Page:Book of Etiquette, Volume 1, by Lilian Eichler.djvu/301

 emotional nature and of subduing wayward impulses and of bringing about harmony in the home circle. The writer knows of one family—and there are many others—which sometimes in the evening finds itself all at sixes and sevens. Nobody agrees with anybody else; the whole group is hopelessly tangled. The mother goes to the piano and begins playing a song that they all know. One by one the members of the family join in and it is not long before they are all gathered around the piano singing song after song and the petty disagreements and the unpleasant feeling of discord have vanished into thin air.

Much is to be said in favor of the gramophones. Through them the best music is accessible to almost everyone. But it is not wise to depend on them altogether, for children have talent to be developed, and there is a charm about music in the family that is like, to use a crude comparison—home-cooking. It cannot be duplicated elsewhere.

After all, the greatest charm of childhood is natural, spontaneous simplicity. Stilted, party-mannered children are bores. They are unnatural. And that which is not natural, cannot be well-bred.

The cause of shy, bashful, self-conscious youngsters is wrong training. They are repressed instead of developed. Their natural tendencies are held down by constant reminders and scoldings and warnings. Instead, they should be brought out by proper encouragement, by kind, sympathetic understanding. Some children have the idea, in their extreme youth, that parents are made only to forbid things, to repress them and make them do things against