The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Our Relations to Our Fellow-Creatures.

[The original Sir Reginald Bray served King Henry VII, and his descendants carry on his name. The author of this article is probably the British politician Reginald Arthur Bray (1869-1950) who wrote The Town Child in 1907and Boy Labour and Apprenticeship in 1912. "Bray never married and died in July 1950, aged 81."]

At 12.0, MR REGINALD BRAY read his paper on Our Relations to Our Fellow-Creatures

I remember reading somewhere a fairy tale of a princess who lost her heart--unfortunately not to a lover but to a witch who had stolen and imprisoned it within a mountain of ice. [Heart of Ice] The life of a princess was a curious one. She stood in the closest of relations to a large number of people, to her parents who fed and clothed her, to the attendants who provided her with amusement, and to the princes who competed with one another for her hand. But to all alike she was indifferent; they were no more to her than the chairs on which she sat, or the bed in which she slept. They supplied her needs and to that extent came into her life, but they came no further. In course of time the usual fairy prince put in an appearance. After a fierce struggle he rescued the heart of the princess from the ice mountain and restored it to the owner. A striking change followed. The actual relations, regarded as objects of knowledge, remained unaltered; but in the eyes of the princess they became invested with a new colouring, a new warmth and a new life that transformed the whole world. Before, her fellow-creatures had seemed only so many conditions to which of necessity her actions conformed; they now acquired an importance of their own quite independent of the fact that they were means of satisfying her wants. Hitherto her parents had appeared merely an intricate piece of furniture; they now became living beings whose existence and welfare were charged with a significance such as the state of repair of a complex machine could never possess. While, as for the prince it is but natural to anticipate that the princess restored to him the heart he had so gallantly won. The human element with its companions of passion and sentiment had been introduced into her existence; and her relations to the world, before passive, had become active and living.

So far as the larger portion of humanity is concerned, we resemble the princess before the arrival of the prince. Whether we will or no, we are brought into many and varied relations with our fellow-creatures. The intricate mechanism of civilization has widened enormously the field of these relations. But they are mainly of the passive kind; they are called into existence without our consent or co-operation, and we are constrained by the bonds they create. The human beings who stand related to us in this way are only so many complicated machines that minister to our needs, arousing in our hearts no trace of feeling and emotion. We are for example brought into passive relations with the native who gathers tea in Ceylon; every breakfast-time, a tie is established between us. But the condition of the native exerts no appreciable effect on our conduct; he may be happy or miserable, but this knowledge makes no practical difference to us. He is merely one of the forces of the world, like gravity or electricity, to be used but not to be loved. The relation is purely of the passive kind, and we are like the princess before the prince came. The relation may, of course, at any time become active; this will occur if, let us say, we become tea merchants or missionaries. Standing in conspicuous contrast with Ceylon, there is always some nook or corner in our world where the relations are active, as, for example, our family circle. We are no longer cold and passionless, we no longer submit ourselves passively as to unalterable conditions; but we play instead an active part in the relation, and the living beings to whom we stand related are to us motives for action and objects of love--the prince has come.

But what is the significance of this distinction? I think we may say without exaggeration that all real progress of the world has been made and will be made by the conversion of passive into active relations, in other words, by adding the warmth of the human element to the mechanical ties that bind us to our fellow-men. Little more than a hundred years ago we bought our sugar placidly indifferent to the fact that the sugar canes were cultivated by slave labour. Our relation to the slaves was of the passive kind. Then came a handful of men who brought home to us the truth that these slaves were living creatures with feelings like our own, but bound in throbbing helplessness to the yoke of an oppressive task master. The relation became active and we freed the slaves. Less than a hundred years back we burned our coal cheerily, oblivious and negligent that we were at the same time burning up the lives of the women and children who toiled in the mines. Then a great reformer [Anthony Ashley-Cooper] and a great poem [The Cry of the Children, E.B.Browning] rendered this passive relation active and inaugurated the era of factory legislation. What is true of the progress of a nation is equally true of the progress of a child. His education is little more than the conversion of passive into active relations; and its success turns on the number and nature of these active relations.

