Bindon; but most are
in an advanced stage of childhood, and need play and pleasure almost
as much as air or food; and these instincts require wholesome
gratification, under such approval as may make the enjoyment bright
and innocent; and yet there should be such subduing of their excess,
such training in discipline, as shall save them from frivolity and
from passing the line of evil, prevent the craving from growing to a
passion, and where it has so grown, tone it back to the limits of
obedience and safety.
Alas! perhaps there lay the domestic difficulty of which Julius
could not speak; yet, as if answering the thought, Dr. Easterby
said, "After all, charity is the true self-acting balance to many a
sweet untaught nature. Self-denials which spring out of love are a
great safeguard, because they are almost sure to be both humble and
unconscious."
And Julius went away cheered as he thought of his Rosamond's wells
of unselfish affection, confident that all the cravings for variety
and excitement, which early habit had rendered second nature, would
be absorbed by the deeper and keener feelings within, and that these
would mount higher as time went on, under life's great training.
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