"One great reason why clergymen's households are generally unhappy is
because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house. The
doctor is out visiting patients half his time: the lawyer and the
merchant have offices away from home, but the clergyman has no official
place of business which shall ensure his being away from home for many
hours together at stated times. Our great days were when my father went
for a day's shopping to Gildenham. We were some miles from this place,
and commissions used to accumulate on my father's list till he would make
a day of it and go and do the lot. As soon as his back was turned the
air felt lighter; as soon as the hall door opened to let him in again,
the law with its all-reaching 'touch not, taste not, handle not' was upon
us again. The worst of it was that I could never trust Joey and
Charlotte; they would go a good way with me and then turn back, or even
the whole way and then their consciences would compel them to tell papa
and mamma. They liked running with the hare up to a certain point, but
their instinct was towards the hounds.
"It seems to me," he continued, "that the family is a survival of the
principle which is more logically embodied in the compound animal--and
the compound animal is a form of life which has been found incompatible
with high development.
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