The over-solicitude that defeats its own end, in the case of a parent,
has been admirably portrayed by Arthur Benson in "Beside Still Waters,"--
"there was nothing in the world that he more desired than the company and
the sympathy of his children; but he had, beside this, an intense and
tremulous sense of his responsibility toward them. He attached an undue
importance to small indications of character, and thus the children were
seldom at ease with their father, because he rebuked them constantly, and
found frequent fault, doing almost violence to his tenderness, not from any
pleasure in censoriousness, but from a terror, that was almost morbid, of
the consequences of the unchecked development of minute tendencies."

Something must be left to natural growth, and to fortune, even in such
important matters as the rearing of children.






XII.

THE WORRIER ON HIS TRAVELS

After all, is it not a part of the fine art of living to take the enjoyment
of the moment as it comes without lamenting that it is not something else?

LILIAN WHITING: _Land of Enchantment_.