You Won’t Repeat It—Will You ?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVII, Issue 23, 8 December 1906, Page 48-52

You Won’t Repeat It—Will You ?

She takes her friend aside and pours forth with bated breath and low whispers a torrent of trivialities concerning their neighbours, and winds up with "For Heaven's sake, don’t say that I told you!” Ln nine cases out of ten the revela lions relate to matters of no importance to anybody. The whole story might be cried aloud from the house tops and nobody would be one penny the worse. But the friend feels bored and uncomfortable. Her mind is burdened with a tissue of silly nothings which she has been forced to promise on her word of honour to reveal to no living soul. And the affair is made more aggravating by the knowledge that, each casual acquaintance has been similarly taken aside and entrea tingly asked. "You won't repeat it. will you?'* Most of the secrets are storms in tea-cups, the mighty mysteries merely molehills. One type of villian in melodrama invariably makes his entrance to the hoarse stage whisper, "Hist! not a word to anybody.” Similarly, thousands of women go through life with Ihe same ‘‘Hist! I swear to you secrecy" attitude. It is. of course, tiresome to have such an impressive importance tacked on to trifles, but it is often quite harmless, and arises from a childish love of living in an atmosphere of plot and mystery in which many women out Sherlock Sherlock Holmes. But some of these mystery mongers are not content with the copyright of trivial gossip, they write twelve sheets of criminal libels on their friends, for which the mildest and most philanthropic among judges would unhesitatingly pronounce ‘‘nine months' hard." And they fondly imagine that they clear their consciences of any stain of dishonour and themselves of all legal and moral responsibility by the post, script. "You won't repeat it—will you?'' "Don't quote me as your authority” is the recognised formula between feminine friends when one of the two has confided that fact that, "to her knowledge, Mr A. would be in prison if he had his rights.” The statement that she has seen with her own eyes Mrs B. cheating at cards invariably winds up with, ‘‘You won’t repeat it—will yon?” 4’ 4' 4* Are Women Cheap? AYe read that “once women become cheap they are a national danger.” There are plenty of diamonds in the world, but their value remains the same even though existent numbers increase, because the owners hold them back, and our Englishwomen will always be as highly prized, because their own pride and modesty, their dignity and womanhood make them realise once and for all that the worth of a virtuous woman is above rubies. 4* 4r 4* Children Need the Awakening of the Imagination. It is because children need the awakening of the imagination, 'which is their greatest possession, that there ought to be at hand, in every household, » good collection of the stories of heroes, myths, fairy stories and legends. Those matter-of-fact people who, like Mr Gradgrind. of Coketown, believe that children ought to Ito taught only facts, do not realise that there is no such thing as

seeing a fact, except by the use of imagination; that no man ever sees any objective thing precisely as it is, independently of his own faculty of oliservation; nor do such people realise what a nightmare life would be if it were made up of facts rather than truths. The fact exists for the sake of the truth which the imagination gets out of it. Training without imagination makes men artisans; training with imagination makes them artists. Mother (loose is the beginning of real education; the fairy stories are the proper literature for the next stage; the. hero books and the lengends follow close upon them. Jn every case the parent ought to be as much saturated by the literature as the child, for the Bible stories which are told without the aid of the Book, and.the fairy stories which are told by the light of the hearthtire, last the longest and are the pleasantest io remember of all the stories one hears or remembers. The background of the child’s mind ought to be the oldest world, that childhood of the race found in the Old Testament. and the heroes and fairy tales. It ought to live in the newest world, the world of to-day. In every home there ought to be good newspapers, good magazines, a little group of the best books on the conditions of the hour, and these ought to contribute to the variety and interest of home life in the talk at the table. It is as great a mistake to “talk down” to children in the home as in public assemblies. One of the greatest privileges which a child can enjoy is to hear the talk of older people. Tu this way. while its deepestlife i- ' ent red in the home, and its imagination is associating the poetry of life with that home. it ought to enter into the larger life of the world, to understand, through what it hears at the breakfast and dinner table, what is going on in Russia, the changes in the Ear East, the meaning of the Hague Conference, the latest applications of electricity; above all. it ought to hear all the stories of contemporary selfdenial self-sacrifice and heroism. The newspapers give such enormously disproportioned attention to evil in all forms that the utmost endeavour ought to be made in the home to present life in a true perspective and to give good in all its forms the commanding place which it really holds in the world. ■E 4- 4Five Wives and Forty=three Children. According to the New York correspondent of the ‘•Express," Joseph Smith, o' Salt Lake City, the president of the ■Mormon body, has been arrested because he has five wives. The United (States authorities have long watched Smith’s .frequent plunges into matrimony, blit the birth of another child, bringing the total of .as offspring to 43. was too much even for his monogamist brethren, and they decided to attempt to cheek his wayward career. He was arrested at the instance of the monogamists. and will lie tried by a Mormon Court, some members of which are said to have made experiments in polygamy. Smith has really been married' six times, but one wife divorced him. His live wives live in the same street in separate houses, which are connected by a passage nt the back, so that Smith, on his round of visits, may not have to go by the street. He pays all the bills of each household, and makes an allowance in proportion to the number of children. Each family has an average of about £lOOO a year. Smith’s salary as president is £lO,OOO a year, and he makes another £5OOO in commercial enterprises.