Now there is an important point concerning relations that must never be forgotten. When once we are grown up, our habits formed and our prejudices developed, certain relations decline under any conditions to become active. They remain mere matter for knowledge, and can be illumined by no single ray of feeling. Had the fairy princess been immured in a dungeon till the charms of her youth had faded, it is probably that no prince would have been drawn to so unattractive a creature. Or, if his gallantry had driven him to his work of rescue, he would have discovered that the heart, imprisoned within the ice mountain, had turned to ice itself, and, when returned to the princess, was incapable of warming to a single throb of affection. So too if the heart of a child is left to freeze in the ice mountain of indifference, there is no magic that will thaw it into life when childhood is passed and gone.

Here then I have reached two important principles that touch closely our relations to our fellow-creatures. First, passive relations must be made active, in other words, hearts be trained to beat in sympathy with that vast multitude to whom, however indirectly, we stand related. And next, this task can only be achieved in early life, before character has grown rigid and unpliable; it must be begun among children.

Now, before we begin to consider how these active relations may best be established, we must decide on the kind of relation required. We are here brought face to face with a controversy, and the side taken will materially affect our views on education. There are two opinions, diametrically opposed, concerning the nature of the tie that ought to unite us with our fellow-creatures. Both agree that we should stand in active relations with all men. But the one party declares that the tie ought to be of the same strength in each case; that, for example, the tie that binds me to my brother must be no closer than the tie binding me to a native of Ceylon, and the fact that he is my brother ought to be allowed no weight in determining my judgement. While the other party strenuously maintains the position that the strength of the tie ought to vary in every case, and further asserts that unless we are very closely connected with a few individuals, it is absolutely impossible for us to enter into any active relations with the dusky inhabitants of Ceylon.

The first opinion is advocated by the great Russian author, Tolstoy. So far as I am aware he has not himself discussed this question in relation to family life, but has confined his efforts to an attack on national life, teaching that patriotism is a vice and not a virtue, a spirit to be rooted up instead of cultivated. Certain socialists, however, have carried the standard of battle into the family circle. They maintain that the family bond is the most serious obstacle in the path of progress. "Domestic unity," they say, "is inconsistent with an absolute social unity vested in the state," or again, "Family supremacy will be absolutely incompatible with an interdependent solidaric commonwealth." The arguments, whether the fight ranges round family or country, are the same. If a man is compelled to choose between the happiness of his brother and the happiness of a native of Ceylon, under present conditions he prefers the former. Further, if the choice lies between his brother and two Ceylon tea gatherers, the result is the same. This preferential love of the few leads to the sacrifice of the many in the interests of these few. Where a country is concerned war is the outcome; and where a family is in questions selfishness will prevail. The progress of civilization is barred until this preferential affection, whether for the individual or for the country, disappears. This, in brief, is their line of argument. Personally I differ entirely from these conclusions. A short time devoted to unravelling the fallacies that underlie these arguments will not be time wasted, as I hope to render clear certain truths which have an important bearing on my subject. What then have I to say in answer to the Tolstoyans? I admit frankly the truth of their assertions. I confess that the special love for a few does lead to a preference for the interests of these few; I grant that an impartial view of the claims of humanity is thus rendered impossible. But I absolutely deny the truth of the conclusions supposed to be founded on these facts. For to advocate, as is done, the destruction of a certain system of relations on the ground that dangers and evils are connected with them, is nothing short of lunacy. On this principle, a man with a weak digestion must be advised to abstain altogether from food for fear that a meal will cause him discomfort. In either case there is an obvious alternative, to recognize the danger and to take precautions against it.

Further, the Tolstoyans lose sight of the important truth that man is human, and shares with his fellows the frailties of humanity. He cannot help loving the few he knows more than the many with whom he is unacquainted. If he fight against this natural tendency, he can only win success by eradicating the affections. In this process, his immediate neighbours will lose and humanity will in no wise be a gainer. To imagine that a love of humanity is acquired by the cultivation of a genial indifference to the individual is to establish strong claims to a cell in a lunatic system.

Lastly, when a man is exhorted to consider the effect of his actions in humanity, he might with as good sense be told to calculate the influence of the innumerable earthquakes his every step along the pavement is creating. He is lost in be wilderment and can trace no effect on so visionary a body. "The individual," as Mazzini says, "is too insignificant and humanity is too vast." He knows neither what to do nor what to abstain from doing. So long as there is no call for action, an indulgence in the vague sentiment of humanity is a harmless form of dissipation. But it provides neither guidance nor stimulating motive for effective work. Possibly for people of another planet, made on the lines of a logical machine, an impartial view of the universe may be possibly; but for us, poor creatures of sentiment as we are, it is unmeaning and unworkable.

