16 MORE POT-POURRI 



true relations between a mother and a growing -up son. 

 I still think that if boys are unfit to have a key at seven- 

 teen, or the recommended allowance at an earlier age, it 

 shows that their education has been somewhat defective 

 in fitting them, not for doing well at school, but for the 

 general struggle of life as they get older, which is learnt 

 so well by children in a lower class of life. There might, 

 of course, be an exception in a family, but that merely 

 means that he is more deficient in common-sense than 

 his brothers, and should be gradually strengthened by 

 some method fitted to his peculiar case. It is a delight- 

 ful feeling of comfort to me to think that, whatever I 

 suggest, nobody need follow it unless it seems to them 

 good ; but I wrote nothing without deliberate thought 

 and practical experience. 



As a rule, the book seemed to please the old and the 

 young, rather than the middle-aged. Occasionally, how- 

 ever, some few parents wrote appreciating my hints about 

 the modern danger of children growing up more and more 

 apart from their parents. In our grandmothers' days 

 this only happened among what have been called the 

 'upper ten thousand.' Now it pervades all classes, down 

 to the labourer who has to send his children to the infant 

 and Board school. Not that schools of any sort are neces- 

 sarily bad in themselves, but it is a new position which 

 has to be faced with courage and thoughtfuluess by the 

 parents. 



A young mother wrote full of faith in her own excellent 

 principles of how to bring up children, and how easy she 

 had found it to gain an influence on their lives. This 

 cocksureness, natural and even wholesome in the young, 

 often brings about a good deal of disappointment. You 

 may make a soil ever so good, and you may plant ever so 

 good a seed, but even then there can be no security as to 

 results. The very child who is most impressionable and 



