Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Some- times town, sometimes country, and often abroad, they were never in one place for six months at a time. Many parents are so afraid of making these breaks in the continuity of their girls' education, and — as is only human — the governesses and teachers are always against it. One of the disadvantages of classes and competitive education is that ambitious children themselves often object to their studies being broken into. But all the DAUGHTERS 327 experience of moving about, the little hardships and privations that come even in our modern luxurious travelling, are an immense advantage and training to children, revealing their individual characters to their mother as no home life ever can. The impressions gained through the eyes and ears are incomparably mor lasting and real than any information learnt from books. Bad temper in children is a thing that, in my opinion, ought always to be treated with the utmost kindness, gentleness, tenderness, and consideration. It is generally a matter of health and nerves, and often may be, in some mysterious way, inherited from the mother's irritability during her pregnancy, which is caused very frequently by a feeling of dislike at having a child at all. Surely, then, this demands our utmost tenderness. I think that, in a family, the children with good and even tempers ought to be talked to in a way to make them understand that, if they tease and annoy the child with the hot temper, they are quite as much to blame as the irritable ones themselves. The even-tempered child generally means the indifferent one, and this in itself is an irrita- tion to one who is excitable and highly strung. Thwarting and contradicting only do harm ; love, tender- ness, gentleness, and great attention to health may do good. In short, the true situation is revealed to us by the old Persian philosopher's prayer : — ' O God ! be merciful to the wicked. To the good Thou hast already been sufficiently merciful in making them good.' In my youth, and still more before my time, girls were brought up to think that marriage was their one and only chance in life, and that, if they did not marry quite young, they would never marry at all. Now they know much more about the difficulties and dangers of life, and pride themselves on not thinking about marriage. This seems to me a mistake ; they ought to think of 328 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN it very seriously and from every point of view, so that they should be able and ready to seize on the practical solution when the difficulty arises. Marriage should not be a woman's only profession, but it should be her best and highest hope. Every girl should try and make herself worthy of it both in body and mind, and this attitude will not make a girl grow into a less sensible old maid if she has to be one. Galiani asked Madame d'Epinay, the writer of the famous *M6moires' in the last century, and the friend of Eousseau, what were her views of woman's education. This is her reply : — ' Vous voulez savoir de moi ce qu'une femme doit 6tudier ? Sa langue, afin qu'elle puisse parler et 6crire correctement. La po6sie, si elle y a du penchant; en tout elle doit cultiver toujours son imagination, car le vrai me" rite des femmes et de leur societ^ consiste en ce qu'elles sont moins factices, moins gat6es, moins eloigne"es de la nature et par cela plus aimables ; en fait de morale el les doive