ng to hint to
him what it takes so long for a strong individual nature to learn, that
the law of one temperament cannot justly or fruitfully be enforced as
the law of another.

The younger children--Esther and Dot and Mat used sometimes to say to
each other--would grow up in a more clement atmosphere of home than had
been Henry's and theirs. Already they were quietly assuming privileges,
and nothing said, that would have meant beatings for their elders. For
these things had Henry and Esther gladly faced martyrdom. Henry had
looked on the Promised Land, but been denied an entrance there. By his
stripes this younger generation would be healed.

The elder girls hastened to draw close to their father in gratitude, and
home breathed a kinder, freer air than ever had been known before.
Between Esther and her father particularly a kind of comradeship began
to spring up, which perhaps more than ever made the mother miss her boy.

But, all the same, home was growing old. This was the kindness of the
setting sun!

Childless middle age is no doubt often dreary to contemplate, yet is it
an egoistical bias which leads one to find in such limitation, or one
might rather say preservation, of the ego, a certain compensation? The
childless man or woman has at least preserved his or her individuality,
as few fathers and mothers of large families are suffered to do. By the
time you are fifty, with a family of half a dozen children, you have
become comparatively impersonal as "father" or "mother." It is tacitly
recognised that your life-work is finished, that your ambitions are
accomplished or not, and that your hopes are at an end.

The young Mesuriers, for example, were all eagerly hastening towards
their several futures. They were garrulous over them at every meal. But
to what future in this world were James and Mary Mesurier looking
forward? Love had blossomed and brought forth fruit, but the fruit was
quickly ripening, and stranger hands would soon pluck it from the
boughs. In a very few years they would sit under a roof-tree bared of
fruit and blossom, and sad with falling leaves. They had dreamed their
dream, and there is only one such dream for a lifetime; now they must
sit and listen to the dreams of their children, help them to build
theirs. They mattered now no longer for themselves, but just as so much
aid and sympathy on which their children might draw. Too well in their
hearts they knew that their children only heard the