But she was a very young wife; so, when she had hatched three eggs into cygnets, her pride knew no bounds. The father, getting into his dotage, encouraged her in her maternal follies. The cygnets were fine healthy birds, but the two old birds took them out walking to such an extent that one by one they died. No one quite knows why. Some say that there was not enough grass by the pond, and the parents took them to find grass; and some say that parental vanity wished to display such flourishing offspring; but anyhow, the fact remains that the cygnets took walks with their parents till they died. There is nothing more domestic than the family walk.
But now contrast this domestic affection with the melancholy fate of the inebriate swan.
A clergyman’s wife kept one swan, and the swan, no one knows how, got into the habit of going to eat malt at a public-house. If he had done this within bounds it would not have mattered, but he got regularly intoxicated, and every evening reeled homewards. His mistress tried to reform him, but to no purpose; and she tried to shut him up, but he got out; and she used to meet him coming home with rolling, uncertain step and hanging head. She wept, for it was such a bad example to the parish; but that had no effect on him. At last, one evening, he was run over and killed while reeling home in a state of intoxication.
Now, how far more melancholy is such an end than that of the three infants killed by family affection! I would rather die three times over from walking with my family than once from intoxication.
What is the moral? Do not break up the family too early. The presence of the children (up to the age when he wants to kill them) will have a softening and steadying effect on the manners of the father; while who knows what stores of masculine experience he may not impart to his children up to the time when they wish to fight him.
Besides all this, it is really much more amusing.
IV
CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE
