The Iron Rule

The Iron Rule, by T.S. Arthur

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Title: The Iron Rule
Author: T.S. Arthur
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4628] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 20,
2002]
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The IRON RULE;

OR, TYRANNY IN THE HOUSEHOLD.
BY T. S. ARTHUR,
AUTHOR OF "LOVE IN HIGH LIFE," "LOVE IN A COTTAGE,"
"MARY MORETON; OR, THE BROKEN PROMISE," "AGNES; OR,
THE POSSESSED," "INSUBORDINATION," "LUCY SANDFORD,"
"THE ORPHAN CHILDREN," "THE DEBTOR'S DAUGHTER,"
"THE DIVORCED WIFE," "PRIDE AND PRUDENCE," "THE TWO
MERCHANTS," "CECILIA HOWARD," "THE BANKER'S WIFE,"
ETC. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
Philadelphia:
1853

THE IRON RULE;
OR, TYRANNY IN THE HOUSEHOLD.
CHAPTER I.

ANDREW HOWLAND belonged to that class of rigid moralists who
can tolerate in others no wanderings from the right way. His children
were forced into the straight jacket of external consistency from their
earliest infancy; and if they deviated from the right line in which they
were required to walk, punishment was sure to follow.
A child loves his parent naturally. The latter may be harsh, and
unreasonable; still the child will look up to him in weak dependence,
while love mingles, like golden threads in a dark fabric, amid the fear
and respect with which he regards him. Thus it was with the children of
Andrew Howland. Their mother was a gentle, retiring woman, with a
heart full of the best affections. When the sunshine fell upon her golden
locks in the early days of innocence, it was in a home where the ringing

laugh, the merry shout, and the wild exuberance of feeling ever
bursting from the heart of childhood were rarely checked; or, if
repressed, with a hand that wounded not in its firm contraction. She had
grown up to womanhood amid all that was gentle, kind and loving.
Transplanted, then, like a tender flower from a sunny border, to the
cold and formal home of her husband, she drooped in the uncongenial
soil, down into which her heart-fibres penetrated in search of nutrition.
And yet, while drooping thus, she tenderly loved her husband, and
earnestly sought to overcome in herself many true impulses of nature to
which he gave the false name of weaknesses. It was less painful thus to
repress them herself, than to have them crushed in the iron hand with
which he was ever ready to grasp them.
Let it not be thought that Andrew Howland was an evil minded man. In
the beginning we have intimated that this was not so. He purposed
wrong to no one. Honest he was in all his dealings with the world;
honest even