Unless he be one in
a thousand he has certainly to pass through many unnecessary troubles; and
may, possibly, come to extreme grief simply from ignorance of the proper
proportions of things.
Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot. He
chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown
Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots are not
wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the unwisdom of
biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers and goes abroad, at six
months, a well-mannered little beast with a chastened appetite. If he had been
kept away from boots, and soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity full-
grown and with developed teeth, just consider how fearfully sick and thrashed
he would be! Apply that motion to the "sheltered life," and see how it works.
It does not sound pretty, but it is the better of two evils.
There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the "sheltered life"
theory; and the theory killed him dead. He stayed with his people all his
days, from the hour he was born till the hour he went into Sandhurst nearly at
the top of the list. He was beautifully taught in all that wins marks by a
private tutor, and carried the extra weight of "never having given his parents
an hour's anxiety in his life.
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