In 1892 a little book was published called 'Mothers and Sons.'It made some impression on a good many mothers, and this is not surprising, as it was written by the successful headmaster of a public school. I cannot but differ widely from a book which, while it professes to teach a mother's duty to her son, ignores all reference to the husband and father. The tact of mothers is disputed in the introduction, and it cannot be denied that women vary very much in their successful management of children and servants, and these two go pretty much together. But, however much a father may leave the training and management of his sons to their mother, his blood runs in their veins, his example is daily before them, and what he is they will be, more or less. Heredity, I admit, sometimes plays us strange pranks; but I think, if people will honestly look round on the circle of their acquaintances, they will find, in nine cases out of ten, that the stamp of the children belongs to the name they bear-to the family of the father, not of the mother. The tone of a child's mind, especially a boy's, is very much what was represented in one of 'Punch's' pictures some years ago-a manly young monkey standing up before his mother and saying: 'What a happy day it was for you, mother, when you married into our family !'I should not have alluded to the headmaster's book at all but for the very cordial way I agree with Chapter IV., called 'Food.' The following passage seems to me entirely true:-'Pendulums have a way of swinging; and if starvation or under-feeding was a danger to boys thirty years ago, it is luxury and over-feeding with which the sons of nearly all classes are threatened in 1892.'No one advocates more strongly than I do that young children should be wholesomely and sufficiently fed (the size of the body depends on this with all animals), even to the point of occasional stomach attacks. The moment, however, that a child is not well, parents should realise that what weakens it is-not the want of food which it refuses to swallow, but the fever brought on by internal derangement from overloading the stomach. Nearly all sick children like fruit, and I think, if fruit and bread alone were given them for a day or two, they would generally get well without any doctor or medicines. Of course, if the nurse insists on giving just a little magnesia as well, the whole thing is spoilt. Fruit does not do with any form of alkaline drug. It is most important to keep to one treatment or the other-the acid or the alkaline; if not, the poor child's inside is turned into a saline draught. The author points out, with great severity and truth, the absurdity of the fact that boys are fed in the most stimulating way on meat, wine, and beer. If, as is sometimes the case, the wine and beer are knocked off, they are doubly allowed and encouraged to eat as much as they like, which, in order to live healthily, they have to work off by playing for hours at football and cricket. Inconsistently enough, they seem to acknowledge that, for rowing, heavy eating is bad. The athlete and the Alpine climber know it well. It is proverbial that the navvy, who is said to eat enormously with a view to keeping up his strength, is worth nothing at all in the way of work by the time he is forty. Nowhere are gout and rheumatism so prevalent, in spite of the beauty of the climate, as in Australia, where meat is cheap, and people live principally upon it. I maintain that if more, and more decided, abstinence were enjoined, there would be no necessity for the number of hours that are now wasted in exercise. Mr. John Morley, in a recent speech to some schools, refers to this point. He says: 'Is there not a little too much addiction to pleasure nowadays? Do not young men attend rather more to their athletics and sports than is wholly good? This was what had been said:-In Germany, young men who were going into the family business travelled and acquired languages, and learnt to know the tastes and habits of the natives. In England the sons of the house devoted themselves to pleasure-to billiards, the theatre, sport, and so on. In Germany the father said, "Thank God I have a son! " In England the son said, "Thank God I have a father! "' Mr. Morley wound up, after saying that those who worked hard ought to have pleasure, as follows:- 'There was no doubt, taking the country as a whole, that pleasure and sport were now absorbing an amount of time and mental occupation which must block out some other objects to which it would be well if men and women paid attention.' The way to diminish exercise without loss of health is by the very economical method of diminishing food, especially food of that kind which is well known to increase muscle. From the little I know of French schools it seems to me that the exercise there is very inadequate. We are told that Germany is our successful rival in many forms of physical prowess and staying power, in spite of education being more complete and universal in that country. Is it not possible that they adjust the balance better between study and muscular development?

I am often accused by my friends of being too ambitious-indeed, worldly-minded-from caring too much for the success in life of those whom I know well and am fond of. The justification to myself of this accusation, the truth of which I admit, is that the youth of life is a time of preparation, and if we get no results-no outward demonstration-that when a man has done his best he has done well, it seems to me like going up for an examination and then not caring if you pass, like acting to empty houses, writing books which no one reads, painting pictures which no one buys, or losing money instead of making it. Every now and then a genius is passed over by his generation and acknowledged later on, but this is the exception. Broadly speaking, the average get very much what they deserve, and, in vaguely generalising, one can only speak of the average. I do think that, having travelled half the road of life, we have a right to expect moderate success, and to feel disappointed if we do not get it. I am sure to be asked, perhaps a little scoffingly, 'What do you mean by success ? Happiness ?'No, certainly not. What I mean is easy to understand, though difficult to define. It is the generally-accepted meaning of success, perhaps in its lowest sense, the contrary of failure; and I mean the same as Mr. Morley does when he speaks of success in the following words:- 'It is the bitterest element in the vast irony of human life that the time-worn eyes to which a son's success would have brought the purest gladness are so often closed for ever before success has come.'