The Children of the West 8 1 



velopment of the Anglo-Saxon race. One hesitates 

 to use the odious word, " decadent " in connection 

 with them, but no other can be found. You will 

 see many pretty faces, whose features lack strength 

 and balance. The lads are pallid, narrow-chested, 

 and rickety; the girls, like the roses, lack fresh- 

 ness and fragrance. There is an exotic quality about 

 them, a quality not without a charm, a languorous 

 grace denied to the robuster children of the North. 

 These are the orchids of the Pacific Slope. 



Their precocity is astounding. Most of them are 

 allowed to read the public prints, and in particular 

 the Sunday editions, wherein may be found a special 

 page devoted to the young, and which the young 

 — according to my experience — seldom read. In 

 1895 we were horrified by a dreadful double murder. 

 Two girls were decoyed to a church, and there dis- 

 honoured and despatched by a fiend of the name 

 of Durrant. The case furnished hundreds of col- 

 umns of what is known in editorial sanctums as 

 " good stuff/' and for two years these details tainted 

 the public mind The very headlines were sufficient 

 to debauch the imagination. To-day, you would 

 hardly find on the Pacific Slope an intelligent boy 

 of fifteen who is not familiar with the details of this 

 murder. Finally, Dewey took the taste of Durrant 

 out of their mouths. 



If the mental diet is too stimulating for the chil- 

 dren, the food they eat is no less so. Some parents 

 gravely contend that the tissues of a child's stomach 

 may be toughened, like his cuticle, by abuse. One 

 man I know wakes up his children in the middle of 

 the night to eat whatever he fancies : Welsh rarebit, 



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