However earthly parents may wrong their children by neglect, or by permitting in themselves characters that react ruinously upon those sacredly intrusted to their training, the Divine Father seems to give all a chance sometime in life for the achievement of the grandest of all victories, the conquest of self. Whatever abstract theories dreamers may evolve secluded from the world, those who observe closely--who KNOW humanity from infancy to age--are compelled to admit, however reluctantly, that the inner self of every heart is tainted and poisoned by evil. The innocence of childhood is too much like the harmlessness of the lion's whelps. However loftily and plausibly some may assert the innate goodness and self-rectifying power of humanity, as Tom Paine wrote against the Bible without reading it, not having been able at the time to procure one in infidel Paris, those who take the scientific course of getting the facts first shake their heads despondingly. It is true that parents discover diversities in their children. Some are sweeter-tempered than others, and seem pointed horizontally, if not heavenward, in their natures. Many bid fair to stand high, measured by earthly standards. But the approving world can know nothing of the evil thoughts that haunt the heart. What mother has not been almost appalled as she has seen the face of her still infant child inflamed with rage and the passionate desire for revenge? The chubby hand is not always raised to caress, but too often to strike. As mind and heart develop, darker and meaner traits unfold with every natural grace. There is a canker-worm in the bud, and unless it is taken out, there never can be a perfect flower. But Mr. and Mrs. Marsden thought of none of these things. The mother received her estimate of life, and her duty, from current opinion on the avenue. She complacently felicitated herself that she kept up with the changing mode quite as well as most women of wealth and fashion, if not better. She managed so well that she excited the admiration of some, and the envy of more; and so was content. As for Mr. Marsden, what with his business, his newspaper, whist, and an occasional evening at the club or some entertainment or public meeting that he could not escape, his life was full and running over. He never had time to give a thought to the fine theories about his children, nor to the rather contradictory facts often reported from the nursery. But as year after year he paid the enormous and increasing bills for nurses, gouvernantes, Italian music masters, and fashionable schools, he sincerely thought that few men did as much for their children as he.