SEPTEMBER 13 



love of her home; and the children may forbear, also 

 through love, to tell their mother that the dinner-hour 

 is not quite the fashionable one, and "you might have 

 remembered how I hate that pudding." The mother will 

 look out for herself and see to the tastes of her family, 

 and will in talks with one and the other ask for advice 

 and hints on new ways of arranging the familiar details 

 of life. And so good manners, which are really the 

 Christian virtues of patience, charity, and self-control, 

 will reign in that house, and it will be a far pleasanter 

 place than if everyone in turn were loudly to volunteer 

 their opinion of how it ought to be conducted.' 



This has truth in it. All individuals must decide for 

 themselves how to draw the line between good manners 

 and what may end in whited sepulchres. This is doubly 

 difficult with children whose natural inclination is to 

 speak as they feel, for not to do so appears to them 

 rather as a deception than as a sparing of other people's 

 feelings. Everyone's experience will tell them how early 

 children say to others what they dare not say in their 

 own home. The great difficulty is to keep the love of 

 children. Goethe says: 'There is a politeness of the 

 heart ; this is closely allied to love. Those who possess 

 this purest fountain of natural politeness find it easy to 

 express the same in forms of outward propriety.' 



Nothing was more amusing to me than this interest- 

 ing variety in the letters about ' Sons and Daughters.' I 

 will quote passages from several of them : ' I agree with 

 your " Daughters " more than I thought I should. You 

 do not lay such stress as I thought you would on the 

 necessity of getting married and the " complete " point of 

 view.' All the same I maintain that an unmarried woman 

 is not a complete human being. 



1 1 think the chapter on " Sons " the better of the two. 

 But I think independence in boys is far easier to manage 



