There is no talisman in the word "parent" which can generate miracles of
affection, and I can well believe that my own child might find it less of
a calamity to lose both Arowhena and myself when he is six years old,
than to find us again when he is sixty--a sentence which I would not pen
did I not feel that by doing so I was giving him something like a
hostage, or at any rate putting a weapon into his hands against me,
should my selfishness exceed reasonable limits.
Money is at the bottom of all this to a great extent. If the parents
would put their children in the way of earning a competence earlier than
they do, the children would soon become self-supporting and independent.
As it is, under the present system, the young ones get old enough to have
all manner of legitimate wants (that is, if they have any "go" about
them) before they have learnt the means of earning money to pay for them;
hence they must either do without them, or take more money than the
parents can be expected to spare. This is due chiefly to the schools of
Unreason, where a boy is taught upon hypothetical principles, as I will
explain hereafter; spending years in being incapacitated for doing this,
that, or the other (he hardly knows what), during all which time he ought
to have been actually doing the thing itself, beginning at the lowest
grades, picking it up through actual practice, and rising according to
the energy which is in him.
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