Page 196 - erewhon

ener’s carriage was rarely seen at the door of those houses. I
saw two or three such cases during the time that I remained
in the country, and cannot express the pleasure which I
derived from a sight suggestive of so much goodness and
wisdom and forbearance, so richly rewarded; yet I firmly
believe that the same thing would happen in nine families
out of ten if the parents were merely to remember how they
felt when they were young, and actually to behave towards
their children as they would have had their own parents be-
have towards themselves. But this, which would appear to
be so simple and obvious, seems also to be a thing which
not one in a hundred thousand is able to put in practice. It
is only the very great and good who have any living faith in
the simplest axioms; and there are few who are so holy as to
feel that 19 and 13 make 32 as certainly as 2 and 2 make 4.
I am quite sure that if this narrative should ever fall into
Erewhonian hands, it will be said that what I have written
about the relations between parents and children being sel-
dom satisfactory is an infamous perversion of facts, and
that in truth there are few young people who do not feel
happier in the society of their nearest relations {4} than in
any other. Mr. Nosnibor would be sure to say this. Yet I can-
not refrain from expressing an opinion that he would be a
good deal embarrassed if his deceased parents were to re-
appear and propose to pay him a six months’ visit. I doubt
whether there are many things which he would regard as
a greater infliction. They had died at a ripe old age some
twenty years before I came to know him, so the case is an
extreme one; but surely if they had treated him with what in

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