Our active relations must therefore possess different degrees of strength. To pervert a parable; it is only from the well-plenished board of a rich family love that Dives [the rich man] has any crumbs of affection to spare for the poor beggar humanity, sitting outside on the doorstep [Lazarus]. I fear that many of you must think I have wandered far from my subject. My excuse is my desire to make prominent two principles. I was anxious to show that our relation to our fellow-creatures must be regarded as starting from some one central point, and thence widening outwards in a series of circles. Each circle brings us into wider contact with the world outside, while the strength of tie decreases with every increase in the distance from the centre. Secondly, as a sort corollary, it follows that, just as we cannot begin with the whole series of circles, so at the commencement we cannot take in the whole scope of one, but must concentrate first on some single point. Or, to leave abstract terms, if we desire to change our relations to any class of people from the passive to the active form, we must select some one person and enter into active relations with him. After this, I fear dreary theory of relations, I can pass on to consider how the results apply to the education of a child.

I. THE RELATION TO THE FAMILY.

A child is not born into the world a mere disconnected atom of humanity; he is born a new member in an already closely linked and interrelated world--the miniature world of home. From the moment of his entry, close ties bind him to the few; and it is not long before he learns that all his needs and happiness depend on these few. The welfare of the whole depends so entirely on the relation between the units, that from his earliest years the consequences attending conduct stand vividly impressed on his mind. The world is but an enlarged copy of the family and its ideal--the ideal of an association regulated by mutual service and mutual good will--is the ideal found most closely realised within the family. The family, someone has said, is the heart's fatherland. Now, it would be presumptuous in a bachelor to attempt an explanation of how the child may best be taught the meaning of these family relations. But there are certain characteristics that should be conspicuous in the family relation, characteristics which make that relation the type and model of all relations to our fellow-creatures. First, love, and not expectation of reward, is the motive that determines conduct. The attempts of the child to please the mothers are so many expressions of the feelings cherished towards her. There is no thought of any further happiness than that derived from the pleasure she will show.

Secondly, to the various services performed and received, there clings no taint of favour and patronage on the one side, and no humiliating sense of dependence on the other. Here is the typical community, where the weaker turns naturally to the stronger, and the stronger shares his strength with the weaker.

Thirdly, while cultivating and strengthening the emotions, the family life makes it easy to turn these emotions into action. There are few things more injurious to character than the idle indulgence in emotions which result in action of no kind and remain an end in themselves. This empty sentimentalism is a real danger of the present day; it is a habit that grows upon a man, giving him all the consciousness of virtue, without the feeling of effort that alone makes virtue virtuous. William James has some remarks on this point that deserve quotation:--"Every time," he says, "a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge . . . One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be never to suffer one's self to have an emotion . . . Let the expression be the least thing in the world--speaking genially to one's aunty--if nothing more heroic offers, but let it not fail to take place." [Principles of Psychology, vol 1]

This is an important lesson. The child must be shown how to find in some sort of action an expression for each emotion, and be prevented from indulging in that idle sentimentalism so prevalent nowadays. In a family this is easy; there is always someone to whom the child can show kindness, some definite person who may be saved a pain or given a pleasure. The deadening effect of the sentiment of humanity is due to the difficulty found in breeding action out of so vague and impersonal a feeling.

These three characteristics--service from sympathy, service without sense of patronage, and service as the definite expression of each emotion--together, give the model that should distinguish all our relations with our fellow-creatures.

II. OUR RELATION TO OUR NEIGHBOURS.

The family forms the centre of the system of widening circles by which we are brought into contact with the rest of the world. However secluded and isolated the family may be, however strongly walled off from commerce with the multitudinous life outside, some commerce there must be. What the commerce shall be and with whom it shall be established, this the guardian of the child can determine. The relations will be of two kinds, the one with people of the same social standing, the other with members of a different class. The relation with the former presents little difficulties. If the family life is healthy and distinguished by the above-mentioned characteristics, the child's relation to his neighbour will be merely an expansion of the family tie. Valuing family life himself, and conscious that his whole happiness is centred there, it will not be hard to inspire him with the wish that others shall enjoy the same benefits. The parent will have little difficulty in showing the child how, by some self-sacrifice, he may give effect to this feeling. The only point that needs attention is to insure that any such service shall be free from patronage. This, among equals, is not a task of any great difficulty. The relation to those in a different class of life is much more difficult to establish. This does not occur naturally, and where some tie is created, it is often of an undesirable kind.

