Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Without forbidding any one book or other, it would be wise for a mother to recommend her daughter not to read the current novels of the day, at the time they are being continually discussed in public, if they are of a nature which unfits her to join in the conversation. It is not that there is harm in having read the book, but there are some things which it is impossible for a girl to talk about. In Eichter's ' Levana,' which I mention elsewhere, there are some excellent passages on this very subject. In this permission to read or not to read books, as in all else that seriously concerns the education of children, the all-important thing is that the father and mother should agree. Nothing has so bad an effect on children, and they are quick to learn it, as that father thinks one thing and mother another. A wife had far better allow a fault to pass than try to stop that which she knows her husband would allow ; and a husband had far better back the mother when he thinks her wrong than condemn her before her children. There is an old saying that widows' children turn out well. I do not think this means that women are more fitted to manage a family alone than men are, but men very rarely give the subject their consideration. There is nothing, when men really try, that they do not do better than women — from the highest in art and literature, to the humblest cooking and tailoring. I think the old saw merely means that one will and one law are better than a divided judgment. If a woman has strong views on education, let her begin by 334 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN educating and persuading her husband. If she cannot do this, let her simply try and carry out his wishes and views, whatever they are. Not an unusual trouble of family life is that the energetic, and those who are happy through employing themselves, no matter in what way, are apt to be a sore trial to the idle and to those who want to be amused and excited. Many of us know the disappointment of rushing into a room, anxious to confide something of great or no importance to a sympathetic human being, and finding presented towards us what can only be described as a busy back, and the chilled feeling which results from the doubt whether or not we have any right to disturb it. Sometimes the parents are idle and the children industrious, which is perhaps the most common. The children must then not exact an interest in their work, which they are not likely to get. Schopenhauer says : ' Whoever seriously takes up and pursues an object that does not lead to material advantages must not count on the sympathy of his contemporaries.'