This is all the heedlessness and pride of youth. We old people are needed to curb your impulses and to guide you by our experience, while you young people must obey us so as to profit by our experience. Your active life is still before you; now you are growing and developing. Get your education, and all the culture you can; stand on your own legs, have your own firm convictions, and then begin your new life, if you feel you have the strength for it. But now you must obey those that are guiding you for your own good, and you must not strike out into new paths in life!”
The youth made no reply, and the older persons present agreed with what his father said.
“You are right,” said a middle-aged, married man, addressing the youth’s father. “It is true that a youth having no experience of life may blunder in trying new paths of life, and his resolution may not be deeply settled; but, you see, we are all agreed on this point, that our lives are contrary to our consciences, and do not make us happy. And so we can’t help regarding your desire to enter upon this new life as laudable.