257 



SONS 



Boys and girls — The health question — Early independence — Public 

 schools — Influence o£ parents — The management of money — 

 Family life and its difficulties — Sir Henry Taylor — ' Mothers and 

 Sons ' — The feeding of children — The abuse of athletics — Success 

 in life — Spartan upbringing — Youth and age. 



I FEEL STire you all, as my nieces, care enough for my 

 views on most things to wish for a few remarks on the 

 great question of how to bring up boys and girls. The 

 opinion of anybody who has thought at all and who has 

 lived a long life is worth having as the personal ex- 

 perience of one individual. Age is to Hfe what distance 

 is to landscape, it makes all things assume fairer pro- 

 portions and embrace a larger horizon. We see more 

 plainly the good and the bad in all systems, any con- 

 victions we may stiU have we hold conditionally, and 

 we lose the confidence vsdth which we stepped out when 

 we knew less and felt more. 



I had better begin first with the boys, and speak of 

 the girls later on, which is certainly dealing with the 

 matter in the old, conventional way. 



It is a weU-knovTO fact that more boys are born into 

 the world than girls, but they are more difficult to rear, 

 which accounts for the greater preponderance of women 

 in the end. 1 suppose I ought to have more to say about 

 boys than girls, for, as you know, I have had only boys 

 of my own. My mother used . to say it was a merciful 



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