arise by degrees a new phase of things: the
useful will again gain the upper hand; and even the man of large
possessions will feel at last that he must make the most of all which
belongs to him. Believe me, it is quite possible that your son may
become indifferent to all which you have been doing in the park, and
draw in again behind the solemn walls and the tall lindens of his
grandfather."

The secret pleasure which it gave Charlotte to have a son foretold to
her, made her forgive the Assistant his somewhat unfriendly prophecy of
how it might one day fare with her lovely, beautiful park. She therefore
answered without any discomposure: "You and I are not old enough yet to
have lived through very much of these contradictions; and yet when I
look back into my own early youth, when I remember the style of
complaints which I used then to hear from older people, and when I think
at the same time of what the country and the town then were, I have
nothing to advance against what you say. But is there nothing which one
can do to remedy this natural course of things? Are father and son,
parents and children, to be always thus unable to understand each
other? You have been so kind as to prophesy a boy to me. Is it necessary
that he must stand in contradiction to his father? Must he destroy what
his parents have erected, instead of completing it, instead of following
on upon the same idea, and elevating it?"

"There is a rational remedy for it," replied the Assistant. "But it is
one which will be but seldom put in practice by men. The father should
raise his son to a joint ownership with himself. He should permit him to
plant and to build; and allow him the same innocent liberty which he
allows to himself. One form of activity may be woven into another, but
it cannot be pieced on to it. A young shoot may be readily and easily
grafted with an old stem, to which no grown branch admits of being
fastened."

The Assistant was glad to have had the opportunity, at the moment when
he saw himself obliged to take his leave, of saying something agreeable
to Charlotte, and thus making himself a new link to secure her favor. He
had been already too long absent from home, and yet he could not make up
his mind to return there until after a full conviction that he must
allow the approaching epoch of Charlotte's confinement first to pass by
before he could look for any decision from her in respect to Ottilie. He
therefore accommodated himself