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212 many would not welcome the easing of their burden, and the training of their children by experts? And why in the world should mothers be likely to have less affection for their children because they have infinitely less trouble with them, and see them only in their smiling hours?

The happiest phase of English home life is, surely, found in those middle-class families which can send the children away to school for four-fifths of the year and welcome them home periodically in the holiday mood. In the vast majority of cases the teacher has to struggle despairingly against the influence of the home and the street; for it is to the street that the mother entrusts the child. A lady (an educational expert) once observed to me that it was remarkable to find the children in Gaelic districts of Scotland speaking the purest English. On the contrary, it was wholly natural, and it points an important pædagogical moral. The children learned English from their teachers only; there was no corrupt English dialect in the home or village to undo the teacher’s lessons. In other matters besides language the school-lessons are constantly frustrated outside the school.

I pass frequently through the stream of children pouring out of a large and handsome suburban school. It is not in a slum. There are broad green fields on every side, and there are vast and beautiful public spaces not far away. But the homes from which many of the children come are squalid, and the street-scenes, especially in front of the