The Iron Rule: Tyranny in the Household

A year elapsed before any tidings of the wanderer came.  Then Mrs. Howland received a few lines from him, dated in a Southern city, where he spoke of having just arrived from South America.  He had little to say of himself, beyond that he was well; and did not speak of visiting home.

After reading this letter, Mrs. Howland placed it in the hands of her husband, who read it also, and then gave it back without a remark.  He checked an involuntary sigh as he did so.  Not the slightest reference was made to him by his son; a fact that he did not overlook, and that he did not observe without a sense of disappointment.  The long absence of his wayward boy had softened his feelings toward him; and with pain he remembered many acts of harshness that now seemed to have in them too much of the element of severity.  At the term of the Court, which was held soon after Andrew went away, the Grand Jury failed to obtain sufficient evidence to justify the finding of a bill against him, and released the security given for his appearance at Court.  This fact, with a previous questioning of the policeman by whom Andrew had been arrested, satisfied Mr. Howland that the boy had been unjustly suspected of an intention to commit a crime.  But this conviction had come too late.  The effects of that unjust accusation had already fallen in sad consequences upon the head of the poor boy; and the father could not force from his mind the painful conviction that he was, mainly, responsible for these consequences.

Another year went by, but during all the time, no further tidings came of Andrew.  To his first letter, Mrs. Howland had immediately replied, urging him, by every tender consideration, to return to his home.  But she had no means of knowing whether it had ever been received.  Upon her the effect of his absence had been, for a time, of the most serious character.  For a few weeks after he went away, both body and mind were prostrated; to this succeeded a state of mental depression, which continued so long that her friends began to fear for her reason.  Not until after the lapse of a year, when she received the above-mentioned letter from her son, did her mind attain to anything like its former state.  The knowledge that he was yet, alive, that he thought of her, and still cherished her memory, gave a new impulse to her fainting spirit, and a quicker motion to the circle of life.  There was yet room to hope for him.  But, as time went on, there came not back even a faint echo to the voice she had sent after him, her heart failed her again.  Yet time, which imparts strength to all in trouble, had done its work for her also.  The care and labor that ever attend the mother’s position among her children, had bent her thoughts so much away from Andrew, that, while his absence left a constant weight upon her feelings, it did not crush them down as before, into a waveless depression.

The second year of Andrew’s absence came to a close; but nothing further was heard from him.  And it was the same with the third, fourth, and fifth years.  In the meantime, there had been many changes in Mr. Howland’s family.  Mary had married against her father’s wishes, and both herself and husband had been so unkindly treated by him on the occasion and afterward, that neither of them visited at his house.

Henry Markland, the husband of Mary, had been rather a gay young man, and this, with some other things which had come to his ears, created a prejudice in the mind of Mr. Howland against him.  As to what was good in Markland, and likely to overbalance defects, he did not inquire.  The hue of his prejudice colored everything.  Men like Mr. Howland, who seek to bend everything into forms suited to their own narrow range of ideas, are rarely successful in attaining their ends.  The principle of freedom is too deeply interwoven with all the tissues of the human mind to admit of this.  From. earliest infancy there is a reaction against arbitrary power; and, those who are wise, have long since discovered that it is a much easier task to lead than force the young into right ways.  Those who would truly govern children, must first learn to govern themselves.  Let a parent break his own imperious will before he tries to break the will of his child; and he will be far more successful in the work he essays. to perform.  But not so had Mr. Howland learned his duty in life.  Without being, aware of the fact, he was a domestic tyrant, and sought to establish a family despotism.  And the worst of the whole was, he did nearly all this work in the name of religion!  Not that he was a hypocrite.  No; Mr. Howland was sincere in his professions of piety.  But he was a narrow-minded man, and did much in the name of religion, that in no way harmonized with its true character.  His faith was a blind faith, and he sacrificed to the god of his imagination in the unyielding spirit of a dehumanizing superstition.  Of necessity, he marred everything upon which he sought to impress the form of his own mind.

Erroneous judgment of others is almost certain to mark the conclusions of such a man’s mind; and it is no wonder that Mr. Howland erred in his conclusions respecting the true character of his daughter’s husband, who had in him many good qualities, and was sincerely attached to Mary.  The great defect appertaining to him, was the fact that he was not a church member.  Mr. Howland did not look past the veil of a profession, to see if there was in the ground work of the young man’s character a basis of right principles—­the only true foundation upon which a religious structure can be built.  Because he did not belong to the church, and make an open profession, he classed him with the irreligious, and considered him as one whose feet were moving swiftly along the road to destruction.

