You carry so many more guns than they do that they
cannot fight you. This is called moral influence, and it will enable
you to bounce them as much as you please. They think you know and they
will not have yet caught you lying often enough to suspect that you
are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful person which you
represent yourself to be; nor yet will they know how great a coward
you are, nor how soon you will run away, if they fight you with
persistency and judgement. You keep the dice and throw them both for
your children and yourself. Load them then, for you can easily
manage to stop your children from examining them. Tell them how
singularly indulgent you are; insist on the incalculable benefit you
conferred upon them, firstly in bringing them into the world at all,
but more particularly in bringing them into it as your own children
rather than anyone else's. Say that you have their highest interests
at stake whenever you are out of temper and wish to make yourself
unpleasant by way of balm to your soul. Harp much upon these highest
interests. Feed them spiritually upon such brimstone and treacle as
the late Bishop of Winchester's Sunday stories.
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