Most homes of the upper classes have not the means to keep up the life that is lived in them. By the money of creditors, or by an exorbitant profit made at the cost of working people, or by careless consumption of the very necessary savings to be laid by for hard times, or against the death of the family provider, a luxurious style of living is maintained. But even when in rare cases there is real ability to live in this way, parents would not do it, if the best interests of the children were taken into account. Elders may speak of industry as much as they like; if the father's and mother's work for children has no reality about it, the parents would do best to be silent. The same must be said of warnings and arbitrary prohibitions to children concerning the satisfaction of their desire for enjoyment, if the parents themselves do not influence the children by their own example. On the other hand there are just as disturbing consequences when industrious parents conceal their self-denial from their children, when they deprive themselves in the effort to spare their children the knowledge that their parents are not in a position to clothe them as well as their companions or to give them the same pleasures. Least of all is home life successful in helping children through the difficulties of their earlier years, when discipline has killed confidence between them and their parents, when they become insincere from want of courage and careless from want of freedom; when parents present themselves to the children as exceptional beings, asking for blind reverence and absolute subjection. From such homes in old days fine men and women could proceed, but now extremely seldom. Young people recognise in our days no such requirements; confidential intercourse with parents has robbed them of this nimbus of infallibility.