I shall here consider the relations of what are usually called the upper to the lower classes. All admit the desirability of such relations, and all lament the present unsatisfactory condition. The great blot and the great danger of modern civilisation is this complete segregation of classes. One class stands in ignorance of the manner of life and the needs of the other. The personal element, the personal tie, and the personal knowledge are absent; in consequence, all effective sympathy is rendered impossible. London stands as the most prominent example of such segregation. To most of us, London means little more than the uninhabited region of the City and a comparatively small fragment of the sparsely populated West End. What associations, what memories, and what ideas are connected with Stepney or Camberwell, each possessing a quarter of a million inhabitants? These people are no more to us than the tea gatherer in Ceylon. What is true of London is true of other towns; everywhere there is prominent this character separation of class from class. The evils are obvious. In spite of a democratic constitution one class governs the other; and government enlightened by ignorance is only one step better than no government at all. If the lower classes remain quiet, all is supposed to be well and nothing is done; if they agitate, then the wrong course is almost sure to be followed. Until one class understands and sympathises with the other, there is little hope of real progress. The passive relations now existing must be made active. If we wish for success, we must endeavour to make these relations active among our children. As we grow older and our characters formed, it becomes more and more difficult to establish active new relations. They won't connect. Some trivial matter renders the whole relation unsatisfactory. For example, the fact that a person eats off the end of his knife or manifests a certain hesitancy in the distribution of his aspirates [dropped consonants] is probably an impassable barrier to any true friendship. Children fortunately are free from such prejudices, and relations impossible for an adult are possible for them. The relations desired are of course relations marked by the three characteristics of the family--service from sympathy, service without patronage, and service as the expression of each emotion.

How can this relation be established? I do not think there is any serious obstacle in the way. When your Secretary asked me to read a paper at this Conference, she kindly sent me a number of leaflets relating to the Society. I read them with great interest and was particularly struck by the admirable methods employed to render the child familiar with the ways of Nature. Provision was made for teaching the child Natural History and country excursions arranged to give reality and life to these lessons. Then I began to wonder whether there was any similar provision for teaching the children what I call Human History. I do not mean the history of the Past, but the history of the various classes of people living around. The lessons of Natural History and Human History run parallel. There will be lessons on the condition and manner of life of the labouring classes. Then to give reality to the lessons there will be, in place of an excursion into the country, an excursion to, let us say, Walworth or Bethnal Green. The children will then walk through the meaner streets, they will watch the boys and girls as they come from school, and see them playing in their hundreds in the roads, they will examine the coster barrows [market stalls] and have pointed out to them the block dwellings and cottages in which the people live. I fancy this will be quite as interesting and instructive as a visit to the country. The first effect produced will be that of confusion and bewilderment. The strangely new manner of existence, the countless sea of life and its many needs will not fail to excite sympathetic emotion. But the very numbers concerned will serve to check action by throwing into prominence the helplessness of the individual. In other words such an excursion will encourage that least desirable kind of feeling, which issues in no form of action. The children will probably have stamped on their minds the misery of such an existence, and at the same time their own impotence to cope with the evil. They will thus be left at once with an erroneous impression and a feeling of sympathy incapable of expression. In discussing relations in general, I tried to show that when the system of widening circles included a whole class, we could not embrace the whole circle, but must first put ourselves into active relations with one member and know him. This points to the remedy; the children must become intimately acquainted with a few individuals. There are many safe ways of securing this result. At the present time in a large number of the elementary schools, Happy Evenings are established for the children. Ladies and gentlemen come weekly and provide games and amusements for the children. Why should not our own children go and assist? After two or three visits, the child will be sure to make a few friends. On the next excursion he may visit them at their own homes and perhaps invite them to his own. Friendships will be easily made and can be continued in various ways. For example, the children may correspond; I can answer for the school children that they would delight to receive and answer letters. Or again, when in the country, flowers can be picked and sent to the town-child. No treasures will be valued more highly.

