SONS 265 



of your children, when they are twenty-one, that they 

 have never been in debt and have never asked you for 

 money, you have attained a satisfactory platform, which 

 will enormously help the dignity of the situation. Such 

 children's minds have not been pauperised, and the parent 

 has not been put into the difficult and painful position of 

 having to refuse or yield to a beggar. Children, on the 

 other hand, should be helped to remember that, however 

 free they may be left as regards the expenditure of their 

 own allowances, no man, woman, or child is free while 

 entirely dependent on money which they neither earn 

 nor possess by inheritance. How often does a son, fresh 

 from leaving school, who is dying to go for a visit or a 

 holiday, or to buy a gun or a dog, go first to his mother, 

 of whom he is not afraid, to plead his cause with his 

 father for the money he wants ! This is a distinctly 

 wrong system, whether the father is rich or poor, an 

 extravagant man himself, or the contrary. If the boy 

 gets what he wants at once, he accepts it as a right, and is 

 quite ready at Christmas to ask for more. If it is denied or 

 grudgingly given, he resents it with irritation as a want 

 of generosity and a needless check on his pleasures. 

 Whereas, if the amount of the allowance is from the first 

 proportioned to the income of the parents, it is brought 

 home to their minds what the children are likely to cost 

 them; while the boy is made to realise that, be the 

 allowance large or small, his expenses must be propor- 

 tioned to it. In the case of really poor parents it is 

 especially necessary to impress upon the whole family 

 that, with regard to pleasures, education, or even 

 necessities, everything is subservient to the fact that 

 money can only go as far as it will. Of course, if it were 

 necessary, or even desirable, each member of a family 

 might contribute what he or she can afford to the 

 advantage of one member of it. Not a bad illustration of 



