rest deep in the heart. Partly this was because of a common habit of reticence which we have so fortunately outgrown. But another reason must have been that life then, as I have said, was imperfectly organised. To-day we have applied the principle of the division of labour so that we no longer expect the same person to do the work of the world and to feel its sacred significance. Thus, to-day there are women who are mothers and other women who proclaim the sacred function of motherhood. To-day there are women who bring up their children, and other women who, at the slightest provocation, thrill to the clear, immortal soul that looks out of the innocent eyes of childhood.

At this moment the clear, immortal soul of my boy, Harold, finds utterance in a succession of blood-curdling howls. He is playing Indians again. The wailing accompaniment in high falsetto emanates from the immortal soul of the baby. Those two immortalities are at it again.

I call out, "Harold!"

There is a silence.

"Harold!"

With extreme deliberation he appears in the doorway. I recognise him largely by intuition, so utterly smeared up is he from crawling in single file the entire length of the hall on his stomach. Beneath that thick deposit of rich alluvial soil I assume that my son exists. I ask him what he has been doing with the baby.

He had been doing nothing at all. He had merely tied her by one leg to a chair and pretended to scalp her with a pair of ninepins. He had performed a war dance around her and every time his ritual progress brought him face to face with the baby he made believe to brain her, but he only meant to see how near he could come without actually touching her, and he would strike the chair instead. He didn't know why the baby shrieked.

"Harold," I said, "do you feel the sacred innocence of childhood brooding in you?"

He was alarmed, but bravely attempted a smile.

"Ah, father!" he said.

I looked at him severely.

"Do you know what I ought to do to you in the name of the New Parenthood?"

"Ah, father!" and his lip trembled.

"You are a disgrace to the eternal spark in you," I said.

He lowered his head and began to cry. It required an effort to be stern, but I persisted.

"Harold," I said, "you will go into your room and stand in the corner for ten minutes. Close the door behind you. I will tell you when time is up."

He dragged himself away heartbroken and I found it was useless trying to write any more. I had made two people utterly miserable. I threw down my pen and rose to take a book from the shelf, but stopped in the act. Out of Harold's room came music. I stole to the door and looked in. He had not disobeyed orders. He had merely dressed himself in one of the nurse's aprons and the baby's cap, and standing erect in his corner, he sang "Dixie," with all the fervour of his fresh young voice.

About his appearance there was nothing sacred.

VI

EDUCATIONAL

Half-minute lessons for up-to-the-minute thinkers:

I. WORD STUDY

Child, noun; a student of sex hygiene; a member of boy scout organisations and girls' camp-fire organisations for the practice of the kind of self-control that parents fail to exercise; a member of school republics for the study of politics while father reads the sporting page; a ward of the State; a student of the phenomena of alcoholism; a handicap carefully avoided by specialists in child-study; one-third of a French family; the holder of an inalienable title to happiness which the Government must supply; in general, a human being under thirteen years of age who must be taught everything so that he will be surprised at nothing when he is thirty years of age. The ignorant and innocent offspring of a human couple, obs. Synonyms: man-child; girl-child; love-child.

Motherhood, noun; a profession once highly esteemed, but rejected by modern spirits as too frequently automatic.

Mother, noun; a female progenitor; a term often employed by the older poets in connection with the ideas of love, sacrifice, and holiness, but now delicately described by writers of the Harper's Weekly temperament as being synonymous with cow.

Eugenics, noun; a condition of intense excitement over the future of the human race among those who are doing nothing to perpetuate it.

Literature, noun; see Sex; White Slave.

Drama, noun; see Sex; White Slave.

Punch, noun; see Drama; Literature; Magazine Advertising.

Adenoids, noun; something that is cut out of children.

Social-mindedness, noun; something that is injected into children.

II. GEOGRAPHY

Argentina; where the tango comes from.

Russia; where Anna Pavlova and ritual murder trials come from.

Persia; where the harem skirt comes from, and other fashions eagerly embraced by a generation which insists that woman shall no longer be man's chattel and plaything.

America; where the profits of all-night restaurants in Montmartre come from.

Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Peru, Yucatan, Patagonia; where the decorations for Broadway lobster-palaces come from.

Equator; the earth's waistline, unfashionably located in the same place year after year.

Tenderloin; where the world's wisdom comes from.

Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, Morningside Heights; the sites of once celebrated educational institutions whose functions have now been taken over by theatre managers on Broadway.

Underworld; the world now uppermost.

Mountain; a rugged elevation of the earth's surface which comes to every self-constituted little prophet when he snaps his fingers.

Sea; where we are all at.

Mexico City; residence of Huerta, the most eminent living disciple of Nietzsche.

Bulgaria; a nation which scornfully rejected peace and reaped honour, widows, and orphans; where the Servians were the other day.

Servia; where the Bulgarians may be next week.

Chautauqua; any place outside the offices of the State Department.

III. ARITHMETIC

1. A ship carrying 800 passengers and crew is in collision off the banks of Newfoundland, and 700 are saved. Describe the method by which the Evening Journal computes 400 souls lost.

2. The salary of a police lieutenant is about $2,500 a year. At what rate