Is not that filial ingratitude, of which parents so generally complain, the bitter fruit of their own training?--You fill their hearts with mercenary passions, and with measureless ambition. You break the tenderest ties, and send them to distant public schools. Your children, in turn, put your lessons to account, and abandon your importunate and declining age, if you depend on them, to mercenary hands. When they were young, you ridiculed them out of their innocent recklessness, and frankness, and want of worldly wisdom. You vaunted to them that ambition and those arts of rising, which, put in practice, have steeled their hearts against filial piety, as well as the other affections that belong not to calculation. Since the paramount object of your training was to teach them to shine, and make the most out of every body, you have at least a right to expect from their vanity, pompous funeral solemnities. I revere that indication of infinite wisdom, that has rendered the love of the parent more anxious and tender than that of the child. The intensity of the affections ought to be proportionate to the wants of the beings that excite them. But ingratitude is not in nature. Better training would have produced other manners. In rearing our children with more enlightened care, in inspiring them with moderate desires, in reducing their eagerness for brilliancy and distinction, we shall render them happy, without stifling their natural filial sentiments; and we shall thus use the best means of training them to sustain and soothe our last moments, as we embellished their first days.[34] LETTER XVI. OF FRIENDSHIP. Let us bring within the family circle a few persons of amiable manners and simple tastes. Our domestic retreat may then become our universe. But we must search for real friends, with capabilities for continuing such. If interest and pleasure break the accidental ties of a day, shall friendship, which was always a stranger to the connexion, be accused of the infraction? A real friend must not be expected from the common ties of vulgar interest; but must be, in the circle to which he belongs, as a brother of adoption. So simple should be our confidence in the entireness of his affection, and the disinterestedness and wisdom of his advice, as to incline us to consult him without afflicting our wife or children by a useless communication of our perplexities. To him we should be able to confide our fears; and while we struggle, by his advice and aid to escape the pressing evil which menaces to overwhelm us, our family may still repose in tranquil security.[35] If he suffer in turn, we share his pains. If he have pleasures, we reciprocally enjoy them. If either party experience reverses, instead of finding himself alone in misery, he receives consolations so touching and tender, that he ceases to complain of a lot which has enabled him to become acquainted with the depth of the resources of friendship.