That's the broad and easy way that leads to destruction.

Ellen and I," he went on, his excitement showing only in his lapses into dialect, "we hain't worked all our lives so that our children'll be shiftless idlers, settin' 'round, polishin' their fingernails, and thinkin' up foolishness and breedin' fools." Matilda had always known that Hiram and Ellen were hopelessly vulgar; but she had thought they cherished a secret admiration for the "higher things" beyond their reach, and were resolved that their son should be a gentleman and their daughter a lady.

She found in Hiram's energetic bitterness nothing to cause her to change her view.

"He simply wants to hold on to his property to the last, and play the tyrant," she said to herself.

"All people of property naturally feel that way." And she held steadily to her programme.