You May Bend the Sapling,

BUT NOT THE TREE.

LADDER, and pole, and cord will be of no use to straighten the bent tree; it should have been looked after much earlier. Train trees when they are saplings and young lads before the down comes on their chins. If you want a bullfinch to pipe, whistle to him while he is young; he will scarcely catch the tune after he has learnt the wild bird’s note. Begin early to teach, for children begin early to sin. Catch them young and you may hope to keep them.

Ere your boy has reached to seven,
Teach him well the way to heaven:
Better still the work will thrive,
If he learns before he’s five.

What is learned young is learned for life. What we hear at the first we remember to the last. The bent twig grows up a crooked tree. Horse-breakers say

“The tricks a colt getteth at his first backing, Will whilst he continueth never be lacking.”

When a boy is rebellious, conquer him, and do it well the first time, that there may be no need to do it again. A child’s first lesson should be obedience, and after that you may teach it what you please: yet the young mind must not be laced too tight, or you may hurt its growth and hinder its strength. They say a daft nurse makes a wise child, but I do not believe it: nobody needs so much common sense as a mother or a governess. It does not do to be always thwarting; and yet remember if you give a child his will and a whelp his fill, both will surely turn out ill. A child’s back must be made to bend, but it must not be broken. He must be ruled, but not with a rod of iron. His spirit must be conquered, but not crushed.

Nature does sometimes overcome nurture, but for the most part the teacher wins the day. Children are what they are made: the pity is that so many are spoiled in the bringing up. A child may be rocked too hard; you may spoil him either by too much cuffing or too much kissing. I knew two boys who had a Christian mother, but she always let them have their own way. The consequence was that when they grew up they took to drinking and low company and soon spent the fortune their father left them. No one controlled them and they had no control over themselves, and so they just rattled along the broad road like butcher boys with runaway horses, and there was no stopping them. A birch or two worn out upon them when they were little would have been a good use of timber.

Still, a child can be treated too hardly, and especially he can be shut up too many hours in school, when a good run and a game of play would do him more good. Cows don’t give any the more milk for being often milked, nor do children learn any more because of very long hours in a hot room.

A boy can be driven to learn till he loses half his wits: forced fruits have little flavor; a man at five is a fool at fifteen. If you make veal of the calf he will never turn to beef. Yet learning may be left so long that the little dunce is always behindhand.

There’s a medium in everything and he is a good father who hits upon it, so that he governs his family with love, and his family loves to be governed by him. Some are like Eli, who let his sons sin and only chided them a little; these will turn out to be cruel parents in the long run: others are too strict, and make home miserable, and so drive the youngsters to the wrong road in another way. Tight clothes are very apt to 7 tear, and hard laws are often broken: but loose garments tear too, and where there are no laws at all, things are sure to go amiss. So you see it is easy to err on either side, and hard to dance the tight-rope of wisdom. Depend on it, he who has a wife and bairns will never be short of care to carry. See what we get when we come to marry, yet many there are who will not tarry.

In these days children have a deal too much of their own way, and often make their mothers and fathers their slaves. It has come to a fine pass when the goslings teach the geese, and the kittens rule the cat: it is the upsetting of everything, and no parent ought to put up with it. It is as bad for the boys and girls as it is for the grown folk, and it brings out the worst side of their characters. I would sooner be a cat on hot bricks, or a toad under a harrow, than let my own children be my masters. No, the head must be the head, or it will hurt the whole body.

For children out of place
Are a father’s disgrace,
If you rule not you’ll rue,
For they’ll quickly rule you.

A MAN MAY LOVE HIS HOUSE,

THOUGH HE RIDE NOT ON THE

RIDGE.

YOU can love your house and not ride on the ridge; there’s a medium in everything. You can be fond of your wife without being her drudge, and you can love your children dearly, and yet not give them their own way in everything. Some men are of so strange a kidney that they set no bounds to their nonsense. If they are fond of roast beef they must needs suck the spit; they cannot rest with eating the pudding, they must swallow the bag. If they dislike a thing, the very smell of it sets them grumbling, and if they like it they must have it everywhere and always, for nothing else is half so sweet. When they do go in for eating rabbits, they have

Rabbits young and rabbits old,
Rabbits hot and rabbits cold,
Rabbits tender, rabbits tough:
Never can they have enough.

Whatever they take up takes them up, and for a season they cannot seize on anything else. At election times the barber cannot trim his customer’s poll because of the polling, and the draper cannot serve you with calico because he is canvassing. The nation would go to the dogs altogether if the cat’s-meat man did not secure the election by sticking his mark on the ballot paper. It is supposed that the globe would leave off turning round if our Joe Scroggs did not go down to the “Dun Cow,” and read the paper, and have his say upon politics, in the presence of the house of commons assembled in the taproom. I do not quite think so, but I know this, that when the Whigs and the Tories and the Radicals are about, Scroggs is good for nothing all day long. What party he belongs to I don’t know, but I believe his leading principle will be seen in the following verse: —

If gentlemen propose a glass

He never says them nay; For he always thinks it right to drink

While other people pay.

