OF CHILDREN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19418, 28 August 1926, Page 6 (Supplement)

OF CHILDREN.

El" OIUEL

No. 11 This stale of things had continued ever since the cradle days of the unspoilt child, -who was now approaching the sixth year of her life unlearned in the art of ABC, and most other things, except what she had discovered for herself. But on a certain evening came a changa; gray clouds began tc> rol; np on the hitherto cloudless horizon of Mrs.-Clubitis in the git ape of the gray curls of Mrs. Clubitis, sen;:.., who returned suddenly from the fast and took up her abode in the Clubitis household for the space of one week. *' Harry,"" said she, after a day of two, to Mr. Clubitis., " do you know that child c 7 yours is u little igoranus.? I have been questioning her and she knows absolutely nothing except maids' gossip and n certain amount of natural fact-, which she ha*, doubtless picked up for herself. She 'it neither stupid nor la7.v, but the poor dear has never been taught. What's her mother thinking about, I should like to know " Her mother.? Oh, bridge, I suppose. Confound it," replied Mr. Clubitis. "She seldom thinks of anything else;; and as for mo, 1 haven't time to educate the child." " Naturally not. It's a mother's business to sow the first seeds in the field of a baby's brain, and apparently the ground has not even been tilled. We must see about, this, Harry. If 1 were only staying longer, 1 would undeitake to set thriigs right "i i» few months. But what about school " School? School for that baby? Why/ the young brains might be injured it they wim: started at her age on the uphill path of cram." ' I'ouh ; Brains injured, indeed! Neglect will do far more toward injuring them, causing backwardness from which a child may nover recover through all the afterschool days. Gram, iniieud ! Kight down laziness on your wife's part, only you men ure so blind !" So, after a little more talk, it was arranged that the unspoilt child should go t.o school. Mrs. Clubitis resented the interference at first, but came round later us she saw in it a now Way of getting her daughter out of the way. To school then she goes; and that, as far as this article is concerned, is the end of her as a child. But who can even make up to her what she missed in the first six years ot her life? And who can say that those two years when she ought to have known her ABC and started to read simple things will not prove an eternal drawback ? Is it ever possible to make, up for those years ? Perhaps, if the child is of keen intellect-, and if of average or below average, probably not. T wonder if that girl, when she is grown, is going to come to her mother with all her difficulties to he smoothed, with a darkened horizon to he lightened, with the superior wisdom and strength that only a mother's mind can give. I she is going to confide in her. Rathor, I think not. As that child began }ife, so she will continue it—just findingvfchings out for herself ; finding out life with all its pitfalls. And, perhaps, you will argue, reader, that one only can find out life for oneself. In ft measure, yes—'ult in a measure only. Mrs. Clubitia, is going to be the one left in the dark, ignored—liitfii' on. Mrs. Clubitis is going to suffer later on, when alio has wearied of the Bridge Club and wants, a daughter's love and companionship. * 'She will not get them,—never, never will she be able to recover them now, for those things, wsrd lost long ago in the first six yeafs when the child was mother of this now independent voun" woman/ Mrs, Clubitis is going to suffer later or—when the Bridge Club has found a new mother, and a daughter shs hardly knows can do very well without one, as she has always done.