Another gossip asked her what she
expected to make of her great family of boys when it was well known that
all the gentry in the neighbourhood but two or three had sworn that they
would never have a hulking Puritan to brush their boots or run their
errands. And it almost made her husband burn his book and swear that he
would never be seen at another prayer-meeting when his wife so often said
to him that he should never have had children, that he should never have
made her his wife, and that he was not like this when they were first man
and wife. And in her bitterness she would name this wife or that maid,
and would say, You should have married her. She would have gone to the
meeting-house with you as often as you wished. Her sons are far enough
from good service to please you. 'My wife,' he softly said, 'was afraid
of losing the world. And then, after that, my growing sons were soon
given over, all I could do, to the foolish delights of youth, so that,
what by one thing and what by another, they left me to wander in this
manner alone.' And I suppose there is scarcely a household among
ourselves where there have not been serious and damaging
misunderstandings between old-fashioned fathers and their young people
about what the old people called the 'foolish delights' of their sons and
daughters.
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