rural and parochial affairs.  I was, indeed, by the fangs of the government, defeated in my fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating enjoyments; but those fangs, merciless as they had been, had not been able to prevent me from laying in for their lives a store of useful information, habits of industry, care, sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures:  the fangs had made me and them pennyless; but, they had not been able to take from us our health or our mental possessions; and these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.

306.  After the age that I have now been speaking of, fourteen, I suppose every one became a reader and writer according to fancy.  As to books, with the exception of the Poets, I never bought, in my whole life, any one that I did not want for some purpose of utility, and of practical utility too.  I have two or three times had the whole collection snatched away from me; and have begun again to get them together as they were wanted.  Go and kick an ANT’s nest about, and you will see the little laborious, courageous creatures instantly set to work to get it together again; and if you do this ten times over, ten times over they will do the same.  Here is the sort of stuff that men must be made of to oppose, with success, those who, by whatever means, get possession of great and mischievous power.

307.  Now, I am aware, that that which I did, cannot be done by every one of hundreds of thousands of fathers, each of whom loves his children with all his soul:  I am aware that the attorney, the surgeon, the physician, the trader, and even the farmer, cannot, generally speaking, do what I did, and that they must, in most cases, send their sons to school, if it be necessary for them to have book-learning.  But while I say this, I know, that there are many things, which I did, which many fathers might do, and which, nevertheless, they do not do.  It is in the power of every father to live at home with his family, when not compelled by business, or by public duty, to be absent:  it is in his power to set an example of industry and sobriety and frugality, and to prevent a taste for gaming, dissipation, extravagance, from getting root in the minds of his children:  it is in his power to continue to make his children hearers, when he is reproving servants for idleness, or commending them for industry and care:  it is in his power to keep all dissolute and idly-talking companions from his house:  it is in his power to teach them, by his uniform example, justice and mercy towards the inferior animals:  it is in his power to do many other things, and something in the way of book-learning too, however busy his life may be.  It is completely within his power to teach them early-rising and early