Delude not
yourself with thinking that you will be wiser than your parents. You may
be an age in advance of those whom you have pestered, but unless you are
one of the great ones you will still be an age behind those who will in
their turn pester you.
"Imagine what it must be to have an unborn quartered upon you, who is of
an entirely different temperament and disposition to your own; nay, half-
a-dozen such, who will not love you though you have stinted yourself in a
thousand ways to provide for their comfort and well-being,--who will
forget all your self-sacrifice, and of whom you may never be sure that
they are not bearing a grudge against you for errors of judgement into
which you may have fallen, though you had hoped that such had been long
since atoned for. Ingratitude such as this is not uncommon, yet fancy
what it must be to bear! It is hard upon the duckling to have been
hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched
the duckling?
"Consider it again, we pray you, not for our sake but for your own. Your
initial character you must draw by lot; but whatever it is, it can only
come to a tolerably successful development after long training; remember
that over that training you will have no control.
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