when in the impetuosity of my filial affection, I
have rushed into the grand apartment, have I
been challenged with " Where's your bow, sir?"
When I have had to return to the door and bob
my head and scrape my foot on the carpet.
Publicly, in church, we were told that God
made us; privately, in the family circle, we
were informed that we came from London in a
box, or were found in the parsley-bed.

These fathers conducted themselves towards
their children as if they, the children, were a
lower class, a dangerous class, which it was
necessary to suppress and keep down, lest it
should obtain universal suffrage and swamp the
paternal class altogether. This conduct was, in
fact, an application of the prevailing principle
of Toryism to the affairs of the family circle.
Our fathers resisted the intellectual development
of their children as they resisted the
Reform Bill. There is possibly more analogy
between the cases than we suspect. A parent
who allowed his boys to sit at table with him,
and mix on terms of intellectual equality with
his grown-up relations, was regarded as a dangerous
innovator—a demagogue in domestic policy.
Boys treated in this rational manner were
spoken of as " spoilt," and the good old
conservative father pitied them, and prophesied
that they would never do any good in the world.
In 1831, Lord Russell was a political father
"spoiling" his children in this way.

The sovereign receipt for managing boys,
which descended from generation to generation,
and passed from one to another, was expressed in
a very few words. " Be severe with them." That
was the golden rule. Never let a boy contradict
you; never let him answer again; don't allow
him to have an opinion of his own; don't let
him talk about matters which he does not
understand—and it was considered that boys had no
business to understand anything that belonged
to the practical affairs of life. Let them learn
geography at school, and know how to describe
the boundaries; but don't let them know better
than you about the natural products of Peru.
What can a boy know about guano and its
chemical properties? Let him go and learn his
lessons; let him learn to say—like a parrot—
by what countries or seas Peru is bounded on
the north, and the south, and the east, and the
west; but don't let him presume to teach his
father how to grow turnips.

The severity of some of the old-fashioned
fathers was positively brutal. With full warrant
from high and venerable authorities, they carried
the maxim, " Spare the rod and you spoil the
child," to the extent of thrashing their boys
within an inch of their lives. I remember a
very worthy, well-intentioned father, who used
to horsewhip his boys first, and then duck them
in the horse-pond. Those boys, and many more
whom I knew, were punished with a severity
which would not now be sanctioned towards
convicts. I have seen children crouch and
cower like dogs in the presence of their fathers,
furtively and in a shrinking way watching their
faces for an indication of anger. I remember
a boy who, whenever he was spoken to by his
affectionate paternal parent, always lifted up
his elbow in an attitude of defence. It had
become a habit with him. A word was suggestive
of a blow; and he was ever ready with his
elbow in case of accidents. Such was the faith
of those fathers in the virtues of the rod, that
they would allow others to punish their children,
and sometimes be guilty of the exquisite cruelty
of sending a boy to school with a letter
containing injunctions to the schoolmaster to give
the bearer a sound flogging.

This old-fashioned father—who has died
universally unregretted—made up for the character.
You could tell a father of real life as readily as
you can tell the stage king by his brass crown
and his fur tippet. The paternal " make-up"
was severe. It included a coat with a great
deal of collar, a hat with a great deal of crown,
a shirt with a great deal of frill, a watch with a
great deal of seal, and a walking-stick with a
great deal of tassel. It was not until he actually
became a father that he thought it necessary to
appear in this guise. In his bachelor days he
was smart enough and gay enough, both in his
manner and attire; but no sooner was it
announced to him that he was a father than he
put on severe looks and severe clothes. Where
he got that wonderful top-heavy hat, that looked
as if it had a suit of clothes packed up in the
crown of it, that formidable frill resembling the
dorsal fin of a pike in full charge upon its
enemies, that seal, so huge and imposing that it
might have satisfied a lord chancellor, that
tassel, that bastion of a collar—where he got all
these paternal " properties" I never could
discover. But he did get them; he thought it
incumbent upon him to get them; and when he
put them on he put on with them the severe
aspect of the family Jove. How our mothers,
even in their coal-scuttle bonnets and leg-of-
mutton sleeves, could love him, and have any
admiration for him, I never could understand.
I am inclined to think that it was the Reform
Bill which first undermined this monumental
father. Indeed, I believe that the Reform Bill
has been the cause of " all the mischief," as
some folks call it—including that leakage which
has nearly caused the wreck of Noah's ark. I
feel sure that if there had been no Reform Bill
we should still be eating our beefsteaks with
three-pronged steel forks, and lighting our
matches by plunging them into bottles of
phosphorus.

The monumental father, who was first
undermined by the Reform Bill, began to topple
over about the time when penny postage was
adopted. It was not that he was ashamed to
wear a hat like that and a frill like that when
a letter could be sent from one end of the kingdom
to the other for a penny; but it was
because his boys began to see that he was an
incongruity, an anomaly, and an anachronism. No:
papa did not march with the times, and the
young hopeful who did, began to call him
"Guv'nor." No more " Honoured Sir" now in
the school letters. Boys were grown taller for