SONS 259 



cocity that comes from development of character and in- 

 dependence, or from the stimulus of ambition, is as 

 desirable as that resulting from over-excitement or over- 

 bookwork is the contrary. 



As soon as children are no longer babies, it is very 

 unwise to leave them much with servants. Little boys 

 have no natural employments at home, especially in towns, 

 when once they go to school. I should recommend parents 

 who live in London to give up dining out during the winter 

 holidays. It is only for four weeks, and the evenings at 

 home with parents out are certainly dull for boys ; this 

 applies doubly where there are no sisters. I used to 

 think the perfect education for boys was the foreign way, 

 to li ve at home and attend a day school : but the universal 

 condemnation of this system by young Englishmen has 

 shaken me, and certainly we have hardly any machinery 

 prepared for carrying it out. The public school system, 

 therefore, seems to be the only one here. At any rate, 

 boys are brought up at school in the mythologies of their 

 time and country, as Huxley used to recommend ; and on 

 the whole that seems to answer best. The thing most to 

 be avoided, it appears to me as I look back on life, is 

 bringing up children on any sort of fad, however genuine 

 the conviction of the parents that they are right and other 

 people wrong. There is no mistaking the bitterness with 

 which young men talk if they have been brought up in 

 any way that alienates them from their generation. 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. 



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