“Yes, of course, some are very bad,” sighed Mrs. Flockson, “but it is so difficult, isn’t it, to know just where to draw the line without being too severe. They say now it is so important that the character should be developed along its natural lines. It is so difficult not to impose one’s own individuality too much, and yet to preserve the idea of everything that is sweet and gracious.”
Now, if I had been alone I could have managed her perfectly. I could have kept Mrs. Flockson happy without doing her an atom of harm, but Mrs. Figgins is so abrupt.
“I can’t stop to think about individuality when a child is gobbling and talking nonsense at the same time,” she said. “I tell it at once, ‘Don’t eat like a pig,’ and then it doesn’t. I don’t care whether I am imposing my individuality or that of any other self-respecting person who wishes to eat with Christians.”
Several more people came in then. They were mostly badly dressed, and evidently put all their money on expression so far as charm was concerned; but then when people are very much in earnest about things that are of no consequence, and have as much consciousness as rabbits, and are not very healthy, it is difficult to make them look nice.
Miss Jamieson, a capable pink lady in a well-made dress with irrelevant trimming, spoke for half an hour on the question of children’s toys. She told us what toys ought to mean, and the qualities they ought to foster in the child. How, if his taste were trained in this manner, he would more easily distinguish the good from the bad later on. I asked whether a good taste in dolls acquired in the nursery would help my son not to fall in love with the wrong kind of minx. I did not put it in just those words, but Miss Jamieson did not give me much comfort. She smiled kindly, and said my question hardly came within the scope of her paper, but she was sure a taste in dolls would help very much, only boys did not play much with dolls, did they?
Then some one got up and said there was just one question she would like to ask, and that was, when Miss Jamieson recommended us to get those beautifully modelled animals for the nursery—she would ask presently for the address where they could be got—was there any one particular animal more than another that she recommended? And was it better to begin with the tame animals, as being less alarming, and work gradually up to the jungle animals, or would that be giving the child a wrong idea of evolution, as, of course, the wild animals did come first, didn’t they?
Miss Jamieson disposed of this lady by saying that, so long as they were animals of noble instinct, she did not think it mattered in what order they came, but she thought that unpleasant animals, such as the glutton or the sloth, should be kept for more advanced study.
Other inquiries, such as whether a Noah’s Ark were bad in case it biased the mind towards the dogmatic side of religion, instead of dwelling on the larger and more comprehensive issues, and whether playing at soldiers ever resulted in the child becoming brutalised, were dealt with in their turn, and then a vote of thanks to Miss Jamieson was proposed, seconded, and carried, and we had tea.
On the way home I passed a house where a young friend of mine lives with his barbarous parents. I felt it my duty to ask how his father was.
“We ain’t seen ’im for three days,” said Jimmy. “He’s been on the drunk and pawned everything in the ’ouse—’e’s a fat-’ead, ’e is.”