If Nature, in such a case, put into that lad's breast but one secret prompting which urged him towards his father and away from you, she would be a liar and an idiot.' Nicholas was delighted to find that the old gentleman spoke so warmly, and in the hope that he might say something more to the same purpose, made no reply.
'The same mistake presents itself to me, in one shape or other, at every turn,' said brother Charles.

'Parents who never showed their love, complain of want of natural affection in their children; children who never showed their duty, complain of want of natural feeling in their parents; law-makers who find both so miserable that their affections have never had enough of life's sun to develop them, are loud in their moralisings over parents and children too, and cry that the very ties of nature are disregarded.

Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers.

I wish we could be brought to consider this, and remembering natural obligations a little more at the right time, talk about them a little less at the wrong one.' After this, brother Charles, who had talked himself into a great heat, stopped to cool a little, and then continued: 'I dare say you are surprised, my dear sir, that I have listened to your recital with so little astonishment.

That is easily explained.