Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/205

 Miss Corelli has grappled with human wrongs just as great, even though they may not be amenable to jurisdiction.

In the two books before us she deals, in hard-hitting, thought-compelling terms, with the criminally mistaken up-bringing of children. Her object in writing "The Mighty Atom" she tersely explains in her dedicatory note to "those self-styled 'progressivists'" who support the cause of education without religion. The short and pathetic history of Lionel Valliscourt is placed before us as typical of the fate which so often befalls the overwrought child-brain: the horrible end to the young life is depicted with the idea of manifesting in what the absence of religion even from a boy's mind may result. Had Lionel learned to say his prayers at his mother's knee; had he trotted off to Church every Sunday morning, his hand within his father's, and at eventide listened to the sweet old Bible-stories which so appeal to a child's imagination, the Christian precepts thus implanted in his heart would surely have stayed his hand when he conceived the idea of taking his own life.

This most sad story fully brings home to the reader the evils attendant on the entirely godless teaching bestowed on a young and exceptionally bright boy, who has an instinctive yearning for that