THE PEOPLE AND THE FARMS 119 



visitor to England has informed us that it is not so, 

 that mothers do sometimes slap or scold a child, and 

 children do sometimes cry. I can say the same of 

 West Cornwall, and nevertheless believe that com- 

 pared with other parts of England it is a children's 

 paradise. A common complaint made by English 

 residents is that the children are not taught to know 

 their place that they do just what they like. 

 " When my children want to go anywhere," a mother 

 said to me, " they do not ask my permission : but 

 they are very good they always tell me where they 

 are going. I do not forbid them because I know 

 they would go just the same." The schoolmaster in 

 a village I stayed at told me as an instance of the 

 power the children have that one morning on passing 

 a cottage he heard sounds of crying and voices in 

 loud argument and went in to ascertain the cause. 

 He found the man and his wife and their two little 

 children Billy the boy and Winnie the girl, aged 

 nine all in great distress. The man had received 

 a letter from his cousin in Constantine to say that the 

 village festival was about to take place and inviting 

 him to go to him on a two or three days' visit and to 

 take Billy. He wanted to go and so, of course, did 

 Billy, and now Winnie had said that she must be taken 

 too ! In vain they had reasoned with her, pointing 

 out that she could not go because she had not been 

 included in the invitation ; she simply said that if 

 Billy went she would go, and from that position they 

 could not move her. The result was that the visit to 

 Constantine had to be abandoned ; the good man 



