Obedience is
the grandest thing in the world to begin with. Yes, and we shall end
with it too. I do not think the time will ever come when we shall not
have something to do, because we are told to do it without knowing why.
Those parents act most foolishly who wish to explain everything to their
children--most foolishly. No; teach your child to obey, and you give him
the most precious lesson that can be given to a child. Let him come to
that before you have had him long, to do what he is told, and you have
given him the plainest, first, and best lesson that you can give him. If
he never goes to school at all he had better have that lesson than all
the schooling in the world. Hence, when some people are accustomed to
glorify this age of ours as being so much better in everything than
those which went before, I look back to the times of chivalry, which we
regard now, almost, as a thing to laugh at, or a merry thing to make
jokes about; but I find that the one essential of chivalry was
obedience. It is recognized in our army still, but in those times it was
carried much farther. When a boy was seven years old he was sent into
another family, and put with another boy there to do what? To wait with
him upon the master and the mistress of the house, and to be taught, as
well, what few things they knew in those times in the way of
intellectual cultivation.
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