here they understand the happiness of their lot, links the two extremes
together across the centuries. The jubilant onset of their company in
some laborious work is like an anthem rising to God, bearing witness to
the happiness of labour where it is part of His service. They are the
envy of the choir religious, and in the precincts of such religious
houses children unconsciously learn the dignity of manual labour, and
feel themselves honoured by having any share in it. Such labour can be
had for love, but not for money.

One word must be added before leaving the subject of the realities of
life. Worn time to time a rather emphatic school lifts up its voice in
the name of plain speaking and asks for something beyond reality--for
realism, for anticipated instruction on the duties and especially on the
dangers of grown-up life. It will be sufficient to suggest three points
for consideration in this matter: (1) That these demands are not made by
fathers and mothers, but appear to come from those whose interest in
children is indirect and not immediately or personally responsible. This
may be supposed from the fact that they find fault with what is omitted,
but do not give their personal experience of how the want may be
supplied. (2) Those priests who have made a special study of children do
not seem to favour the view, or to urge that any change should be made
in the direction of plain speaking. (3) The answer given by a great
educational authority, Miss Dorothea Beale, the late Principal of
Cheltenham College, may appeal to those who are struck by the theory if
they do not advocate it in practice. When this difficulty was laid
before her she was not in favour of departing from the usual course, or
insisting on the knowledge of grown-up life before its time, and she
pointed out that in case of accidents or surgical operations it was not
the doctors nor the nurses actively engaged who turned faint and sick,
but those who had nothing to do, and in the same way she thought that
such instruction, cut off from the duties and needs of the present, was
not likely to be of any real benefit, but rather to be harmful.
Considering how wide was her experience of educational work this opinion
carries great weight.

CHAPTER VI.

LESSONS AND PLAY.

"What think we of thy soul?

* * * *

"Born of full stature, lineal to control;
And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient,