Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

In 1892 a little book was published called ' Mothers and Sons.' It made some impression on a good many mothers, and this is not surprising, as it was written by the successful headmaster of a public school. I cannot but differ widely from a book which, while it professes to tea,ch a mother's duty to her son, ignores all reference to the husband and father. The tact of mothers is dis- puted in the introduction, and it cannot be denied that women vary very much in their successful management of children and servants, and these two go pretty much together. But, however much a father may leave the training and management of his sons to their mother, his blood runs in their veins, his example is daily before them, and what he is they will be, more or less. Heredity, I admit, sometimes plays us strange pranks; but I think, if people will honestly look round on the circle of their acquaintances, they will find, in nine cases out of ten, that the stamp of the children belongs to the name they bear — to the family of the father, not of the mother. The tone of a child's mind, especially a boy's, is very much what was represented in one of * Punch's* 270 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN pictures some years ago— a manly young monkey standing up before his mother and saying : ' What a happy day it was for you, mother, when you married into our family ! ' I should not have alluded to the headmaster's book at all but for the very cordial way I agree with Chapter IV., called 'Food.' The following passage seems to me entirely true : — ' Pendulums have a way of swinging ; and if starvation or under-feeding was a danger to boys thirty years ago, it is luxury and over-feeding with which the sons of nearly all classes are threatened in 1892.' No one advocates more strongly than I do that young children should be wholesomely and suf- ficiently fed (the size of the body depends on this with all animals), even to the point of occasional stomach attacks. The moment, however, that a child is not well, parents should realise that what weakens it is — not the want of food which it refuses to swallow, but the fever brought on by internal derangement from overloading the stomach. Nearly all sick children like fruit, and I think, if fruit and bread alone were given them for a day or two, they would generally get well without any doctor or medi- cines. Of course, if the nurse insists on giving just a little magnesia as well, the whole thing is spoilt. Fruit does not do with any form of alkaline drug. It is most important to keep to one treatment or the other — the acid or the alkaline; if not, the poor child's inside is turned into a saline draught. The author points out, with great severity and truth, the absurdity of the fact that boys are fed in the most stimulating way on meat, wine, and beer. If, as is sometimes the case, the wine and beer are knocked off, they are doubly allowed and encouraged to eat as much as they like, which, in order to live healthily, they have to work off by playing for hours at football and cricket. Inconsistently enough, they seem to acknowledge that, for rowing, heavy eating is SONS 271