But pecuniary assistance is not all; it is occasionally care and attention an aged parent requires, the presence of a daughter who prefers the gaiety of the city to the quiet of the old homestead that is imperiously demanded.  If the parent be feeble or sick, the undutiful child is criminally negligent; the crime is still greater if there be danger through that absence of the parent’s dying without religious consolation.

I have said nothing of that unnatural specimen of humanity, sometimes called a “loafer,” and by still more ignoble names, who, to use a vulgar term, “grubs” on his parents, drinks what he earns and befouls the home he robs, with his loathsome presence and scandalous living.  The least said of him the better.  He exists:  ’tis already too much said.

CHAPTER LX.  DISINTERESTED LOVE IN PARENTS.

Love seems to resume all the obligations of parents toward their offspring; certainly, it directs all their actions, and they fulfil these obligations ill or well according to the quality of that love.  But love is not sufficient; love is of two kinds, the right and the wrong; nothing good comes of an affection that is not properly ordered.  In itself, parental love is natural, instinctive; therefore it is not meritorious to any high degree.  But there is much merit in the proper kind of parental affection, because it requires sacrifice.

There may be too little love, to the neglect and misfortune of children.  There may be too much, to their spoiling and utter perversion.  Again there may be affection that is partial, that singles out one for caresses and favors to the exclusion of the others; hence discord and dissensions in the family.  The first two forms of inordinate affection are equally bad, while the last combines both and contains the double evil thereof.  It is hard to say which is the worse off, the child that receives too much or the one that receives too little of that love which to be correct should avoid extremes.

Parents are apt, under the sway of natural affection, to overlook the fact that God has rights over the children, and that the welfare and interests of the children must not be left outside all consideration:  herein lies the root of all the evil that befalls the family through degenerate love.  What is commonly, but improperly, called love is either pagan fondness or simon-pure egotism and self-love.

When a vain person looks into a mirror, she (if it be a “she”) will immediately fall in love with the image, because it is an image of herself.  And a selfish parent sees in his child, not another being, but himself, and he loves it for himself.  His affection is not an act of generosity, as it should be, but an act of self-indulgence.  He does not seek to please another, he seeks to please himself.  His love, therefore, is nothing but concentrated vanity—­and that is the wrong kind.