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UNCONSCIOUS CRUELTY TO CHILDREN
"Percival, come here this minute; sit -down and be still."
"Percival, stop chasing that cat!"
"Percival, if you don't make less noise I'll tell father and he's attend
to you."
And for a whole afternoon it was "Percival, don't" and "Percival, do"
until tonight we expect "Percival" will ring in our ears and prevent sleep.
It was in the park that we saw "Percival" and his well-meaning but
nervous mama. They had gone there presumably that Percival might have
a good time. But if we're any judge of boyhood, Percival wasn't having it,
for he no sooner started to enjoy himself, boy fashion, than the sharp voice
of his querulous guardian coiled itself around him like a lariat and yanked
him into captivity.
Of course, Percival's mama loved Percival and thought she was shoot
ing her machine-gun commands at him for Percival's best interests.
The trouble with that woman was that she had never been a boy her
self. Had she been, she would have agreed with the Minnesota man who
told the convention of Sunday school teachers in Chicago that a boy is
compounded of 50 per cent play, 40 per cent fight and only 5 per cent each
of work and religion.
It was easy enough, it was even enjoyable for her to sit still on a park
bench and just be passive to the caress of nature, for she was built that way.
But for a live boy ugh!
The unconscious cruelties of doting parents to growing children must
make the angels mourn.
AN IMROVEMENT
The Arab The best way to cross the desert is with a cameL It can go
500 miles on one drink of water.
The Explorer That's nothing. A monoplane can go twice that far
on nothing but air.
Skowhegan, Me., has a prodigy in I who has never been ito school, but
the form of a 5-year-old ybungster can read anything placed before huu,
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