The man is a hog in armour, soliloquized Sir Peter, when his cousin was gone; and if it be hard to drive a common pig in the way he dont choose to go, a hog in armour is indeed undrivable. But his boy ought not to suffer for his fathers hoggishness; and I shall begin at once to see what I can lay by for him. After all, it is hard upon Gordon. Poor Gordon; poor fellow! poor fellow! Still I hope he will not go to law with me. I hate law. And a worm will turn, especially a worm that is put into Chancery.
CHAPTER VI
DESPITE the sinister semi-predictions of the ci-devant heir-at-law, the youthful Chillingly passed with safety, and indeed with dignity, through the infant stages of existence. He took his measles and whooping-cough with philosophical equanimity. He gradually acquired the use of speech, but he did not too lavishly exercise that special attribute of humanity. During the earlier years of childhood he spoke as little as if he had been prematurely trained in the school of Pythagoras. But he evidently spoke the less in order to reflect the more. He observed closely and pondered deeply over what he observed. At the age of eight he began to converse more freely, and it was in that year that he startled his mother with the question, Mamma, are you not sometimes overpowered by the sense of your own identity?
Lady Chillingly,I was about to say rushed, but Lady Chillingly never rushed,Lady Chillingly glided less sedately than her wont to Sir Peter, and repeating her sons question, said, The boy is growing troublesome, too wise for any woman: he must go to school.
Sir Peter was of the same opinion. But where on earth did the child get hold of so long a word as identity, and how did so extraordinary and puzzling a metaphysical question come into his head? Sir Peter summoned Kenelm, and ascertained that the boy, having free access to the library, had fastened upon Locke on the Human Understanding, and was prepared to dispute with that philosopher upon the doctrine of innate ideas. Quoth Kenelm, gravely, A want is an idea; and if, as soon as I was born, I felt the want of food and knew at once where to turn for it, without being taught, surely I came into the world with an innate idea.
Sir Peter, though he dabbled in metaphysics, was posed, and scratched his head without getting out a proper answer as to the distinction between ideas and instincts. My child, he said at last, you dont know what you are talking about: go and take a good gallop on your black pony; and I forbid you to read any books that are not given to you by myself or your mamma. Stick to Puss in Boots.
CHAPTER VII
SIR PETER ordered his carriage and drove to the house of the stout parson. That doughty ecclesiastic held a family living a few miles distant from the Hall, and was the only one of the cousins with whom Sir Peter habitually communed on his domestic affairs.
He found the Parson in his study, which exhibited tastes other than clerical. Over the chimney-piece were ranged fencing-foils, boxing-gloves, and staffs for the athletic exercise of single-stick; cricket-bats and fishing-rods filled up the angles. There were sundry prints on the walls: one of Mr. Wordsworth, flanked by two of distinguished race-horses; one of a Leicestershire short-horn, with which the Parson, who farmed his own glebe and bred cattle in its rich pastures, had won a prize at the county show; and on either side of that animal were the portraits of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor. There were dwarf book-cases containing miscellaneous works very handsomely bound; at the open window, a stand of flower-pots, the flowers in full bloom. The Parsons flowers were famous.
The appearance of the whole room was that of a man who is tidy and neat in his habits.
Cousin, said Sir Peter, I have come to consult you. And therewith he related the marvellous precocity of Kenelm Chillingly. You see the name begins to work on him rather too much. He must go to school; and now what school shall it be? Private or public?
THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH.There is a great deal to be said for or against either. At a public school the chances are that Kenelm will no longer be overpowered by a sense of his own identity; he will more probably lose identity altogether. The worst of a public school is that a sort of common character is substituted for individual character. The master, of course, cant attend to the separate development of each boys idiosyncrasy. All minds are thrown into one great mould, and come out of it more or less in the same form. An Etonian may be clever or stupid, but, as either, he remains emphatically Etonian. A public school ripens talent, but its tendency is to stifle genius. Then, too, a public school for an only son, heir to a good estate, which will be entirely at his own disposal, is apt to encourage reckless and extravagant habits; and your estate requires careful management, and leaves no margin for an heirs notes-of-hand and post-obits. On the whole, I am against a public school for Kenelm.
Well then, we will decide on a private one.