and all hated to see their daughters running here and there without an elder eye upon them-"but if I suggest going with her to a dance or show, she tells me that it makes her queer and conspicuous, and will kill her with the bunch." All wanted their daughters to "have friends" and to "be happy," ending with the pathetic query: "That's only natural, isn't it?"

I submit these phrases, common to all, as a complete exculpation of the modern girl. Every one of the scores of letters I received was virtually an abdication of maternal authority, and an evasion of maternal responsibility! Not in a single one was there a note of conscientious, courageous motherhood; only whimpers, futile hand-wringing and helpless bewilderment. The only comfort lay in the fact that not one gave a real name or address, an anonymity that showed a certain shame for her own cowardice.

The three phrases that stood out most prominently were these: "It's so hard to keep saying 'No' all the time"; "After all, a girl is young only once"; and "I want my daughter to be happy." Every mother wrote to me out of a very real anxiety, and yet all stressed these hackneyed excuses as though they contained a definite justification for their failures. Not one apparently realized that the seeming extenuations were actually indictments.

"She's only young once." There's the stark tragedy of it! Just a few short years in which to teach her truth, taste, delicacy, duty, respect, judgment, industry, responsibility, standards of perfection, self-discipline. Just a few short years in which to mold the character in such strength that it can and will

Why? What is the reason for tragic confusion that has come u us? Is it that modern women indifferent and lazy, putting t own pleasures before the drudg responsibilities of motherhood? is it that they have been mud by all this modern claptrap ab youth, and the importance of all ing children to "find themselv to "express themselves" until th mothers truly and honestly beli that the girl of to-day is differ from the girl of yesterday, and not be brought up as we were brou up by our mothers.

Where is there a normal mo who doesn't want her daughter be happy? But to assure that sired end, must all powers of deci be turned over to the child? parental control to be surrend entirely, and every adolescent stituted sole judge of what makes happiness? I think I may say I no lack of interest in my daugh joyousness, but certainly it n enters my head to give her liberty of choice and action, let her dash off in blind pursuit of e whim and wish that possesses her f day to day, and even hour to h Coming right down to the h

of the matter, where is there any problem in providing happiness for a growing child? Health is the base of it, and what surer road to health than early hours, plenty of sleep and freedom from unwholesome excitement? A little time, a little thought, a little intelligence, and every waking hour of a youngster can be filled with so much of joy, color and interest that there is no possible room for the disappointments that come from being denied the hurtful and unwise. Who will say that such normal children, made to flower naturally, do not have firmer foundations for happiness than those who have been cheated out of childhood, and are restless and nervous, bored and blasé at eighteen? I have seen many girls whose mothers gave them their heads at thirteen because they "wanted them to be happy," and I do not know of any sadder sight.

Of course I want my girl to have friends and to be popular. But does that mean any kind of a friend, no matter how bad her example, how vicious her influence? If a girl of thirteen has to rouge, smoke, drink and "pet" in order not to be "set apart" and "cut off from the crowd," what greater proof is needed that it's the wrong sort of crowd? If her If her popularity depends on running the streets of an afternoon, thinking sex when she ought to be thinking school, or huddling in parked cars, then it's a popularity that no mother should wish her girl to have. If manners and modesty, and the innocence that is in keeping with tender years, are things that make a child "queer" and "conspicuous," why not want her to be queer and conspicuous!

What if such an attitude does make "bad times" between a mother and her daughter now and then? Isn't it a thousand times better to have her cry her tears now-tears of a quickly forgotten disappointment than have her weep her heart out at some later day?

As for hating to say "No" all the time, what mother doesn't? But why should it be necessary? If a child has been reared in the understanding that there are certain things she can not do, and taught the futility of begging, there is no chance for noisy pleading and exhausting temper-fits. Every mother, even the laziest and silliest, knows that it is dangerous to let the baby play with matches, and as a consequence, children grow up in the knowledge that this prohibition is unbreakable. We do not hear thirteen-yearolds wheedling, whining and crying for permission to burn down the house. It does not even occur to them to ask, for they have been drilled into acceptance of the fact that it is forbidden.

Why then, is it not possible to lay down hard and fast rules with relation to other things that are equally dangerous? Speaking from my own experience, I can testify that it is possible. From the time that they were able to walk and talk, my children have had fixed bed hours, and were taught to realize that it was a rule that permitted no argument. When my daughter was thirteen, she was given an extension of time and now goes to bed at half past eight, one hour later than her eleven year old brother. I do not have to keep saying "No" to their pleas to be allowed to stay up a

little longer, because the rule is one that they have grown up with, that they have been compelled to observe until the habit of obedience is automatic.

Invitations to evening parties, therefore, cause me no trouble whatever. When any of my daughter's thirteen year old friends ask her to some affair that begins at eight and lasts until eleven, I am not compelled to say "No," because the rule says it for me. Doubtless she has her moment of secret rebellion in which she mutters to herself, "Just wait until I'm eighteen," but there is no crying, whining and sulking, or any large amount of disappointment, for never at any time did she expect she could go. She has to be in bed every night by half past eight, and she knows it!

So many of the anonymous mothers wrote of bitter anxieties: "School is out at half past three, but my daughter rarely gets home until six"; "I never know where my daughter is half the time"; "My daughter's absences worry me sick, but I don't want to embarrass her by telephoning to the homes of her friends." Would they be a prey to these fears if their daughters had been brought up under a rule that established the right of the mother to know where her children are every minute of the day; if it had been made a law of their young lives that under no circumstances could they go anywhere or do anything without the mother's knowledge and consent? Hard on the child? Not a bit of it. It is the mother that it is hard on, for to establish a rule calls for patience and unremitting drudgery.

But what of it? Children are a du a sacred obligation, and the par who regards them as a "luxury" guilty of a sin against youth. Sur if children were meant merely our pleasure, God would not ha created lap-dogs.

Doubtless many will accuse me being old-fashioned. Well, I am have no patience with this nonse about children "finding themselve and to such mothers as have b fooled by this gabble, I recomme a visit to any juvenile court. To-d when the whole country seems to in the grip of a species of sex-m ness, when on every hand there an apparent revulsion against normalities of life, and when decent reticences of the past h been thrown aside, more than e is there need to wrap protect arms about our children, hold them close, guarding them w until character is crystallized.

I am not a modern mother, do I want to be. They can e call me Victorian without arous the slightest irritation. I hold, j as my mother held, that mor manners, taste, decencies and du -all the things that enable hum beings to get the most out of lif are not natural instincts, but slow fruit of care and training; t it is criminally stupid to let a grow child dictate its actions and conduct; that adolescence, inst of abating the necessity of paren watchfulness, is a time when t watchfulness must be redoubl that motherhood is not a joy-r but a job, and that we must ans for our failures to our children a to the God of final judgment.