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LESSONS OF HOME . LIFE. a
or anyhow talked, of education shows us that what was
wrong was generally wrong from defect. There were big
gaps, and it is much easier to specify the gaps than to
describe the positive goodness of the training, just as
feeding is more difficult to explain than hunger.
One big gap was caused by the very thing alluded to :
the army of servants whose whole raiaon d'etre was minis-tering
to our wants. After reading the autobiography
of Booker Washington, one realizes the importance for
young people of being helped cu little cu po88ible by anybody
: constantly encouraged, but not helped. Every
bit of help is an interruption to a child's growth. One of
the greatest blessings brought by the War-there are not
many-is that most of our sons are obliged to dispense
with servants' help. The opportunity is given to the
once rich of learning to do without ; and there is no
reason why we should spoil it all by grumbling. A child
will learn self-help, resourcefulness, patience, observation,
perseverance, and fifty other good "things if parents and
servants will leave him alone. Suggest and encourage,
but don't help. This maxim, I fear, is learnt less readily
by women than by men, and in education it is plain
that zeal is quite as dangerous as laziness.
At Hagley there were elements in the home-life for
which every child learnt later on to be profoundly thankful,
but they were bound up with the spell of some remarkable
personalities, and are too intimate and sacred still to be
made the theme of criticism and analysis, but their
broad features may be stated. In my father a spirit of
deep piety and noble devotion to duty were combined
in a very unusual degree with sportiveness and boyish
humour, and from the blend came a remarkable sense of
true values. He knew instinctively, never by analysis,
what things mattered. Though a reserved man, he
managed to make it known through the elder sisters
that to him' the strongest desire in life was that his sons
should go straight. •
Hy mother died before I was two years old, and our