Mr. Nosnibor would be sure to say this. Yet I cannot refrain
from expressing an opinion that he would be a good deal embarrassed if
his deceased parents were to reappear and propose to pay him a six
months' visit. I doubt whether there are many things which he would
regard as a greater infliction. They had died at a ripe old age some
twenty years before I came to know him, so the case is an extreme one;
but surely if they had treated him with what in his youth he had felt to
be true unselfishness, his face would brighten when he thought of them to
the end of his life.
In the one or two cases of true family affection which I met with, I am
sure that the young people who were so genuinely fond of their fathers
and mothers at eighteen, would at sixty be perfectly delighted were they
to get the chance of welcoming them as their guests. There is nothing
which could please them better, except perhaps to watch the happiness of
their own children and grandchildren.
This is how things should be. It is not an impossible ideal; it is one
which actually does exist in some few cases, and might exist in almost
all, with a little more patience and forbearance upon the parents' part;
but it is rare at present--so rare that they have a proverb which I can
only translate in a very roundabout way, but which says that the great
happiness of some people in a future state will consist in watching the
distress of their parents on returning to eternal companionship with
their grandfathers and grandmothers; whilst "compulsory affection" is the
idea which lies at the root of their word for the deepest anguish.
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