We had no business with pleasant things at all, at any rate very
little business, at any rate not he, Ernest. We were put into this
world not for pleasure but duty, and pleasure had in it something more
or less sinful in its very essence. If we were doing anything we
liked, we, or at any rate he, Ernest, should apologise and think he
was being very mercifully dealt with, if not at once told to go and do
something else. With what he did not like, however, it was
different; the more he disliked a thing the greater the presumption
that it was right. It never occurred to him that the presumption was
in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that the
onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who disputed
its being so. I have said more than once that he believed in his own
depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept
without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over
him: he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew
nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much
stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious.
The dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings too swift and
sure to be translated into such debatable things as words, but
practically insisted as follows-
"Growing is not the easy, plain sailing business that it is commonly
supposed to be: it is hard work- harder than any but a growing boy can
understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to
attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too.
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