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 



