Pg. 297

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 297] THE SPOILED CHILD. 9

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 and permission to stay at home, he would then, to get rid of our importunity and command, beg permission to go to the church in the next village, which happened to be nearer. And in order to induce him to go somewhere to the house of God, we thus left him, or rather abandoned him to himself. That which we ought to have anticipated and feared, did take place. His vicious companions took the charge of him; and they led him, riot into the house of God, but into the village taverns! Whole Sabbaths had he thus spent before we made the appalling discovery!”

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 “And then,” said the Pastor, “did not your too fond and compliant hearts place funds too profusely at his disposal even from the first?”

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 3 “Ah! Sir,” cried the father, “that was my next error, which, perhaps, gave pungency and fatality to the rest. I gave him money, first, because ‘I loved the dear child:’ then I gave him money, because I saw other parents giving liberally to their children : and then, I gave him money, because my pride said, my only son shall not be behind his comrades in any thing: and, finally, I confess that latterly I gave many sums purely out of self-defence, or an indolent aversion to resistance, simply to get rid of his importunate duns! And now I can say, from experience, that these ill timed donations to children fail not to beget new wants, and new appetites, and new desires. This evil is like the dropsy in the natural body, it increases by its own means of indulgence: the more water the dropsical man drinks the more thirsty he becomes, and the more inveterate is his disease rendered by every fresh draught; That parent who lavishes ‘pocket money’ on his child, before he has acquired sound principles and prudence to control his passions, and a spirit of enlightened charity and good taste to make a wise use of it, exerts his influence directly to initiate him into habits of gambling, intemperance, gluttony, and their attendant revolting vices. He furnishes the means of gratification; he lays, the train, and puts into the hands of his child the lighted torch and the match ready to be applied! All this, alas! to my sorrow, have I done. And when, at length, I did awaken to the frightful consequences, now too evident in the confirmed habits of vice in my poor ruined boy, I found myself adding another error to the former, and