And so, instead of wisely seeking to win the confidence of the young man, that he might gain an influence over him for good, Mr. Howland, offended because his daughter could not obey him in a matter so vital to her happiness, angrily repulsed and insulted both of them, even after he saw that a marriage was inevitable.  The consequence was, as has been mentioned, that Markland, who possessed an independent spirit, would not go to the house of his father-in-law; and Mary, resenting the wanton attacks that had been made upon her husband’s feelings in more than one or two instances, absented herself also.  Mr. Howland, however much he might regret the hardness of his unavailing opposition, was not the man to yield anything; and so the breach remained open, in spite of all the grieving mother’s efforts to heal it.

Of all his children, Mr. Howland saw most to hope for in Edward, who early perceived it to be his best policy to humor his father, and, by that means, gain the ends he had in view.  Cold in his temperament, he was generally able to control himself in a way to deceive his father as to the real motives that were in his heart.  Thus, while Mr. Howland, by his peculiar treatment of his children, drove some of them off, he made this one a hypocrite.

Not the smallest affection existed between Edward and the other children, who knew too well the selfish and evil qualities that lay concealed beneath an external of propriety, put on especially for his father’s eyes.  The mother, too, saw beneath the false exterior assumed by her son, who treated her, except when his father was present, with little respect or affection.

Martha, the youngest, was a sweet tempered girl, who had managed to keep, as a general thing, beyond the sphere of antagonism that marked the intercourse of the other children.  To her mother, as she grew up, she proved a source of comfort; and she could, at almost any time, dispel by her smiles the cloud that too often rested on the brow of her morose father.

On reaching his seventeenth year, Edward had been placed in a store by his father, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge of mercantile affairs.  A young man in this position, if he has any ambition to make his way in the world, soon gets his mind pretty well filled with money-making ideas, and sees the way to wealth opening in a broad vista before him.  Every day he hears about this, that, and the other one, who started in business but a few years before, with little or no capital, and who are now worth their tens of thousands; and he thus learns to aspire after wealth, without being made to feel sensibly the fact, that the number who grow rich rapidly are as one to a hundred compared with those who succeed as the result of small beginnings united with long continued and untiring application.  Long before Edward reached his twenty-first year, he had so fully imbibed the spirit of the atmosphere in which he breathed, that his mind was made up to go into business for himself as soon as he attained his majority.  This idea Mr. Howland sought to discourage in his son; but Edward never gave it up.  Soon after he was twenty-one, an offer to go into a business, that promised a large return was made, provided a few thousand dollars capital could be furnished.  Not a moment did Edward rest until he had prevailed upon his father, ever too ready to yield a weak compliance to the wishes of this son, to place in his hands the amount of money required.  To do this, was, at the time, no easy matter for Mr. Howland, whose own business was far from being as good as usual and whose pecuniary affairs were not in the most easy condition.  Six thousand dollars was the amount of capital he was obliged to raise, and it was not accomplished without considerable sacrifice.

Edward and his partner were what are usually called “enterprising young men,” and they drove ahead in the business they had undertaken at a kind of railroad speed, calculating their profits at an exceedingly high range.  It is not surprising that, by the end of the first year, they required a little more capital to help them through with their engagements, the furnishing of which fell upon Mr. Howland; who, in this emergency, passed his notes to the new firm for several (sic) thonsand dollars.

It is not our purpose to trace, step by step, the progress of this young man in the work of ruining his father and disgracing himself by dishonest practices in business.  Enough, that in the course of three years, the “enterprising young men,” who made from the beginning such rapid strides toward fortune, found their course suddenly checked, and themselves involved in hopeless bankruptcy.  But, with themselves rested not the evil consequences of failure; others were included in the disaster, and among them Mr. Howland, who was so badly crippled as to be obliged to call his creditors together, and solicit a reduction and extension of the claims they had against him.  To Mr. Howland, this was a crushing blow.  He was not only a man who strictly regarded honesty in his dealings, but he was proud of his honesty, and in his pride, had often been harsh in his judgment of others when in circumstances similar to those in which he was now placed.  To be forced to ask of his creditors both a reduction and an extension, humiliated him to a degree, that for a time, almost deprived him of the power of doing business.  From that time, there was a perceptible change in the man of iron.  His tall, erect form seemed to shrink downward; his head bent toward his bosom, and the harsh lines on his brow and around his less tightly closed lips grew softer.  His indignation against Edward was so great, when he finally comprehended the character of the transactions in which he had been engaged, involving as they did a total absence of integrity, that he turned his back upon him angrily, saying, as he did so—­

“Never come into my presence again, until you come an honest man!”

On the day after this utterance of the father’s indignant feelings, Edward left the city; and it was the opinion of many that he went with a pocket full of money.  They were not far wrong.

Thus, of all his children, only the youngest remained with Mr. Howland.  All the rest were estranged from him; and in spite of all his efforts to push the conviction from his mind, he could not help feeling that he was to blame for the estrangement.