Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

This applies equally to great and little things — from the training of the strict Anglican clergyman, or in the Agnostic's morality, to affectations in dress or peculiarities of diet. It is important that parents should not be unduly elated by good school reports, for they mean but little. The typical top-of-the-class boy, a good plodding fellow who gives no trouble, is always a favourite with the master, but he hardly ever does anything in after-life s2 260 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN An idle, naughty boy sometimes reaches the top out of sheer talent ; but that is quite a different matter. These things always depend a good deal on temperament. If you are stupid, it is easier to become good than to become clever ; and you must never forget that, for the tortoises to win the race, the hares must go to sleep — and that is just what does not happen in these days. The world of school is an immense experience in itself, but a world represented by one sex alone is apt to give only a narrow and one-sided training. The necessary discipline, too, by which a school is regulated gives but little scope for boys to learn how to take care of themselves in the every- day world outside of it. It is only in the holidays that they can gain any experience as to the management of their lives, or — and above all — the employment of their time independently of rule. I once asked a boy how he made up his mind at school about what was right and what was wrong. He looked up, and said without hesitation, ' I always try and think what father would say about it.' At school, morality and public opinion can be as little decided by hard-and-fast rules as in the world. There, as in after-life, always speaking the truth without reserve, especially when it concerns others, may resolve itself into being only a form of self-indulgence. A great many mothers recognise this when it is brought home to them that their boy has refused to speak the truth in a way that would implicate others. At the same time parents seldom put it plainly before a boy that there may be occasions when it is a far higher standard of morality to bear personal blame than to implicate others by speaking the truth. He ought not to have the additional pain of fearing he is doing that which would displease his parents, and is contrary to the principle of simple and direct truthfulness which has been inculcated at home. I hope nobody, on reading this, will imagine SONS 261 that I am advocating want of truthfulness as a principle, or that I doubt for a moment that the fact of speaking truth intentionally, even to the injury of self, is one of the most essential strengtheners of man's moral nature. It does not always come naturally, however, as many imaginative children lie, and weaklings are sure to lie, hate it as they may, for it is the certain fruit of fear. Jean Paul Eichter speaks of it in the following terms : — ' Lying, that devour- ing cancer of the inner man, is more severely judged and denned by the feeling of nations than by philosophers. The Greeks, who suffered their gods to commit as many crimes with impunity as their present representatives, the gods of the earth, do yet condemn them for perjury — that root and quintessence of a lie — to pass a year of lif elessness under the ground in Tartarus, and then to endure nine years of torments.