However much Stanisław had wished during our consultation to "pull the silly fellow's ears," the letter to his son was indulgent rather than stern. It was easy to guess what that yet unseen son, the one hope of the old burgher family, was to Światełki. He had worked perseveringly and honestly for so many years, and had overcome all kinds of difficulties; lonely and neglected, he had passed victoriously through the temptations to enrich himself easily with which Siberia beguiles the unsuspecting novice. Doubtless he owed all this in a certain degree to the honest principles he had brought from his home and country, as well as to his character, but, without any doubt, equally to that son in whose very birth he saw the Hand of God. It was clear that the poor fellow dreamt of standing before his beloved child as an ascetic dreams of appearing at the Judgment-Seat. The thought that he would be able to tell him--openly and fearlessly--"I have nothing to bring you, my son, but a name unstained by a past full of the gravest temptations," was the lodestar of his life. Taking this into consideration, therefore, I did not scold the "silly fool," but explained to him in an affectionate way what the money was the father was sending to the family--money he had earned by working extremely hard, and frequently by pinching himself. I told the lad what he ought to be and might become, being strong and healthy, and that on this account his wish for money to spend on trifles gave his father pain. I wrote large and distinctly, adapting myself to the young joiner's powers of comprehension, and at the end fervently blessed him in his new walk in life.