CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



heir the blended image of his mother's loveliness 

 and his father's manly beauty to be a smug, smooth, 

 prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed 

 down on his forehead, hands always unglaured, and 

 without spot or blemish on his white-thread stock- 

 ings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always 

 moping and musing in a corner with a good book 

 held close to his nose botanizing with his maiden 

 aunts doing the pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in 

 handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and at- 

 tending to the kettle telling tales on all naughty 

 boys and girls laying up his penny a- week pocket- 

 money in a penny pig keeping all his clothes neatly 

 folded up in an untumbled drawer having his own 

 peg for his uncrushed hat saying his prayers precisely 

 as the clock strikes nine, while his companions are yet 

 at blind-man's buff and puffed up every Sabbath- 

 eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon memory 

 for a sermon while all the other boys are scolded 

 for having fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would 

 not wish him, surely, to write sermons himself at his 

 tender years, nay even to be able to give you chap- 

 ter and* verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. 

 Better far that he should begin early to break your 

 heart, by taking no care even of his Sunday clothes 

 blotting his copy impiously pinning pieces of paper 

 to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father 

 [24] 



