Cyrus had a late-Victorian theory in regard to the education of
children, that individuality should not be crushed--give them what they
want--follow the line of juvenile insistence--all the opportunities and
no fetters. This late-Victorian theory had resulted in the production
of a collection of early-Rooseveltian personalities around him, whose
simultaneous interaction sometimes made his good old head swim. As a
matter of fact, the whole family, including Talbert's preposterous
old-maid sister Elizabeth (the biggest child of the lot), absolutely
depended on the good sense of Cyrus and his wife, and would have been
helpless without them. But, as a matter of education, each child had a
secret illusion of superiority to the parental standard, and not only
made wild dashes at originality and independent action, but at the same
time cherished a perfect mania for regulating and running all the
others. Independence was a sacred tradition in the Talbert family; but
interference was a fixed nervous habit, and complication was a chronic
social state. The blessed mother understood them all, because she loved
them all. Cyrus loved them all, but the only one he thought he
understood was Peggy, and her he usually misunderstood, because she was
so much like him. But he was fair to them all--dangerously fair--except
when his subcutaneous conscience reproached him with not doing his
duty; then he would cut the knot of family interference with some
tremendous stroke of paternal decision unalterable as a law of the
Medes and Persians.
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