["Founded in 1889 by Ada Heather-Bigg, the goal of the Children's Happy Evenings Association was to provide a wide range of games and activities which working class children could do after school hours." from The British Library's Untold lives blog]

Another method by which individual friendships can be made will be to use the Country Holiday Fund. Each year a large number of London children are boarded out in the country villages within a radius of about a hundred miles from London. While in the country they sadly need friends and welcome the companionship of children living in the neighbourhood.

These are a few examples of how intimate relations can be established between the different classes. Without these relations, I do not see how one class can come to understand the other. I do not believe that any harm can result from such acquaintances. I know the children attending the schools very intimately and I am certain that, so far as the greater number are concerned, nothing but benefit will spring from friendship with them. Moreover, the school teacher will always be able to vouch for the character of any particular child.

No doubt as years go on it will be often impossible to continue these friendships. But the desired result will have been attained. The relation of the upper to the lower class will be transformed, will be active instead of passive, because sanctified by the memory of childish friendships. As regards the nature of the relation it will in most cases resemble the family relation. It will be free from thought of reward or sense of patronage, and instead of a vague sentimental sympathy with the needs of an innumerable class, there will be the stimulating effect of affection felt for some definite individual. It will serve as a pattern to the relations that should exist when we are grown men, personal service and sympathy taking the place of a subscription to a charity or a few pennies thrown to a beggar.

III. OUR RELATION TO OUR COUNTRY AND HUMANITY.

Our circle of relations has widened; it has passed beyond the family and includes our neighbours, both those in our own class and those in other classes. Of the wider circles, I have time to say but a few words. There remains our relation to our country and to humanity. From childish friendships, from childish games, and from childish memories is derived our love of native place. From love of native place to love of country the passage is short, though not so easy now as it was formerly. In days of old, when a country was fighting for its very existence against external enemies, this relation, so essential to the country's life, formed itself. Men saw that it was only by the union of the manifold native places that each native place retained its independence. At the present day when we are faced by no such life and death struggle, the spirit of patriotism is dying out. This spirit is as the breath of life to a nation, and its extinction cannot be viewed with bland indifference. Fortunately our country has a history, and in its pages the child can fight over again the great battles, whether against foes without or foes within, their forefathers fought before them. History must be taught from what may be called the patriotic point of view. The child must be taught to be proud of his country, proud of the literature it has produced, proud of the glorious deeds and patient endurance for ever engraven upon its records, and proud of the benefits it has conferred on humanity. He must learn that the future rests upon the present, and that the present is his to make or mar; that the present stands upon a past, the slow creation of men who have been willing to give their lives, without thought of reward, and often, too, without hope of success, merely because their country asked this sacrifice of them. Without love of country there can be no effective love of humanity. The gap between the family and the world of human beings is too wide for active relations to reach across. Our country is the field in which we work for humanity. "Our country," says Mazzini, "is our home that God has given us, placing therein a numerous family that loves us and whom we love; a family with whom we sympathize more readily, and whom we understand more quickly than we do others, and which, from its bring centred round a given spot, and from the homogeneous nature of its elements, is adapted to a special branch of activity."

Our relations have widened, but even yet our Ceylon tea gatherer is left forlorn without and must be reached. As an individual it is improbably that we can ever enter into active relations with him; even if we did so, from failing to comprehend his feelings and his needs, we should probably use him wrongly. Yet a relation there is, a relation clear, distinct, and capable only of benefit, the relation between country and country. We are conscious of the priceless treasure a country is to us; it should be our endeavour to assist other countries to win that same treasure. When Europe freed Greece from the tyranny of the Turk, conferring on them their independence, this was a striking example of an active relation between country and country. If a child loves his country, he will wish that others also shall have a country to love. As he grows older, his opinion becomes part of the opinion of his land and so takes active form. In speaking of country and humanity, I have been following closely the teaching of the great Italian patriot, [Giuseppi/Joseph] Mazzini, who more than any other man has explained clearly and eloquently these relations. I venture to quote him once again. "Humanity, he says, "is a vast army advancing to the conquest of lands unknown, against enemies both powerful and astute. The peoples are the different corps, the divisions of that army. Each of them has its post assigned to it, and its special operation to execute; and the common victory depends upon the exactitude with which those distinct operations shall be fulfilled. Disturb not the order of the battle. Forsake not the banner given to you of God . . . Your country is the sign of the mission God has given you to fulfil towards humanity." [Essay on the Duties of Man]

Here then we have the broad outline of our relations towards our fellow-creatures. The progress from the narrower to the wider circles follows everywhere the same course. It is only by learning to love the members of our family, or a few individuals, that we can have love to spare for our neighbours; it is only from sympathy with our neighbours that the spirit of patriotism can be created, and it is only through this love of country that we can rise to active relations with humanity.

