It was not the time or occasion to do more than politely smile; no doubt I left the lady with the impression that I agreed. But what at once occurred to me was a parallel case in which I could hear in imagination some one saying: "I really encourage my children to read trash, silly comic papers, and so forth, for as they grow older I find that they do not want to read books from which they might get much harm". To keep in your child an undeveloped, childish taste, to encourage him in its selfish gratification, seems to me scarcely the best way to equip him with the right reason for resisting temptation as he grows older. A man may perchance not care for wine because he likes sweet things, but one does not want a race of men who eschew men's faults because their places are taken by a childish failing.

It is definitely bad physically for children to eat more than a very limited amount of sweets, even putting the moral aspect of the matter aside. But one cannot put it aside, for nothing that we do or are allowed to do deliberately that is bad for us physically is

otherwise than bad for us morally, and it is quite as bad for a boy's character as it is for his digestion that he should pander to his desire for sweet things when doing so means giving himself a pleasure which no one shares, and which can do him no benefit, and wasting his appetite on rubbish which gives no nourishment, instead of using it for the purpose of assimilating wholesome food.

But it is not by abolishing grub shops that the remedy it to be effected. Again, as I said on a very different subject, it is a question of demand and supply. It is no use stopping the supply until the tide of demand is stemmed. When boys are brought up in such fashion at home, and in their preparatory schools, that eating sweets is not, to the majority of them, a necessity of their existence, the grub shop will cease to exist. If the majority of boys gave up visiting the grub shop, public opinion would vote it away. We do not, in addition to the library full of wholesome literature which we expect to find in every school, also expect to find a room where on payment of so much out of his own

pocket a boy may read trash, unwholesome and unedifying "comic" papers, for instance, or unhealthy and foolishly exciting tales; nor ought we, in addition to wholesome and good meals cooked and served with care and refinement, expect to find-a "grub shop".

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CHAPTER II.

THIS is the argument which here I ought to be able unhesitatingly to bring forward, but here I am obliged to pause. Is the food provided for our boys at their public schools wholesome and good; is it cooked and served with care and refinement? I am rather afraid of not saying enough about this, for I am only intimately acquainted with the ménage of two public schools, and in both of these the food is as good as it can be; and for the rest I speak from hearsay. But if one discounts five-sixths of what one hears on the subject, there is enough faultiness in this respect to make one feel that the mothers of England are indeed a patient and long-suffering race; also enough to make one certain that they are patient and long-suffering in exactly the wrong place, if they do not rise up in a body and insist that their boys should, when they go to school, have proper food, properly cooked, given to

them, insist that boys should never be allowed to cater for themselves, and that they should be properly served and waited upon. Boys ought never to be placed in a position which encourages them to think about their food; it should be the business of those who provide it to see that it is suitable, properly cooked, decently served, judiciously and carefully varied,' palatable and wholesome, and there ought to be an end of the subject. Food ought to be no subject for critical consideration except for the providers thereof. Young men are actually proud of being epicures, and it is the commonest thing in the world to hear a schoolboy talk about why he likes this thing to eat, and why he does not like that. Children ought never to be allowed to talk about their food, but equally they ought

proper food put before them.

at the house of a young man,

always to have One

One may dine or in company

with young men, and often most of the conversation through the meal will be about what they are eating or what they would like to be

I know a school where the boys have "milky pudding" five days a week,