5. It is to be impressed upon the Prince’s mind continually that he is an object of the first consequence, and that his first duty is to take good care of himself.
Such being the plan laid down for Prince Eigenwillig’s education, it is not to be wondered at that, by the time he was two years old, he had a very fair notion of the drift of his mother’s rules, and that they found great favour in his eyes; insomuch that at three, when the Ladies Brigida, Frigida, and Rigida commenced the task of tuition, he contrived to inspire them with the notion that their office, for the present, at least, was likely to be a sinecure. He even resisted the efforts which the Lady Brigida made to induce him to feed himself with a fork and a spoon, and adhered upon principle to the use of his fingers, lest, by yielding the point, he should seem to allow himself to be contradicted.
At four years old the precocity of his talents had greatly developed themselves. He had mingled mustard with the Lady Frigida’s chocolate; he had pulled the chair from under his father, just as the King was about to sit down, whereby his Majesty got a tumble, and the Prince got his ears boxed; he had killed nurse Yellowlily’s cockatoo by endeavouring to ascertain whether it was as fond of stewed mushrooms as he was himself, and he had even gone the length of singing in her presence, and of course in allusion to her bereavement,
“Dame what made your ducks to die?
Ducks to die? ducks to die? ducks to die?
Eating o’ polly-wigs! Eating o’ polly-wigs.”
But if the truth must be told, the prince had acquired by this time many worse habits than that of mischief. And these had their origin in his being permitted to have his own way in everything. For, indeed, it might be said, that this spoilt child was the person who ruled the entire kingdom. The prince ruled his nurse, and his three instructresses; they ruled the Queen; the Queen ruled the King; the King ruled his Ministers; and the Ministers ruled the country.
O Lady Abracadabra, Lady Abracadabra, how could you allow things to come to such a pass? You must have known right well that Queen Ninnilinda was very silly; and that King Katzekopf was one of those folks who are too indolent to exert themselves about anything which is likely to be troublesome or unpleasant; and you must have been quite sure that the nurses and governesses were all going the wrong way to work; you must have foreseen that at the end of four years of mismanagement the poor child would be a torment to himself and to everybody else. Why did you not interfere?
This is a hard question to answer; but perhaps the Lady Abracadabra’s object was to convince both parties of this fact by actual experience, as being aware that in such experience lay the best hope of a remedy.
A torment, however, the child was; there could be no mistake about that. Though he had everything he asked for, nothing seemed to satisfy him; if he was pleased one moment, he was peevish the next: he grew daily more and more fractious, and ill-humoured, and proud, and greedy, and self-willed, and obstinate. It is very shocking to think of so young a child having even the seeds of such evil tempers; but how could it be otherwise, when he was taught to think only of himself, and when he was allowed to have his own way in all things? Unhappy child! yet happy in this, that he was likely to find out for himself that, in spite of having all he wished for, he was unhappy! Unhappy parents! yet happy in this, that, if so disposed, they might learn wisdom, from the obvious failure of their foolish system of weak indulgence!