A man with whom he had had business
dealings (which gave him much satisfaction for some years, and more
dissatisfaction afterwards) did really, I think, persuade my father to
send us to this school, one evening when they were dining together.
Few things are harder to guess at than the grounds on which an
Englishman of my father's type "makes up his mind"; and yet the
question is an important one, for an idea once lodged in his head, a
conviction once as much his own as the family acres, and you will as
soon part him from the one as from the other. I have known little
matters of domestic improvements, in which my mother's comfort was
concerned and her experience conclusive, for which he grudged a few
shillings, and was absolutely impenetrable by her persuasions and
representations. And I have known him waste pounds on things of the most
curious variety, foisted on him by advertising agents without knowledge,
trial, or rational ground of confidence. I suppose that persistency, a
glibber tongue than he himself possessed, a mass of printed rubbish
which always looks imposing to the unliterary, that primitive
combination of authoritativeness and hospitality which makes some men as
ready to say Yes to a stranger as they are to say No at home, and
perhaps some lack of moral courage, may account for it.
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