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You thought again that in attacking your own father with dreadful letters, abusive telegrams, and insulting postcards you were really fighting your mother’s battles, coming forward as her champion, and avenging the no doubt terrible wrongs and sufferings of her married life. It was quite an illusion on your part; one of your worst indeed. The way for you to have avenged your mother’s wrongs on your father, if you considered it part of a son’s duty to do so, was by being a better son to your mother than you had been[32a]: by not making her afraid to speak to you on serious things: by not signing bills the payment of which devolved on her: by being gentler to her, and not bringing sorrow into her days. Your brother Francis made great amends to her for what she had suffered, by his sweetness and goodness to her through the brief years of his flower-like life. You should have taken him as your model. You were wrong even in fancying that it would have been an absolute delight and joy to your mother if you had managed through me to get your father put into prison. I feel sure you were wrong. And if you want to know what a woman really feels when her husband, and the father of her children, is in prison dress, in a prison cell, write to my wife and ask her. She will tell you.
你还以为，写信拍电报寄明信片去咒骂侮辱自己的父亲，你这是在替你母亲出头，为她打抱不平，为她在婚后所受的无疑是可怕的屈辱和痛苦报仇。这真是你的一大幻想，真是你最糟糕的一个幻想。要为你母亲所受的苦找你父亲报仇，假如你认为这是做儿子的部分责任，那就得改弦更张[32a]，做个好儿子；就不要弄得她不敢同你谈重大的事情；就不要签些账单到头来都算到她头上；就要更好地待她，别让她的日子雪上加霜。你的兄长弗兰西斯，在他短短的如花般的生命中，就以他的温良随和大大减轻了你母亲的痛苦。你应该以他为楷模才是。你以为要是假我之手让你父亲入狱，对你母亲会是天大的喜事，哪怕是这样想当然也是错的。我的确感到你错了。如果你想知道，一个女人，看着自己的丈夫、自己孩子的父亲身着囚衣，陷于囚牢，到底会有什么感觉，那就写信给我妻子问问她吧。她会告诉你的。
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