n8 THE LAND'S END 



until the last day of his life. With every meal they 

 drink tea. They are very good eaters : one day the 

 farmer's wife told me that each one of her six little 

 children consumed just double what I did. And the 

 result of this abundance and of an open-air life in 

 that wet and windy country is that the people are as 

 healthy and strong and long-lived as any in the world. 



The children are wonderful. You may go to 

 village after village and look in vain for a sickly or 

 unhappy face among them. It is true you do not find 

 the very beautiful children one often sees in both 

 England and Ireland, the angelic children with shin- 

 ing golden hair, eyes of violet or pure forget-me-not 

 blue and exquisite flesh tints, nor do you find children 

 with so much charm. They are, generally speaking, 

 more commonplace ; the wonder is in their uniform 

 high state of well-being. One of the prettiest scenes 

 I ever beheld was a procession on Empire Day, May 

 24, of all the school children in Penzance. They 

 were all, even to the poorest, prettily dressed, and 

 those of a good number of schools, Catholic, Metho- 

 dist and Anglican, had very beautiful distinctive cos- 

 tumes. As I watched the mile-long procession going 

 by in Market Jew Street, every face aglow with happy 

 excitement, I began to search in the ranks for one 

 that was thin and sad-looking or pale or anaemic, but 

 failed to find such a one. 



We have been told by an English traveller in Japan 

 that children are best off in that land where a mother 

 is never seen to slap or heard to scold her child, and 

 where a child is never heard to cry. Now a Japanese 



