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ennel. I believe the greatest misery of children arises from their being so culpably trusted to the care of servants. A fashionable mother engages a head-nurse, who is well-mannered, respectful, and experienced, and thereupon delivers over her children to her entire jurisdiction, perfectly content if they appear before her, at stated periods, clean and neat, with smiling faces. She little knows how (in the majority of instances) the poor little creatures are coerced, by nursery discipline, not to betray their real feelings for the woman who has them under her influence day and night. * * * * * [Sidenote: And gives the reason why.] At one time, when I walked daily in Hyde Park, I constantly met a nurse whose behaviour to the children under her charge excited my greatest indignation. If one of the little ones lagged behind with the nursemaid, or whimpered, because it was cold or tired, the head-nurse would shake it by the arm, or strike it across the head with such violence as to upset its equilibrium, and her voice at all times was harsh and repellent. I knew it would be useless to speak to her, but one day I followed her home to a house in Park Lane, and, sending up my card, asked if I could speak to the mistress of it. The flunky informed me she was Lady--let us say, "the Lord knows who"--and I was presently admitted to her presence. I did not stand on ceremony with "Lady the Lord knows who." I told her I made no excuse for disturbing her, because if she loved her children she would be very much obliged to me for telling her, from my personal observation, that she had (unconsciously no doubt) trusted them to the care of a woman who was not fit to take charge of a dog. Her ladyship heard me to the end, and then, rising grandly, touched the bell for her flunky and said, "Many thanks for the trouble you have taken, but I have the utmost confidence in my attendants." And so I was bowed out again. How many parents live with the little children they have brought into the world? How many teach them, or explain to them, all they want to know? It is too much trouble! All that sort of thing is delegated to hirelings. How often has one heard an intelligent child snubbed for the very questioning which should be encouraged! The bright, eager little brain, just opening, as it were, to all the wonders of living, is bursting to know the why and wherefore of everything it sees, and for answer to its
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