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.' 



When parents are the energetic, hard-working ones, 

 let them remember a passage in a letter of Madame de 

 StaeTs, whose biography is so interesting because she 

 represents in a large sense what most women are in a 

 smaller. She writes from England in 1813: 'II n'y a 

 point de ressources dans mes enfants; ils sont e'teints, 

 singulier effet de ma flamme.' So often children by their 

 very natures are only contrasts to ourselves. What our 

 children are born, they remain ; of that I am sure. By 

 this I mean that there are certain qualities of character 

 which we can no more change than we can alter the 

 colour of the hair and eyes. What we can do is to help 

 each one to make the best of what he or she actually is, still 

 better said by an old saint, ' Do not try to be not what 

 you are, but very well what you are ! ' 



