There is no more silly and
persistent error than the belief of parents that they can influence
to any appreciable extent the moral ideas and impulses of their
children. These things have their springs in the bases of
character: they are the flower of individuality; and they cannot be
altered or affected after birth by the foolishness of preaching.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, you
will find soon enough he will choose his own course for himself and
depart from it.
Already when Dolly was a toddling little mite and met her mother's
father in the church in Marylebone, it had struck her as odd that
while they themselves were so poor and ill-clad, her grandpapa
should be such a grand old gentleman of such a dignified aspect.
As she grew older and older, and began to understand a little more
the world she lived in, she wondered yet more profoundly how it
could happen, if her grandpapa was indeed the Very Reverend, the
Dean of Dunwich, that her mamma should be an outcast from her
father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage
company.
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