Once you do that, once you convince them you are near enough to their lives to understand their needs and to try and gratify their natural longings, all your worries will take wing and fly away; for your children will cease to hide and cloak their actions and natures, and they will no longer wish to deceive or attempt to defy you.
Send your daughter where she can learn dancing, in company with other refined and well-bred young people. You have so far emancipated yourself from your old superstitions and beliefs that this action on your part will not antagonize the desirable members of your congregation.
Only a remnant of the old bigots and intolerants are to be found in any congregation of intelligent people of to-day.
If that remnant is shaken out of its winding-sheet by being antagonized, you may galvanize it into life.
At all events, do not endanger the peace of your home and the happiness of your children, for fear of antagonizing a few parishioners of arrested spiritual development.
Give your son and daughter an outlet for the youthful vitality which is like steam: a moving power when used, dangerous and destructive when pent up.
Take young Wilton and Rebecca into a room, and talk the whole matter over.
Tell them how deeply you love them, and how you have just come to realize the mistake you have made in trying to eradicate from them the natural desire for wholesome pleasure instead of giving it proper avenues of expression.
Say frankly that you see your error, and that you intend to rectify it.
Ask their coöperation, and appeal to their good taste and affection not to mortify or humiliate you in your position of clergyman, by overstepping the bounds of decorum or discretion.