feeble-minded children to permanent custodial care in institutions
provided especially for their segregation, possible teaching and
thrifty use of small work-power. Alexander Johnson, who has done so
much in the United States to make all philanthropy wise and effective
and particularly has helped to form public opinion concerning right
methods of care and training of the feeble-minded, tells us that
"one-half of the mentally defective can become one-third of a normal
person," can be made happy and useful to the extent of considerable
aid toward self-support if under constant supervision and given the
trained care of special teachers.

There are few private homes in which any feeble-minded boy or girl can
attain such a condition. The children who are "different," if having
the sole devotion of father and mother, may be protected and made
happy in the measure of their power for happiness. But if there are
other children in the family neither they nor the afflicted one are
comfortable. The measure of feeble-mindedness is usually the measure
of unhappiness when the normal and abnormal are in close
companionship. In most families it is not possible for either or both
parents to give entire time, strength and devotion to one subnormal
child. Where it is, there is no security that death will not prevent
the permanency of that devoted care. Hence, it is generally safer and
better for all concerned to place the feeble-minded in collective
homes where their own kind are cared for exclusively and where
segregated control can be complete and permanent through life. There
is no horror of such places for those who have seen what flowers of
happiness and what miracles of devotion may be found in "Training
Schools for the Feeble-minded."

The affectional side of the nature of a mental defective may be of
unusual strength and may find special objects of love among those
still more handicapped than itself. Those visiting intimately in such
School-homes may see a higher-grade imbecile caring for a lower-grade
with patience and devotion; they may see the competitive element in
training, reduced in levels for the accommodation of the slender
stock of mentality, producing on that lower level the same good
results that normal children gain from trying to imitate and to excel.
Small attainments are sources of pride in a class of defectives which
if exhibited among the normal would give bitter experience of
contrast. By making the standard of