Mr.Thorpe met all arguments of this kind by registering his usual protest against "compounding with vice;" and then drew the reins of discipline tighter than ever, by way of warning off all intrusive hands from attempting to relax them for the future.
Before long, the evil results predicted by the opponents of the father's plan for preventing the son from indulging in public amusements, actually occurred.

At first, Zack gratified his taste for the drama, by going to the theater whenever he felt inclined; leaving the performances early enough to get home by eleven o'clock, and candidly acknowledging how he had occupied the evening, when the question was asked at breakfast the next morning.

This frankness of confession was always rewarded by rebukes, threats, and reiterated prohibitions, administered by Mr.Thorpe with a crushing assumption of superiority to every mitigating argument, entreaty, or excuse that his son could urge, which often irritated Zack into answering defiantly, and recklessly repeating his offense.

Finding that all menaces and reproofs only ended in making the lad ill-tempered and insubordinate for days together, Mr.Thorpe so far distrusted his own powers of correction as to call in the aid of his prime clerical adviser, the Reverend Aaron Yollop; under whose ministry he sat, and whose portrait, in lithograph, hung in the best light on the dining-room wall at Baregrove Square.
Mr.Yollop's interference was at least weighty enough to produce a positive and immediate result: it drove Zack to the very last limits of human endurance.

The reverend gentleman's imperturbable self possession defied the young rebel's utmost powers of irritating reply, no matter how vigorously he might exert them.