I began my lecture with a fairy tale. Let me return to it. It was in truth no fairy tale, there was no fairy prince, there was no mountain of ice, and there was no stolen heart. It was the tale of a child brought up in a family indifferent to her existence, and careless of her sorrows and her pains. Her heart remained cold and the world a grey and barren wilderness. Then came the prince; he was but an ordinary common-place mortal, but he touched her heart and warmed it into life. This love of him, this love of a single individual transformed the world, peopling it with new and wonderful beings, her heart's children, and made of it a paradise.

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LORD ABERDEEN, in moving a vote of thank to Mr. Bray. said that he had been surprised to hear that the lecturer considered our patriotism was not in a thriving condition. There seemed to be a great deal of patriotism in the air. But as the lecturer went on, he reminded them that true and deep patriotism was not of the sort that limits patriotism to one country. Appreciation and pride of one's own country induces sympathy with others who also feel that love of country. True love of country is an expansive quality, just as in a home the woman who has a happy home (generally because of her own influence) will not be content to enjoy that home only, but will wish to share her happiness with others who are less fortunate.

MRS. CHAPLIN asked if taking children into the poorer parts of London would not expose them to infection illnesses.

MR. BRAY thought there would not be much danger of this in the open streets, and reminded her that special registers were kept showing in what parts of London there were cases of infectious illnesses.

LADY CAMPBELL: The same mothers who would refuse to take their children through the London streets on the score of risk of infection would be quite willing to send their boys to a preparatory school where they were liable to almost every kind of infection. One must allow the smaller issues to slide. The risk of infection can be greatly minimised by simple precautions, and we ought to consider the equally great risk to character in neglecting this opportunity. I should like to ask Mrs. Franklin to explain the attitude of the P.N.E.U. towards intercourses with poor and sick children.

MRS. FRANKLIN: I have forgotten for the moment the address of the lady which was given in "Aunt Mai's Budget" in this connection, but Mrs. Steinthal, who is present, would, I am sure, be glad to give the name of the Secretary of the Guild [Miss Edith Wyvill, Denton, Ben Rhydding, Yorks.] which encourages children to correspond with and make friends with children in the lower classes. I agree with Lady Campbell that the risk of infection meets us everywhere. The baby in the perambulator who never goes anywhere but into the gardens may be the first to bring measles into the home. It seems to me that there may be other difficulties, such as our not wishing to fill up our children's time by undertaking anything new. Parents should not try to do everything in one year or one term, but let each relationship be taken up as occasion offers. At the same time we should seize with delight any opportunity of enabling our children to come into closer contact with those of other classes.

MRS. SIEVEKING: If children are able to make friends with those of other classes, it seems to me that it should be easy to continue the friendship when they are grown up. If they make personal friendships as children, I do not see that there need be any break in after life. The idea of taking children up to the poorer parts of London is admirable, things are just ready for it. The whole question is ripe for settlement, if only parents will give their attention to it.

MRS. MORRIS: I have always found it a good plan to ask children to come and stay with my own children in the country, and in this way to make them feel that there is no difference between themselves and children of another class. Then it should be possible to continue a friendship through life. Would it not be well to follow out some of the ideals of the G.F.S. [Girls Friendly Society], where they welcome all classes as members and associates, and all meet at the same sewing-classes, etc.?

MRS. HAYTER thought the children of the higher class were much more ready to form such friendships than the children of the lower. We are very often misunderstood in our efforts in this direction. The Bishop of Rochester's scheme is an excellent one, and also that of the United Girls' Schools Mission, where each girl has a poor child allotted to her as friend, with whom she corresponds from time to time.

LORD ABERDEEN, in summing up the discussion, gave a personal reminiscence of his childhood. When at the age of about eight years old he lived in Regent's Park, and made friends with the cowkeeper's children. His governess disapproved of this, but, his mother offering no opposition, the friendship was allowed to continue, and he was sure with no evil results to himself, and he hoped with none to the other children.

At 3 p.m., the Local Secretaries' Meeting was held.

Typed by happi, Aug 2020