Page 189 - erewhon

and yet not to refuse is much the same as going into part-
nership with half-a-dozen different people about whom one
can know absolutely nothing beforehand—not even wheth-
er one is going into partnership with men or women, nor
with how many of either. Delude not yourself with think-
ing that you will be wiser than your parents. You may be an
age in advance of those whom you have pestered, but unless
you are one of the great ones you will still be an age behind
those who will in their turn pester you.
‘Imagine what it must be to have an unborn quartered
upon you, who is of an entirely different temperament and
disposition to your own; nay, half-a-dozen such, who will
not love you though you have stinted yourself in a thousand
ways to provide for their comfort and well-being,—who will
forget all your self-sacrifice, and of whom you may never be
sure that they are not bearing a grudge against you for er-
rors of judgement into which you may have fallen, though
you had hoped that such had been long since atoned for. In-
gratitude such as this is not uncommon, yet fancy what it
must be to bear! It is hard upon the duckling to have been
hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to
have hatched the duckling?
‘Consider it again, we pray you, not for our sake but for
your own. Your initial character you must draw by lot; but
whatever it is, it can only come to a tolerably successful
development after long training; remember that over that
training you will have no control. It is possible, and even
probable, that whatever you may get in after life which is
of real pleasure and service to you, will have to be won in

1 Erewhon