“No, I thank you!” replied Celia, with frigid politeness.

“Down in the meadow,” said Philip, making one more effort at conciliation, “we can get some tigerlilies, and weave them in and make a beautiful wreath for your mother.”

“She doesn’t like things fussed up,” was the gracious reply.  And then the children trudged along homeward, each with a distinct sense of injury.

IV

Traits that make a child disagreeable are apt to be perpetuated in the adult.  The bumptious, impudent, selfish, “hateful” boy may become a man of force, of learning, of decided capacity, even of polish and good manners, and score success, so that those who know him say how remarkable it is that such a “knurly” lad should have turned out so well.  But some exigency in his career, it may be extraordinary prosperity or bitter defeat, may at any moment reveal the radical traits of the boy, the original ignoble nature.  The world says that it is a “throwing back”; it is probably only a persistence of the original meanness under all the overlaid cultivation and restraint.

Without bothering itself about the recondite problems of heredity or the influence of environment, the world wisely makes great account of “stock.”  The peasant nature, which may be a very different thing from the peasant condition, persists, and shows itself in business affairs, in literature, even in the artist.  No marriage is wisely contracted without consideration of “stock.”  The admirable qualities which make a union one of mutual respect and enduring affection—­the generosities, the magnanimities, the courage of soul, the crystalline truthfulness, the endurance of ill fortune and of prosperity—­are commonly the persistence of the character of the stock.

We can get on with surface weaknesses and eccentricities, and even disagreeable peculiarities, if the substratum of character is sound.  There is no woman or man so difficult—­to get on with, whatever his or her graces or accomplishments, as the one “you don’t know where to find,” as the phrase is.  Indeed, it has come to pass that the highest and final eulogy ever given to a man, either in public or private life, is that he is one “you can tie to.”  And when you find a woman of that sort you do not need to explain to the cynical the wisdom of the Creator in making the most attractive and fascinating sex.

The traits, good and bad, persist; they may be veneered or restrained, they are seldom eradicated.  All the traits that made the great Napoleon worshiped, hated, and feared existed in the little Bonaparte, as perfectly as the pea-pod in the flower.  The whole of the First Empire was smirched with Corsican vulgarity.  The world always reckons with these radical influences that go to make up a family.  One of the first questions asked by an old politician, who knew his world thoroughly, about any man becoming prominent, when there was a discussion of his probable action, was, “Whom did he marry?”