source of much disturbance of mind when the
expressman fails to bring them.

I knew a little girl who watched every delivery for a week and cried
after every one because the box her mother had promised her did not
appear. So let illness and boxes go unmentioned till you can write
something like this, "Papa was sick last week. He is well now. He goes
to the office every day." And after the box has had time to reach its
destination you can say, "Mamma sent a box to you Wednesday. She put two
handkerchiefs, some new shoes, six oranges, and some money in the box.
Papa gave the money to you."

If you are like most mothers, before many weeks have gone by you will be
eager to visit your boy and see for yourself how he is getting on;
whether he is really as happy as the letters from school assure you he
is; what he is learning in class, and whether he has blankets enough on
his bed and sugar enough on his oatmeal.

But before the letter announcing the day of your arrival is posted or
your ticket is bought, sit down by the fire and think the matter over.

You have confidence in the school, else you would never have sent your
boy there; and you have been told repeatedly either that the little
fellow is happy and well or, it may be, that he was rather homesick at
first, but has now settled down to a very comfortable and contented
state of mind and is doing well in class.

Now, if you go to see him too soon after he has left home there will
really be a good deal more danger that the boy will be homesick after
you leave him than there was when you took him to school in September,
even if he has been quite happy up to the time of your visit.

In the first place, he will think, drawing his conclusions from visits
that he may have made before, that school is over and that you have
come to take him home. So it will be a great surprise and shock when you
go away without him. And in any case, after the separation of some
weeks, his love for you will make him want to be with you, and he will
really suffer when you say good-by.

So, if I were you, I would wait till after the Christmas holidays before
going for my visit. By that time he will be fully settled in his new
life and will look on it as an established part of existence. He will
know from observation that other mothers come for a little while and
then go home again without taking their children with them, and his
advance in understanding will make it much easier to explain to