Indian Colonel had taken my fancy, and it had made him sick to see the womanish—­he could call it no better, the weak-womanish—­way in which I worshipped him.  If I were a daughter instead of a son, my caprices would distress and astonish him less.  He could have sent me to my mother, and my mother might have sent me to my needle.  In a son, from whom he looked for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was painful in the extreme.  Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of candour—­(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of the indictment)—­these were my besetting sins, and would lead me into serious trouble.  This new fad, just, too, when he had made most favourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry’s office as the first step in a prosperous career.  I didn’t know; didn’t I?  Perhaps not.  Perhaps I had been at the Woods’ when he and my mother were speaking of it.  But now I did know.  The matter was decided, and he hoped I should profit by my opportunities.  I might go, and I was to shut the door after me.

I omit what my father said of the matter from a religious point of view, though he accused me of flying in the face of Providence as well as the Fifth Commandment.  The piety which kept a pure and GOD-fearing atmosphere about my home, and to which I owe all the strength I have found against evil since I left it, was far too sincere in both my parents for me to speak of any phase of it with disrespect.  Though I may say here that I think it is to be wished that more good people exercised judgment as well as faith in tracing the will of Heaven in their own.  Practically I did not even then believe that I was more “called” to that station of life which was to be found in Uncle Henry’s office, than to that station of life which I should find on board a vessel in the Merchant Service, and it only discredited truth in my inmost soul when my father put his plans for my career in that light.  Just as I could not help feeling it unfair that a commandment which might have been fairly appealed to if I had disobeyed him, should be used against me in argument because I disagreed with him.

I did disagree with him utterly.  Uncle Henry’s office was a gloomy place, where I had had to endure long periods of waiting as a child when my mother took us in to the dentist, and had shopping and visiting of uncertain length to do.  Uncle Henry himself was no favourite with me.  He was harder than my father if you vexed him, and less genial when you didn’t.  And I wanted to go to sea.  But it did not seem a light matter to me to oppose my parents, and they were both against me.  My dear mother was thrown into the profoundest distress by the bare notion.  In her view to be at sea was merely to run an imminent and ceaseless risk of shipwreck; and even this jeopardy of life and limb was secondary to the dangers that going ashore in foreign places would bring upon my mind and morals.

So when my father spoke kindly to me at supper, and said that he had arranged with Mr. Wood that I should read with him for two hours every evening, in preparation for my future life as an articled clerk, my heart was softened.  I thanked him gratefully, and resolved for my own part to follow what seemed to be the plain path of duty, though it led to Uncle Henry’s office, and not out into the world.