CIGARETTE PAPERS

Southland Times, Issue 21822, 27 September 1932, Page 6

CIGARETTE PAPERS

TRAINING A WIFE. One of the most notable of Rousseau’s English follcA-ers was Thomas Day, the author of the now forgotten “Sandford and Merton,” a book, however, that several generations of children enjoyed for its stories without worrying about its philosophy. Day was bom in London in 1748. His father had a post in the Customs House and when he died he left his son £l2OO a year. Day was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford, and he spent many summers in France where he came under the influence of Rousseau. When he wished to marry, Day decided that his wife should be modelled in accordance with the new ideas, and so he went to an orphan asylum and picked out a girl of twelve, whom he named Sabrina Sidney, and then at- the London Foundling Hospital, he selected a second whom he called Lucretia. He gave a written pledge that within a year he would place one of them with a respectable tradesman, giving £lOO to bind her as an apprentice and advancing £5OO to maintain her or set her up in business after she had served her indentures.

He took the girls to France to train them and to decide which he would marry. They quarrelled a lot and then contracted smallpox, so that Day had to nurse both of them. Lucretia he apprenticed to a milliner in London in accordance with his pledge. The unfortunate Sabrina could not qualify for the rank of Mrs Day. He tried dropping hot sealing wax on her arms but she flinched and when he fired pistols at her she screamed. Then she took to wearing thin sleeves for ornament. He found, too, that she could not keep secrets. He sent her off to a boarding school and when she married a barrister he paid £5OO. In later years when her husband died he gave her a pension of £3O a year. Failing to educate a wife, Day married a Miss Milnes in 1788; but the next year he was killed on September 27 by a kick from a horse he was trying to train on a new method. —CRITICUS.