1 Box Special top ch Eis Ver "My Boy came home from Military School with an Orderly Mind" was the pleased comment of a father. WHEN we first talked over the possibility of his for en son rollment in a military school he had a remarked: "He is a good boy, but big, overgrown and playful as a puppy, and doesn't know what to do with himself. Doesn't know his own mind." Later he said: "He came home well set-up, careful of his clothes, punctual and in a very happy frame of mind. We marveled at the change this short time had made in our boy. It had been hard discipline for him, but we felt sure that he knew in his own mind he had won something worth while." Tuition Age of boy A Mental Hygiene School The Rocky Mountain Ranch School specializing in the care and treatment of a very limited number of pre-adolescent children with psychopathic tendencies in accordance with the most modern theories of mental hygiene. Located in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, 6000 feet above sea level, where it enjoys a perfect climate with unlimited opportunities for physical improvement in conjunction with mental and educational development. The school has no accommodations for feebleminded children. It seeks only the patronage of children afflicted with nervousness, abnormal habits, fears, depression, and other personality defects not due to physical causes. For booklet and further information write WALTER C. LANGER, S.B., A.M., (Harvard) Director, Silver City, New Mexico. Recommends teachers to colleges, public and private schools in all parts of the country. Advises parents about schools. The Fisk Teachers' Agencies spay stand সম Name Address ....... 120 Boylston St. BOSTON 225 Fifth Ave., N.Y.; 402 Dillaye Bldg., Syracuse; Philadelphia. Pittsburgh; Kansas City; Birmingham; Portland; Los Angeles; EVERETT Ó. FISK & Co. 8-28 THE ATLANTIC READERS Five Volumes-For Grades IV-VIII LITTLE, BROWN & CO. 34 Beacon st., Boston stand 1 August 3, 1779. - Here we are in The State Council of Massachusetts Before we left Europe they explained to us that it was good usage here to commence the day by drinking a glass of wine and eating a few cakes; and that toward ten o'clock one took coffee or tea with fruits and a few cold meats. Also, if one made or received visits, that wine was again brought and one drank a few healths while waiting for dinner; that this dinner lasted two hours; that about five or six o'clock one drank tea, punch, or other refreshment, and so got to supper, which ordinarily was rather frugal. Americans are sober, but they do VOL. 148 NO.2 A not easily permit foreigners who are living among them to exercise this virtue. However, this régime has not marvelously well succeeded for our health, and I have taken pains to exclude all intermediary repasts in order to relish lunch, dinner, and supper. The dinner does not too much resemble ours. It commences with a blessing, recited with unction by a priest or by the eldest of the family. All the courses, and even the dessert, are served together. The tablecloth falls on the knees of the guests and takes the place of napkins. To us the dishes appeared to be badly prepared, but that is a matter of taste; thus Americans are permitted to say the same of ours. With the first glass of wine one drinks the health of all the guests, without exception. If one has some affections more private for one of them, he invites him in the course of the repast to refill his glass and the two friends drink reciprocally their health. Ordinarily the women seat themselves next to each other. They retire at dessert, either of their own accord or on a sign from the master of the house. We have had trouble to accustom ourselves to this usage. Copyright 1928, by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. It is a part of the austere manner of these people, we are told, to believe that they should banish the ladies at the time when the men, animated by liquors or wine, might forget the respect which is due them. I should like it better if this austerity had led them by a shorter road to sobriety and the respect due women, and if at dessert one would not see the table thus deserted and transformed into a kind of divan, where they smoke or sometimes get intoxicated and where they use all the 'comforts' to a point which seemed to us quite strange. Thus the ladies leave, to our great regret, and the cloth is removed. Bottles, glasses, and fruit remain on the mahogany table and we proceed to drink healths, now political, now military, and to conceive jokes, sometimes rather obscene ones. August 9. I should have spoken of the customs of the Bostonians the first days following my arrival in Boston, as I was then more struck than I am today by the difference between their practices and ours. I still find it extraordinary that a woman leaves her hair its natural color and is content to arrange it with elegant simplicity, not disguising it at all with colored powders. An American lady to whom I remarked my surprise asked me if French ladies also powdered their eyebrows! Rouge is proscribed still more severely than powder, but I had not the least trouble to accustom myself to a usage so natural. I