THE PREVALENCE OF CLUMSINESS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XIX, 7 November 1896, Page 16

THE PREVALENCE OF CLUMSINESS.

‘I sometimes wonder,* said a lady who travels a great deal, • what the early training of some people that I meet must have been, or, to express it more correctly, whether they have had any early training at all. I think I never travel in any train, or enter any public conveyance, that somebody, either man, woman or child, doesn’t walk or stumble, or crowd or lean against somebody else ; and if the awkward individual happens to be carrying a parcel or market-basket, or, indeed, an umbrella, his neighbours have cause for congratulation if they get out of the vicinity with whole bodies or garments. It seems to me that these people must have been badly trained in their youth, or else they never, by any possibility, could be so awkward. There are few greater misfortunes than the faculty of falling over everything oue comes near, or of upsetting or displacing whatever objects may stand in the way. A child’s education should never be considered complete until it is taught to enter and leave a room, to move a chair without noise, to put various objects in their places, not only occasionally, but as a regular thing, and they should never pass any article about the house which may be out of its proper position without quietly replacing it.