You can make a good thing become a nuisance by harping on that one string from dawn to dusk. A hen with one chick makes no end of scratching and clucking, and so does a fellow of one idea. He has a bee in his bonnet, and he tries to put a wasp in yours. He duns you, and if you do not agree with him he counts you his enemy. When you meet with him you are unfortunate, and when you leave him you will better yourself go where you may: “there’s small sorrow at our parting,” as the old mare said to the broken cart. You may try to humor him, but he will have all the more humors if you do, for the man knows no moderation, and if you let him ride on the roof he will soon sit on the chimney-pot.

One man of my acquaintance used to take Morrison’s pills every day of his life, and when I called to see him I had not been there ten minutes before he wanted me to take a dose, but I could not swallow what he told me nor the pills either, so I told him I dare say they were very good for him, but they did not suit my constitution: however, he kept on with his subject till I was fain to be off. Another man never catches sight of me but he talks about vaccination and goes on against it till he froths at the mouth, and I am half afraid he will inoculate me. My master had a capital horse, worth a good deal of money, only he always shied at a stone-heap on the road, and if there were fifty of them he always bolted off the road every time. He had got heaps on his brain, poor creature, and though he was fit for a nobleman’s carriage he had to be put to plough. Some men have got stone-heaps in their poor noddles and this spoils them for life and makes it dangerous for all who have to deal with them. What queer fish there are in our pond! I am afraid that most of us have a crack somewhere, but we don’t all show it quite so much as some. We ought to have a good deal of patience, and then we shall find amusement where else we should be bothered to death. One of my mates says the world is not round, and so I always drop into his notion and tell him this is a flat world and he is a flat too.

What a trial it is to be shut up for an hour with a man or a woman with a hobby; riding in a horsebox with a bear with a sore head is nothing to it. The man is so fond of bacon that he wants you to kiss his pig, and all the while you hope you will never again see either the man or his pork as long as you live. No matter what the whole hog may be, the man who goes it is terrible.

Rocking horse for boy,
Hobby horse for man;
Each one rides his toy
Whenever he can.

The boy is right glad
Though he rideth alone;
His father’s own fad
By the world must be known.

Of the two hobby rides,
The boy’s is the best;
For the man often chides,
And gives you no rest.

It is a good thing for a man to be fond of his own trade and his own place, but still there is reason in everything, even in roasting eggs. When a man thinks that his place is below him he will pretty soon be below his place, and therefore a good opinion of your own calling is by no means an evil; yet nobody is everybody, and no trade is to crow over the rest. The cobbler has his awl but he is not all, and the hatter wears a crown but he is not king. A man may come to market without buying my onions, and ploughing can be done with other horses than mine, though Dapper and Violet are something to brag of. The farming interest is no doubt first, and so is the saddler’s, and so is the tinker’s, and so is the grocer’s, and so is the draper’s, and so is the parson’s, and so is the parish beadle’s, and so is every other interest according to each man’s talk.

Your trade, as a trade, is all very well, But other good folk have their cheeses to sell; You must not expect all the world to bow down, And give to one pedlar the sceptre and crown.

It is astonishing how much men will cry up small matters. They are very busy, but it is with catching flies. They talk about a mushroom till you would think it was the only thing at the Lord Mayor’s dinner, and the beef and the turkeys went for nothing. They say nothing about the leg of mutton, for they are so much in love with the trim-* mings. They can’t keep things in their places, but make more of a horse’s tail than they do of his whole body. Like the cock on the dunghill, they consider a poor barley-corn to be worth more than a diamond. A thing happens to suit their taste and so there is nothing like it in the whole of England; no, nor in all America or Australia. A duck will not always dabble in the same gutter, but they will; for, bless your heart, they don’t think it a gutter, but a river, if not an ocean. They must ride the ridge of the roof, or else burn the house down. A good many people love their dogs, but these folks take them to bed with them. Other farmers fat the calf, but they fall dolpn and worship it, and what is worse they quarrel with everybody who does not think as much of their idol as they do.

It will be a long while before all men become wise, but it will help on the time if we begin to be wise ourselves. Don’t let us make too much of this world and the things of it. We are to use it but not to abuse it; to live in it but not for it; to love our house but not to ride on the ridge. Our daily bread and daily work are to be minded, and yet we must not mind earthly things. We must not let the body send the soul to grass, rather must we make the limbs servants to the soul. The world must not rule us, we must reign as kings though we are only ploughmen; and stand upright even if the world should be turned upside down.