We must not quarrel with Clive and Clive’s friends, because they could not joke and be free in the presence of the worthy gentleman. If they hushed when he came in, Thomas Newcome’s sad face would seem to look round—appealing to one after another of them, and asking, “Why don’t you go on laughing?” A company of old comrades shall be merry and laughing together, and the entrance of a single youngster will stop the conversation—and if men of middle age feel this restraint with our juniors, the young ones surely have a right to be silent before their elders. The boys are always mum under the eyes of the usher. There is scarce any parent, however friendly or tender with his children, but must feel sometimes that they have thoughts which are not his or hers; and wishes and secrets quite beyond the parental control: and, as people are vain, long after they are fathers, ay; or grandfathers, and not seldom fancy that mere personal desire of domination is overweening anxiety and love for their family, no doubt that common outcry against thankless children might often be shown to prove, not that the son is disobedient, but the father too exacting. When a mother (as fond mothers often will) vows that she knows every thought in her daughter’s heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much; nor can there be a wholesomer task for the elders, as our young subjects grow up, naturally demanding liberty and citizen’s rights, than for us gracefully to abdicate our sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute control. There’s many a family chief who governs wisely and gently, who is loth to give the power up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not youth alone that has need to learn humility! By their very virtues, and the purity of their lives, many good parents create flatterers for themselves, and so live in the midst of a filial court of parasites—and seldom without a pang of unwillingness, and often not at all, will they consent to forgo their autocracy, and exchange the tribute they have been wont to exact of love and obedience for the willing offering of love and freedom. Our good Colonel was not of the tyrannous, but of the loving order of fathers: and having fixed his whole heart upon this darling youth, his son, was punished, as I suppose such worldly and selfish love ought to be punished (so Mr. Honeyman says, at least, in his pulpit), by a hundred little mortifications, disappointments, and secret wounds, which stung not the less severely though never mentioned by their victim.