He shrinks out of my way whenever he sees me coming
near him. He will not stay five minutes in the same room with me if he
can help it. He is deceitful. He would not want to hide himself away
so much if he were not deceitful. That is a bad sign and one which
makes me fear he will grow up extravagant. I am sure he will grow up
extravagant. I should have given him more pocket-money if I had not
known this- but what is the good of giving him pocket-money? It is all
gone directly. If he doesn't buy something with it he gives it away to
the first little boy or girl he sees who takes his fancy. He forgets
that it's my money he is giving away. I give him money that he may
have money and learn to know its uses, not that he may go and squander
it immediately. I wish he was not so fond of music; it will
interfere with his Latin and Greek. I will stop it as much as I can.
Why, when he was translating Livy the other day he slipped out
Handel's name in mistake for Hannibal's, and his mother tells me he
knows half the tunes in the 'Messiah' by heart. What should a boy of
his age know about the 'Messiah'? I had shown half as many dangerous
tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to
a greengrocer, of that I'm very sure," etc.
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