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Search - Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass (World Cultural Heritage Library)

Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass - World Cultural Heritage Library
Author: Frederick Douglass

from: CHAPTER 1 To-know all is to forgive all. So, therefore, if you would censure Tydvil Jones because of what happened when he made the attempt to recapture his lost youth, you should know why and how he lost his youth. A biographical introduction to a story is always boring, but I cannot help that. You must know how... more » Tydvil was brought up or it will be impossible to understand him. When you know he began life with a handicap that not one man in a million could carry to the winning post you will recognise that he might have been much worse than he was. To begin with Tydvil was an only child. His father was middle-aged when Tydvil arrived, and was a man deeply absorbed in his business. His mother was a woman of iron will and an ultra pious disposition. That she insisted on calling her son Tydvil because his father had been born in Merthyr Tydvil, and had her way, is one proof of the inflexibility of her purpose. It was the boy's good luck that with his mother's will he inherited the business ability of his father. As there was not room in one family for two will-powers such as her own, Mrs. Jones, senior, did her best to eradicate that of her son in his infancy; but never recognised that, though suppressed, it remained latent. Now, Mrs. Jones as the moving spirit in half a dozen societies for the moral improvement of everybody and everything, obtained an insight into aspects of life that are usually kept decently covered up. Not being as wise as she believed herself to be, and seeing results without understanding causes, she was firmly convinced that all men were brutes. She asserted her belief so often that the natural brutality of man became the basic axiom of her life. She was determined, therefore, that her son would grow up an exception, and took measures accordingly. It was the boy's hard luck that; as an only child, she was able to devote her entire attention to him while she was not otherwise engaged in reforming society. To give her her due, she was well equipped for the job. It would have been better for Tydvil perhaps had she not been entitled to sign herself M.A. By the time he was aged eighteen years he was better furnished educationally than thousands of public school boys. Otherwise the results of his home training were deplorable beyond words. He knew no other boys of his age except at long range. His only sport was tennis played with serious-minded seniors of either sex on the family court. On the rare occasions when he came into contact with youths of his own age, he could not understand them. He considered their outlook on life to be sinful. Their opinion of him, expressed with the freedom of youth, was far from flattering. On one occasion, after reflecting on their manners and customs to two amazed boys, he only escaped gathering the full harvest of his temerity by one restraining the other on the plea that it was impossible to strike a lady. They parted with him after giving him a brief, but lurid, summary of his character that left him pink to the ears. The truth was, that at this age, a more intolerable and obnoxious young prig than Tydvil Jones could not have been found outside the pages of "Sanford and Merton," a literary masterpiece that is, fortunately, forgotten by the present generation.

ISBN-13: 9781438796765
ISBN-10: 1438796765
Publication Date: 9/9/2009
Pages: 150
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Intl Business Pubns USA
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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