,
and there was nothing left for her but white meat.

It isn't the final result which the nice old lady achieved, but the
first one, that I want to commend. A child naturally likes the simple
things till you teach him to like the rich ones; and it's just as easy
to start him with books and amusements that hold sense and health as
those that are filled with slop and stomach-ache. A lot of mothers
think a child starts out with a brain that can't learn anything but
nonsense; so when Maudie asks a sensible question they answer in
goo-goo gush. And they believe that a child can digest everything from
carpet tacks to fried steak, so whenever Willie hollers they think
he's hungry, and try to plug his throat with a banana.

You want to have it in mind all the time while you're raising this boy
that you can't turn over your children to subordinates, any more than
you can your business, and get good results. Nurses and governesses
are no doubt all right in their place, but there's nothing "just as
good" as a father and mother. A boy doesn't pick up cuss-words when
his mother's around or learn cussedness from his father. Yet a lot of
mothers turn over the children, along with the horses and dogs, to be
fed and broken by the servants, and then wonder from which side of the
family Isobel inherited her weak stomach, and where she picked up her
naughty ways, and why she drops the h's from some words and pronounces
others with a brogue. But she needn't look to Isobel for any
information, because she is the only person about the place with whom
the child ain't on free and easy terms.

I simply mention these things in passing. Life is getting broader and
business bigger right along, and we've got to breed a better race of
men if we're going to keep just a little ahead of it. There are a lot
of problems in the business now--trust problems and labor
problems--that I'm getting old enough to shirk, which you and the boy
must meet, though I'm not doing any particular worrying about them.
While I believe that the trusts are pretty good things in theory, a
lot of them have been pretty bad things in practice, and we shall be
mighty slow to hook up with one.

The trouble is that too many trusts start wrong. A lot of these
fellows take a strong, sound business idea--the economy of cost in
manufacture and selling--and hitch it to a load of the rottenest
business principle in the bunch--the inflation of the value of your
plant and stock--, and