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a good correspondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the country. Will is a particular favorite of all the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or a setting dog that he has made himself. He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or sisters, and raises a great deal of mirth among them by inquiring, as often as he meets them, how they wear? These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humors make Will the darling of the country.

Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, when we saw him make up to us with two or three hazel twigs in his hand that he had cut in Sir Roger's woods as he came through them on his way to the house. I was very much pleased to observe on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with which Sir Roger received him, and on the other the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of the good old knight. After the first salutes were over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his servants to carry a set of shuttlecocks he had with him in a little box to a lady that lived about a mile off, to whom, it seems, he had promised such a present for above this half year. Sir Roger's back was no sooner

turned but honest Will began to tell me of a large cock-pheasant that he had sprung in one of the neighboring woods, with two or three other adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncommon characters are the game that I look for and most delight in, for which reason I was as much pleased with the novelty of the person that talked with me as he could be for his life with the springing of a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more than ordinary attention.

In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to dinner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of had the pleasure of seeing the huge jack he had caught served up for the first dish in a most sumptuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it he gave us a long account how he had hooked it, played with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the bank, with several other particulars that lasted all the first course. A dish of wild fowl that came afterward furnished conversation for the rest of the dinner, which concluded with a late invention of Will's for improving the quail-pipe.

Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner I was secretly touched with compassion toward the honest gentleman that had dined with us, and could not but consider with a great deal of concern how so good a heart and such busy hands were wholly employed in trifles; that so much humanity should be so

little beneficial to others, and so much industry so little advantageous to himself. The same temper of mind and application to affairs might have recommended him to the public esteem, and might have raised his fortune in another station of life. What good to his country or himself might not a trader or a merchant have done with such useful tho ordinary qualifications!

Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger brother of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath their quality. This humor fills several parts of Europe with pride and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading nation like ours that the younger sons, tho incapable of any liberal art or profession, may be placed in such a way of life as may perhaps enable them to vie with the best of their family. Accordingly we find several citizens that were launched into the world with narrow fortunes rising by honest industry to greater estates than those of their elder brothers. It is not improbable but Will was formerly tried at divinity, law, or physic, and that, finding his genius did not lie that way, his parents at length gave him up to his own inventions. But certainly, however improper he might have been for studies of a higher nature, he was perfectly well turned for the occupations of trade and commerce. As I think this is a point which can not

be too much inculcated, I shall desire my reader to compare what I have here written with what I have said in my twenty-first speculation.

FAMILY GOVERNMENT

HERBERT SPENCER

Whenever you do command, command with decision and consistency. If the case is one which really can not be otherwise dealt with, then issue your fiat, and, having issued it, never afterward swerve from it. Consider well beforehand what you are going to do, weigh all the consequences, think whether your firmness of purpose will be sufficient; and then, if you finally make the law, enforce it uniformly at whatever cost. Let your penalties be like the penalties inflicted by inanimate nature-inevitable. The hot cinder burns a child the first time he seizes it; it burns him the second time; it burns him the third time; it burns him every time; and he very soon learns not to touch the hot cinder. If you are equally consistent, if the consequences which you tell your child will follow certain acts follow with like uniformity, he will soon come to respect your laws as he does those of nature.

And this respect, once established, will prevent endless domestic evils. Of errors in edu

cation one of the worst is that of inconsistency. As in a community crimes multiply when there is no certain administration of justice, so in a family an immense increase of transgressions results from a hesitating or irregular infliction of penalties. A weak mother who perpetually threatens and rarely performs, who makes rules in haste and repents of them at leisure, who treats the same offense now with severity and now with leniency, according as the passing humor dictates, is laying up miseries both for herself and her children. She is making herself contemptible in their eyes; she is setting them an example of uncontrolled feelings; she is encouraging them to transgress by the prospect of probable impunity; she is entailing endless squabbles and accompanying damage to her own temper and the tempers of her little ones; she is reducing their minds to a moral chaos, which after years of bitter experience will with difficulty bring into order.

Better even a barbarous form of domestic government carried out consistently than a humane one inconsistently carried out. Again we say, avoid coercive measures whenever it is possible to do so; but, when you find despotism really necessary, be despotic in good earnest. Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being, not to produce a being to be governed by others. Were

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