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From generation to generation, or, The rise and progress of temperance
From generation to generation or The rise and progress of temperance Author:Emily Foster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. YOUTHFUL DAYS. WE have hinted in the previous chapter that the event of Lord Mayor's Show produced a change in the life of Felix Ashton. This ... more »alteration was that the boy went to school. Mr. Ashton having discovered how frequently Peter Purfleet was the companion of his son, and not considering such companionship at all suitable, began to think that perhaps, after all, his plan of education was defective, and that Felix required a more constant supervision, a stricter discipline than he had yet received. Obedience was a cardinal virtue with Mr. Ashton—we do not say he was not right, only obedience enforced without love is apt to produce results diametrically opposite to those desired. May we not suppose that the stern formalism which often existed side by side with a coarseness, a narrow mindedness, helped in a great degree to produce the riotous living which marks the century of the Georges. That which occurred at the Court of St. James's we may be sure was an index then, as it is now, of the life and manners of those in humble grade. In youth a rigid code of rules and regulations to be unquestionably obeyed; in manhood too often a reckless defiance of all restraints, an utter want of any self-control. It was youthful days with Felix, so it was his part " not to reason why," but simply to obey, and he did so willingly when he found he was destined to be sent to school. For to this decision had Mr. Ashton arrived, partly, as we havesaid, because he considered some change was desirable with regard to Felix, and partly because it was the opinion of Mr. Henry Woodhouse, who was perhaps the one being whom Thomas Ashton permitted on any terms of intimate friendship, that " it would be a vast deal better for Felix to go to school," only he did not use the word vast,...« less