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My moral world, too, was built on the cathedral on the cathedral 'don'ts' and 'musts, on the cathedral hours and the cathedral prayers, and the cathedral ambitions and disappointments. My father's great passion was golf. He was not a religious man. But my mother believed in the cathedral with a passion that was almost a disease. She died looking at it.
Vanderveer glowed all over with delight when father condemned the automobile as a nerve racker, and suggested that a young man of the companionable tutor order, who could either play games, fish, and drive with the boy and his chums, or at times leave him wholly alone, according to need, would be a good substitute for a woman who viewed life as a school of don'ts, and had either wholly outlived her youth, or else had most unpleasant recollections of it.
The judge reprimanded him sharply, saying, "Are you not aware that one of the principal War Don'ts is, 'Don't buy clothes: wear your old ones." With this he held up his own sleeve which showed considerable signs of wear. Then he added: "If I can afford to wear old garments, you can. Your application is dismissed."
Day by day, however, as time passed, David diligently tried to perform the "dos" and avoid the "don'ts"; and day by day he came to realize how important weeds and woodboxes were, if he were to conform to what was evidently Farmer Holly's idea of "playing in, tune" in this strange new Orchestra of Life in which he found himself.
She remembered lessons with her mother; she remembered the irksome learning of a hundred "don'ts" from her mother; and though they were tender and pathetic memories she remembered also the reverse of the picture, being glad to escape from her mother, resentful against her mother when stood in the corner by her mother, when stopped doing this that and the other by her mother, when made to learn terribly hard lessons by her mother and to go on learning them till she had learnt them.
She it was who discovered that Abe's contentment could not be absolute without griddle-cakes for breakfast three hundred and sixty-five times a year; she it was who first baked him little saucer-cakes and pies because he was partial to edges; and Blossy it was who made out a list of "Don'ts" for the sisters to follow in their treatment of this grown-up, young-old boy.
And so on with the myriad perplexing "Don'ts" which spatter the career of a fun-loving collie pup. Versed in the patience-fraying ways of pups in general, the Mistress and the Master marveled and bragged and praised. All day and every day, life was a delight to the little dog. He had friends everywhere, willing to romp with him. He had squirrels to chase, among the oaks.
"You suah am improvin' since Miss Polly come," Mandy grunted. "Come, Willie!" called the girl, and ran out laughing through the trees. "What's this?" Douglas took the small book from Mandy's awkward fingers, and began to read: "'Hens set " He frowned. "Oh, dem's jes' Miss Polly's 'don'ts," interrupted Mandy, disgustedly. "Her 'don'ts'?"
The writer has only known of two deaths of children caused by eating the beans in the green pods, but it is said to be a frequent cause of death every year on the Continent, where, possibly, children are less naturally careful about poisonous plants than those in England, to whom risks of this kind are usually and properly made part of the "black list" of the nursery-book of "Don'ts."
"Well," he said, "close up that active brain of yours for the night, Bab, and here are to `don'ts' to sleep on. Don't break your neck in in any way. You're a reckless young Lady. And don't elope with the first moony young idiot who wants to hold your hand. There will quite likly be others." Others! How heartless! How cynical!
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