aracter. Nay, I sometimes
fear lest even our increased activity in practical work may not have the
effect of calling off our attention from those deep underlying causes
which must be dealt with if we are not to engage in the hopeless task of
trying to fill a cistern the tap of which has been left running. This
absorption in the effect and inattention to the cause is to a certain
degree bred in us by the very nature of the duties that devolve upon us
as women. John Stuart Mill has compared the life of a woman to an
"interrupted sentence." The mere fact that our lives are so interrupted
by incessant home calls, and that we are necessarily so concerned in the
details of life, is apt to make us wanting in grasp of underlying
principles. Perhaps it is the fact of my having been associated all the
early years of my life with eminent scientific men that has formed in me
a habit of mind always to regard effects in relation to causes, so that
merely to cure evil results without striking at the evil cause seems to
me, to use a Johnsonian simile, "like stopping up a hole or two of a
sieve with the hope of making it hold water."

It is, therefore, on these deeper aspects that more especially bear upon
the lives and training of our own sons that I want to write, placing
before you some facts which you must know if you are to be their
guardians, and venturing to make some suggestions which, as the result
of much collective wisdom and prayer, I think may prove helpful to you
in that which lies nearest your heart. Only, if some of the facts are
such as may prove both painful and disagreeable to you, do not therefore
reject them in your ignorance as false. Do not follow the advice of a
politician to a friend whom he was urging to speak on some public
question. "But how can I?" his friend replied; "I know nothing of the
subject, and should therefore have nothing to say." "Oh, you can always
get up and deny the facts," was the sardonic reply.

Let me first of all give you my credentials, all the more necessary as
my long illness has doubtless made me unknown by name to many of the
younger generation, who may therefore question my right to impart facts
or make any suggestions at all. Suffer me, therefore, to recount to you
how I have gained my knowledge and what are the sources of my
information.

In the first place, I was trained for the work by a medical man--my
friend Mr. James Hinton--first in his own branch of the London
profession