His father's violent threats, or
coarse sneers, would not have been taken au serieux by a stronger boy,
but Theobald was not a strong boy, and, rightly or wrongly, gave his
father credit for being quite ready to carry his threats into
execution. Opposition had never got him anything he wanted yet, nor
indeed had yielding, for the matter of that, unless he happened to
want exactly what his father wanted for him. If he had ever
entertained thoughts of resistance, he had none now, and the power
to oppose was so completely lost for want of exercise that hardly
did the wish remain; there was nothing left save dull acquiescence
as of an ass crouched between two burdens. He may have had an
ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals; he might
occasionally dream of himself as a soldier or a sailor far away in
foreign lands, or even as a farmer's boy upon the wolds, but there was
not enough in him for there to be any chance of his turning his dreams
into realities, and he drifted on with his stream, which was a slow,
and, I am afraid, a muddy one.
I think the Church Catechism has a good deal to do with the
unhappy relations which commonly even now exist between parents and
children.
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