you teach him, so, all the time, will he teach you. Every principle
laid down in this book, above all others the principle of _freedom_,
will apply to him. He will take the lessons a trifle more reluctantly
but more lastingly than the younger boys; and in a little while you
will be envied of all your women friends because of the competency,
the reliability, the contentment of your children's father.




THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE


When all is said and done, it remains true that the finest, the
most subtle and penetrating influence in education is precisely
that education for which no rules can be laid down. It is the silent
influence of the motives which impel the persons who constantly
surround us. If we examine for a little our own childhood we see at
once that this is so. What are those canons of conduct by which we
judge others and even occasionally ourselves? Whence came that list
of _impossible_ things, those things that are so closed to us that we
cannot, even under great stress, of temptation, conceive ourselves as
yielding to them?

There is an enlightening story of a young man, born and bred a
gentleman, who, by the way of fast living falls upon poverty. In the
hard pressure of his financial affairs he is about to commit suicide,
when suddenly he finds, in an empty cab, a roll of bills amounting to
some thousands of dollars. The circumstances are such that he knows
that he can, if he will, discover the owner; or, he can, without