Oh, the noble king of France,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up the hill one day
And he marched them down again.
FATHER and mother not only cherished the idea that “it was good for boys to have some work to do,” but they cherished it in a distorted form. ’Twas not as though you were opposed to work, per se. No, indeed; there was a time for work and a time for play, and any day you would have been very willing to stay out of school and run errands or pile wood or rake up. Then, work would have been (just as your copy-book informed) a “privilege.”
But witness: only Saturdays and after-school and vacation would do for that, and the privilege was changed into a hardship, with your father, from his security, recollecting what he did “when he was a boy,” and evidently taking it out on you!
For “when he was a boy” father “had to work,” and rather vaingloriously (egotistically, to say the least) presented himself as a living, moving argument to apply to your case. However, he was of little weight with you because, privately, you bet with yourself that he never had to work as hard as you—never! Other fellows could skip off fishing, and everything, while you’d got to pile wood or rake the yard.
“Can I go fishin’ to-morrow?”
With a bluffness cloaking sundry misgivings you laid the question before mother, hoping that she would unwittingly answer yes, and that you might entrap her into a family division. Alas, mother was not to be entrapped.
“Ask your father,” she evaded, just as you had feared that she might.