The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-14

mood with titled dancers and other
 yagaries.
 How will she provide for her sons
 and how, when they are of the age
 of personal responsibility, will they
 provide for themselves? They have, practical people say, not been given
 the sort of education that fits a child for future self-support.
 T do not care especially what my
 boys learn," their beautiful mother has often said, "beyond the mere rudiments."
 T will not have their talents trained to the abnormal point of genius. I want them to become sim pie country gentlemen. I should hate to see one of them become, for instance, Cabinet Minister.
 "A very important part of the edu- cation of my children is teaching them love of beauty. If they love the beautiful they seek to become beautiful. We think of what is about us and we become like what we think about, so it is most necessary to see only beautiful objects. Keep ing this in mind, am most careful about the selection of my children's toys. l never allow them to see any thing that Is maimed or distorted.
 q went shopping in London to buy my children toys. To my surprise and disgust, I found that the six or seven leading toys were all hideous distortions of human or animal bodies. You may be sure my chil- dren received none of these toys. never give them anything like your Billikens or Kewpies or Brownies. They have never had any dolls with huge abdomens and little legs and heads either too large or too small for their bodies, never in right pro- portion to them. Your Teddy bears are not bad, because they look like bears. Most animal toys are hideous travesties of the real"
 Also the Richardson boys are de- prived of the ordinary picture book that so stimulate the imagination of the average child.
 My children's picture books are copies of the sculptures and paint ings in the Louvre and Luxembourg and other galleries of art. They have never been allowed to see anything maimed. So clear a picture that I implanted in their minds of the human body that when my oldest son, Rory, saw picture of Venus de Milo. he said, I don't like it. The arms were missing, and he thought her imperfect. He gave the same criticism of the Winged Victory.
 T let them look at picture books only after I have gone carefully through them and scissored every picture that shows the human figure other than as perfect. Also I cut out every picture that shows killing. My boys have never seen the picture of Jack the Giant Killer, nor of the witch astride broomstick, nor such an absurdity as the COW jumping over the moon."
 Nor have the Richardson boys had their imagination stimulated by fairy stories. Alice in Wonderland is a forbidden delight to them.
 q read or tell them only such stories as deal with beautiful themes go back to mythology for them," said Lady Constance in unfolding her educational theory and practice. For instance, I tell them the story of Theseus and Andromache."
 Every morning of every day for nine months year Lady Constance has sent her children naked into the garden to play.
 T make my boys take exercise every morning for fifteen minutes in a perfectly nude state," she explains. "ln that way the air and sunshine directly reaches their vital organs. Generally I send them straight from their beds to the gardens. In the mid-Winter they take their morning exercise nude indoors, and after the bath. Ordinarily fifteen minutes of play in the nude is enough. A child's instinct for play is an unerring guide. They do not loiter at their play. In-