"Indeed he isn't!" said Mrs. Clarke. "My heart is set on the law. Two of his Clarke grandfathers have been on the bench."
"Mac hasn't evinced any burning ambition in any direction as yet."
"Mac is only thirteen," said Mrs. Clarke with dignity; "all of his teachers will tell you that he is wonderfully bright, but that he lacks application. I think it is entirely their fault. They don't make the lessons sufficiently interesting; they don't hold his attention. He has been at three private schools, and they were all wretched. You know I am thinking of trying a tutor this year."
"I want her to send him to the public schools," Mr. Clarke said with the air of detached paternity peculiar to American fathers. "I went to the public schools. They gave me a decent start in life; that's about all you can expect of a school."
"True, true," said the bishop, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and his fingers tapping each other meditatively. "I am the last person to minimize the value of the public schools, but they were primarily designed, Mr. Clarke, neither for your boy, nor mine. Their rules and regulations were designed expressly for the children of the poor. I was speaking on this subject only yesterday to Mrs. Conningsby Lee. She's very indignant because her child was forced to submit to vaccination at the hands of some unknown young physician appointed by the city.
"I should feel like killing any one who vaccinated Mac without my consent!" exclaimed Mrs. Clarke, "but I needn't worry. He wouldn't allow it. Do you know we have never been able to persuade that child to be vaccinated?"
"And you don't propose for the State to do what you can't do, do you?" Mr. Clarke said, pinching her cheek.
"What Mrs. Clarke says is not without weight," said the bishop, gallantly coming to her rescue. "There are few things upon which I wax more indignant than the increasing interference of the State with the home. This hysterical agitation against child labor, for instance; while warranted in exceptional cases, it is in the main destructive of the formation of the habit of industry which cannot be acquired too young. When the State presumes to teach a mother how to feed her child, when and where to educate it, when and where to send it to work, the State goes too far. There is nothing more dangerous to the family than the present paternalistic and pauperizing trend of legislation."