Page 197 - erewhon

his youth he had felt to be true unselfishness, his face would
brighten when he thought of them to the end of his life.
In the one or two cases of true family affection which I
met with, I am sure that the young people who were so gen-
uinely fond of their fathers and mothers at eighteen, would
at sixty be perfectly delighted were they to get the chance
of welcoming them as their guests. There is nothing which
could please them better, except perhaps to watch the hap-
piness of their own children and grandchildren.
This is how things should be. It is not an impossible ideal;
it is one which actually does exist in some few cases, and
might exist in almost all, with a little more patience and for-
bearance upon the parents’ part; but it is rare at present—so
rare that they have a proverb which I can only translate in
a very roundabout way, but which says that the great happi-
ness of some people in a future state will consist in watching
the distress of their parents on returning to eternal com-
panionship with their grandfathers and grandmothers;
whilst ‘compulsory affection’ is the idea which lies at the
root of their word for the deepest anguish.
There is no talisman in the word ‘parent’ which can gen-
erate miracles of affection, and I can well believe that my
own child might find it less of a calamity to lose both Arow-
hena and myself when he is six years old, than to find us
again when he is sixty—a sentence which I would not pen
did I not feel that by doing so I was giving him something
like a hostage, or at any rate putting a weapon into his hands
against me, should my selfishness exceed reasonable limits.
Money is at the bottom of all this to a great extent. If the

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