the lad could be of most use in the field. If an occasion arose when a lad
was wanted, his lessons had to wait while he lent a hand. He had his play,
of course, as boys in all ages have had; but it was play of a rude
character with the plough lads, and the almost equally rough sons of
farmers, who worked like ploughmen.

In those days the strong made no pretence to protect the weak, or to
abnegate their natural power. The biggest lad used his thews and sinews to
knock over the lesser without mercy, till the lesser by degrees grew
strong enough to retaliate. To be thrashed, beaten, and kicked was so
universal an experience that no one ever imagined it was not correct, or
thought of complaining. They accepted it as a matter of course. As he grew
older his work simply grew harder, and in no respect differed from that of
the labourers, except that he directed what should be done next, but none
the less assisted to do it.

Thus the days went on, the weeks, and months, and years. He was close upon
forty years old before he had his own will for a single day. Up to almost
that age he worked on his father's farm as a labourer among the labourers,
as much under parental authority as when he was a boy of ten. When the old
man died it was not surprising that the son, so long held down in
bondage--bondage from which he had not the spirit to escape--gave way for
a short period to riotous living. There was hard drinking, horse-racing,
and card-playing, and waste of substance generally.

But it was not for long, for several reasons. In the first place, the lad
of forty years, suddenly broken forth as it were from school, had gone
past the age when youth plunges beyond recall. He was a grown man, neither
wise nor clever; but with a man's sedateness of spirit and a man's hopes.
There was no innate evil in his nature to lead him into unrighteous