MODERN INSTANCES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue III, 20 July 1895, Page 69

MODERN INSTANCES.

The papers have recently recorded the suicide of three children—two of them only nine years old. One little girl killed herself because of the harsh reproaches of her father when he found that she had appropriated a penny from some household money, and the other two children took their lives in order to spare their mother, a poor widow, the burden of their support. All belonged to the class whose life is more or less a struggle from the beginning, and probably, therefore, were not endowed with unusual sensitiveness. In commenting upon these incidents, Kate“ Field Washington gives a word of warning to thoughtless parents who do not realise the dreadful suffering children often endure, silently, for some chance remark, exaggerated, either carelessly or to point a moral. Habitual inaccuracy of speech is not taken account of by children, unlearned in the ways

of this world. A serious, sensitive child naturally believes the letter of the law, and will brood for weeks over hints of pecuniary or domestic tronble which the father and mother forget ten minutes after they have uttered them. The certainty that he is powerless to avert misfortune makes it all the more terrible in prospect. Older people know what it is to ' enjoy poor health,’ and understand the * luxury of being miserable,’ hear rumours of bankruptcy and warnings of danger with tolerable complacency ; but children should be spared this unnecessary torture. ’ Childhood's happy hour ’ is balanced by many an hour of real distress, and the five-year-old who announced in a moment of gloom that ‘ this world isn’t any better than an old shanty, anyhow,’ is not alone among his contemporaries. The retrospection of the old, in which childhood figures as a period of unceasing pleasure, takes account of the gains without the losses, and the weather of the

past that children have very I’.ttle appreciation or sympathy given to their sorrows.