choose that of
their father and mother. The straightener's carriage was rarely seen at the door
of those houses. I saw two or three such cases during the time that I remained
in the country, and cannot express the pleasure which I derived from a sight
suggestive of so much goodness and wisdom and forbearance, so richly rewarded,
yet I firmly believe that the same thing would happen in nine families out of
ten if the parents were merely to remember how they felt when they were young,
and actually to behave towards their children as they would have had their own
parents behave towards themselves. But this, which would appear to be so simple
and obvious, seems also to be a thing which not one in a hundred thousand is
able to put in practice. It is only the very great and good who have any living
faith in the simplest axioms; and there are few who are so holy as to feel that
19 and 13 make 32 as certainly as 2 and 2 make 4.
    I am quite sure that if this narrative should ever fall into Erewhonian
hands, it will be said that what I have written about the relations between
parents and children being seldom satisfactory is an infamous perversion of
facts, and that in truth there are few young people who do not feel happier in
the society of their nearest relations3 than in any other. Mr. Nosnibor would be
sure to say this. Yet I cannot refrain from expressing an opinion that he would
be a good deal embarrassed if his deceased parents were to reappear and propose
to pay him a six months' visit. I doubt whether there are many things which he
would regard as a greater infliction. They had died at a ripe old age some
twenty years before I came to know him, so the case is an extreme one; but
surely if they had treated him with what in his youth he had felt to be true
unselfishness, his face would brighten when he thought of them to the end of his
life.
    In the one or two cases of true family affection which I met with, I am sure
that the young people who were so genuinely fond of their fathers and mothers at
eighteen, would at sixty be perfectly delighted were they to get the chance of
welcoming them as their guests. There is nothing which could please them better,
except perhaps to watch the happiness of their own children and grandchildren.
    This is how things should be. It is not an impossible ideal; it is one which
actually does exist in some few cases, and might exist in almost all, with a
little more patience and forbearance upon the parents