Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

The health question from the very beginning is one of the greatest importance. In the case of boys, at any rate, it cannot come naturally to any young mother. Her knowledge and intelligence, however, should at least be sufficient to let her know when things are not going right. As a rule, children grow up as ' Topsy ' did : ' 'Specs I growed.' But every now and then terrible things happen which, with a little sense and knowledge of when to call in a specialist, are quite preventable. I pity the parent who has to say : ' Alas ! I knew too late.' One of the great difficulties in the emancipating of the children of the well-to-do — by which I mean helping them to learn independence, and to take care of themselves in early childhood — is the nervousness of mothers and nurses. If parents would only consider how sharp are the children of the London poor in looking after themselves, I think they would gain courage, and their children would profit. I know a child, the youngest of a family, a fine, plucky little fellow, whose whole nature was altered by being put out of frocks into knickerbockers and his hair cut short when very young. One day this child was taken by his father, at the age of four and a half, to the City, and sent back alone on the top of a 'bus that set him down at the end of the street in which he lived. He had been given sixpence to pay his fare, and, arriving at home safely, he proudly and triumphantly handed the change to his mother. This same child, at twelve years old, after leaving his private school, and before going to a public school, was sent to Paris to learn French. With a guide-book in one pocket and a map in the other, he found his way about alone all over the town. To my mind, pre- SONS 259 cocity that comes from development of character and in- dependence, or from the stimulus of ambition, is as desirable as that resulting from over-excitement or over- bookwork is the contrary. As soon as children are no longer babies, it is very unwise to leave them much with servants. Little boys have no natural employments at home, especially in towns, when once they go to school. I should recommend parents who live in London to give up dining out during the winter holidays. It is only for four weeks, and the evenings at home with parents out are certainly dull for boys ; this applies doubly where there are no sisters. I used to think the perfect education for boys was the foreign way, to live at home and attend a day school : but the universal condemnation of this system by young Englishmen has shaken me, and certainly we have hardly any machinery prepared for carrying it out. The public school system, therefore, seems to be the only one here. At any rate, boys are brought up at school in the mythologies of their time and country, as Huxley used to recommend ; and on the whole that seems to answer best. The thing most to be avoided, it appears to me as I look back on life, is bringing up children on any sort of fad, however genuine the conviction of the parents that they are right and other people wrong. There is no mistaking the bitterness with which young men talk if they have been brought up in any way that alienates them from their generation.