y of a dog than of a commonplace child between the ages of six and
the beginnings of controlled maturity; for women who cannot bear to be
separated from their pet dogs send their children to boarding schools
cheerfully. They may say and even believe that in allowing their
children to leave home they are sacrificing themselves for their
children's good; but there are very few pet dogs who would not be
the better for a month or two spent elsewhere than in a lady's lap or
roasting on a drawingroom hearthrug. Besides, to allege that children
are better continually away from home is to give up the whole popular
sentimental theory of the family; yet the dogs are kept and the children
are banished.

Child Fanciers

There is, however, a good deal of spurious family affection. There is
the clannishness that will make a dozen brothers and sisters who quarrel
furiously among themselves close up their ranks and make common cause
against a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law. And there is a strong sense
of property in children, which often makes mothers and fathers bitterly
jealous of allowing anyone else to interfere with their children, whom
they may none the less treat very badly. And there is an extremely
dangerous craze for children which leads certain people to establish
orphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any pretext for filling
their houses with children exactly as some eccentric old ladies and
gentlemen fill theirs with cats. In such places the children are the
victims of all the caprices of doting affection and all the excesses
of lascivious cruelty. Yet the people who have this morbid craze seldom
have any difficulty in finding victims. Parents and guardians are so
worried by children and so anxious to get rid of them that anyone who
is willing to take them off their hands is welcomed and whitewashed.
The very people who read with indignation of Squeers and Creakle in the
novels of Dickens are quite ready to hand over their own children
to Squeers and Creakle, and to pretend that Squeers and Creakle
are monsters of the past. But read the autobiography of Stanley the
traveller, or sit in the company of men talking about their school-days,
and you will soon find that fiction, which must, if it is to be sold and
read, stop short of being positively sickening, dare not tell the whole
truth about the people to whom children are handed over on educational
pretexts. Not very long ago a schoolmaster in Ireland was