have not yet seen a beautiful woman, although I have seen several rather comely ones. There are no Parisian waists, so slim and so fine that they sometimes lose proportion with the rest of their bodies; but, if you will, their bodies are well developed and formed by nature, not by tailors. Religious persecution made the first new colonists flee from Europe to settle in New England; they have kept up to now - and above all, the Presbyterians - a violent hatred for the monarchy. This hatred took strength at the epoch of the Revolution. On the other hand several prominent people regard religion today as a political instrument and most of the ministers have been ardent promoters of the Revolution. The people of each parish decide annually upon a sum for their minister's living, and those whose public or private conduct is little fit are badly treated in the grant. The only authorized churches are those of the Presbyterians or Congregationalists, the Anglicans, the Quakers, and the Anabaptists. At the time of the early colonization of Massachusetts, reason, good sense, and natural right took the place of laws for the colonists. One had been able to compare the colony in its infancy to a numerous family governed by the authority of a wise and severe father. A man called Plistore stole four bushels of wheat from the Indians. He was condemned to restore them double the amount, was fined one hundred and fifty Tours livres, and condemned to call himself in the future 'Josiah Plistore' without being able to add the word 'master' to his name. A drunkard was condemned to some work useful to society. They put a workman in irons who demanded a much too large wage, and he paid a fine besides; simply a suspicion of calumny or idleness was punished with the whip and prison. They were content to admonish a girl who had been light in her conduct, but double adultery, proved, was often punished by the death of the two culprits. It must be admitted that nothing is rarer to-day than this latter offense. A husband is permitted to beat his wife by paying a fine of ten pounds; if The governor of the state is chief of treat the council in which rests the sovereign power, and he is the most eminent person in Massachusetts. We paid him a visit. Following our knock at his door, he came himself to open it and received us in a clean apartment, but of Lacedæmonian simplicity. The visit lended, he reaccompanied us to the andoor, his candle in hand, and as it was late I judge he put the key in his pocket and went to bed. fathe le d ed PE In a few states the chief justice, who is is always a very important man, reHerceives a very modest salary, and if he has no horses he must make on foot all his circuits, which are eighty to one hundred leagues. Thus he goes from town to town, carrying justice to the citizens. We often met senators, representaErtives, and respected magistrates returning from the market carrying herbs or a fish. They called my attention to the same thing in Venice, but there was this remarkable difference, that the Venetian senator hides with care ab under his robes the merchandise which he has bought and none would be able to guess it if some longer roots or more active fish did not betray him. But the Bostonian goes along with head high and blushes no more to carry his provisions than a European does to carry a book or a print he has just bought; their habits are too simple to make a mystery of such a natural thing. 1 These Americans who open the door themselves, who go on foot to judge their citizens, who do their own marketing, are the ones who have brought about the present Revolution and who will, if it is necessary, shoulder a musket and march on the enemy. And, between us, I do not know if people who have suisses, stewards, officers and berlines with springs would have likewise resisted despotism. We were surprised to see regularly every Friday that the tables were covered with fish, and above all salted fish; we were edified to find among the Presbyterians a practice which I believed particular to Catholics. We have learned since that this custom has nothing religious in it, and that the inhabitants of North America, whose principal wealth consists in fishing, adopted it from a purely commercial point of view to favor their fisheries. August 24. We have been to see the college at Cambridge, which is three leagues from Boston. It is situated in the midst of a plain cut off by a river bearing the same name. The college itself is composed of five buildings solidly constructed. The greatest part of the funds were given by rich American individuals. They say that England, interested in keeping the colonies in ignorance, did not view this establishment without apprehension, but it would have been too revolting to stop its progress; she contented herself by not contributing. The chairs are occupied by learned men and the plan of study appeared to us well conceived. They estimate the revenues of the college at sixty thousand Tours livres. The war has of necessity considerably diminished the number of hundred and twenty. scholars, and there are now only one We were received into the library of the museum by all of the professors, |