the present day, who are accustomed to a far more indulgent
government, and yet seem to me to know little of the loyal
veneration and submission with which we have, through life, regarded
our father and mother. It would have been reckoned disrespectful to
address them by these names; they were through life to us, in
private, papa and mamma, and we never presumed to take a liberty
with them. I doubt whether the petting, patronising equality of
terms on which children now live with their parents be equally
wholesome. There was then, however, strong love and self-
sacrificing devotion; but not manifested in softness or cultivation
of sympathy. Nothing was more dreaded than spoiling, which was
viewed as idle and unjustifiable self-gratification at the expense
of the objects thereof. There were an unlucky little pair in
Russell Square who were said to be 'spoilt children,' and who used
to be mentioned in our nursery with bated breath as a kind of
monsters or criminals. I believe our mother laboured under a
perpetual fear of spoiling Griff as the eldest, Clarence as the
beauty, me as the invalid, Emily (two years younger) as the only
girl, and Martyn as the after-thought, six years below our sister.
She was always performing little acts of conscientiousness, little
as we guessed it.

Thus though her unremitting care saved my life, and was such that
she finally brought on herself a severe and dangerous illness, she
kept me in order all the time, never wailed over me nor weakly
pitied me, never permitted resistance to medicine nor rebellion
against treatment, enforced little courtesies, insisted on every
required exertion, and hardly ever relaxed the rule of Spartan
fortitude in herself as in me. It is to this resolution on her
part, carried out consistently at whatever present cost to us both,