another room, all the better; and in waiting upon him, she should try to stand between him and the window through which air is coming in. Of course, she will endeavour to avoid catching the patient's breath, and whilst coming into close quarters with him, she should try not to swallow. After every personal attention, she should gargle in another room with some disinfectant, and thoroughly wash her hands and nails with carbolic soap. Many people who neglect these precautions get a sore throat whilst nursing the fever, and though a nurse need not unnecessarily alarm herself should she feel such symptoms, she should never neglect to mention the fact to the doctor. the period of quarantine will not be so long as for scarlet fever. It is a bad plan to put two children suffering from an infectious complaint to sleep together, the effect of which is a constant mutual poisoning. Let each patient have his own bed, and till the fever has subsided at least, keep the children separate. In whooping-cough there is the same difficulty as with measles, for there is danger of infection before the cough has assumed the peculiar sound from which it derives its name. As soon as the nature of the complaint is thus announced, the child should be isolated; but beyond being separated from his playfellows, the only precautions Speaking of the doctor, suggests one very needed are to supply him with a basin half filled important consideration. I have already alluded with Condy's fluid, and to fully disinfect his to the fact that many people will trust to home-handkerchiefs before sending to the wash; and if doctoring in slight cases of fever; and unfortu- there is sudden sickness, to disinfect any article nately, it has become very much the fashion to accidentally soiled. denominate such attacks scarlatina, as distinguished from scarlet fever; whilst, as a fact, the names are as identical as the diseases, scarlatina being simply the technical name for scarlet fever; and moreover, the after-effects, as well as the power of spreading infection, may be quite as grave in slight cases as in more apparently serious attacks. Again, many mothers have not the slightest hesitation in undertaking the care of what they are pleased to term 'only measles; and I have known children to be in actual danger before there has been the shadow of alarm on the part of the home-doctor. It is a pity such people cannot study the death-rates amongst children, and see how many victims are annually sacrificed to the folly and ignorance which stamps this particular complaint as 'so simple;' for though, of course, some children who have been properly cared for all through, sink, from special causes, as a rule the reverse is the truth; and the danger lies not so much in the disease itself-which really is of a mild character-as in those complications which are liable to occur from the commencement of the attack until some time after the patient appears to have quite recovered, and which need a practised eye to discover and arrest in the very beginning. There is also this important consideration to be borne in mind-that it is by no means always easy to decide on the nature of a given complaint; for though in books the symptoms are duly arranged within decided limits, in actual experience those limits are often entirely disregarded, so that the doctor even may not be able to immediately pronounce an opinion, even where the mother is perfectly sure to her own thinkingof the nature of the disease; and this accounts for the fact that in medical practice it is by no means uncommon to discover that there has been scarlet fever of a previous date, by the presence of organic disease, the patient being very likely ignorant of anything more serious that an attack of measles, treated with the proverbial saffrontea. One great difficulty in the way of checking the spread of measles is, that it is infectious during the early stage, when there is no rash, and the child appears to have only an ordinary cold; but it cannot hurt to try isolation, and the same rules for disinfecting should be observed, though Children often suffer more from terror than from the actual cough. 'Are I doing to shake?' was the pitiful cry of my last little patient, and in such cases, it is a great comfort to the sufferer to let him rest across your arm, thrown round his waist, during a paroxysm; and if ever 'spoiling' is allowable, it is when every little excitement brings on the dreaded cough. In all but the mildest cases, which are so slight as to need no medicine, I would urge the calling in of prompt medical advice, for, with delicate children, there is more or less liability to inflammation of the air-passages, and the remedial measures to be used are only fit for skilled hands. Never give a child any of the various preparations sold as specifics for whooping-cough; they mostly contain injurious drugs, and a child requiring medicine needs also watching and care beyond an amateur's. This is a specially needed caution, for many people are under the impression that the cure for whooping-cough is being out of doors, and though fresh air-especially change of airis most desirable in convalescence, in the earlier stages, anything of the nature of damp or keen wind is enough to dip the scale on the side of bronchitis or inflammation of the lungs. Diphtheria is a very difficult disease to manage, because, whilst highly infectious, it is almost impossible, in bad cases, to disinfect thoroughly as you go on. Scarlet fever precautions must be rigidly carried out, and the room will probably need special disinfecting according to the doctor's orders-both during and after an attack. When the patient becomes too weak to sit up, he must be kept plentifully supplied with soft rags, which, after once using, should be thrown into strong disinfectant before being burned. Smallpox is still, unhappily, in our midst, and though in the old days it used to be dreaded, alike for its innate horror and its almost unlimited power of spreading, it is now, I think, more easily managed than scarlet fever or diphtheria, because of the antidote always ready to hand. The great thing is to isolate or remove the patient at once, and to see that all members of the household needing it are re-vaccinated. I have known this plan succeed so well, that in a family of twelve children, the first patient has remained the last, in spite, too, of his having come into contact with several of the unaffected, all of whom however, had been primarily vaccinated. One shudders to think of the terrible results that one such case would have produced, not so very many years ago; and those who refuse to let their children be vaccinated, not only lay themselves open to danger, but expose their innocent victims to the chance of suffering, which needs to be seen or felt to be rightly estimated. I venture to say that no parent with any sort of kindly feeling would neglect this simple safeguard, if he had experienced only the torture of that peculiar, indescribable back-ache, which is frequently but the earnest of worse things to come for the smallpox patient. COLONIAL TRAINING FOR GENTLEMEN'S SONS. RAPID as has been our advance in almost every kind of social progress during the last forty or fifty years, it is probable that no greater strides have been made in any department than in that which includes education. Yet how enormous is the opening for further progress in this direction! Probably one-half of all our social troubles is due to the present lamentable neglect of the great question of education-using the word in that wider sense which includes not 'schooling' merely, but all sorts of general and technical training intended to fit men and women for their special stations in life. If we look around us, we may see-in spite of much distress and many complaints as to the keenness of competition and scarcity of employment-a considerable demand for really first-class workmen and workwomen in not a few branches of industry. There is, both in this country and in our colonies, an almost unlimited demand for well-trained domestic servants and competent cooks; yet, in spite of this unsupplied demand, may be seen in every direction in the slums and back-streets of London and other large towns, in the cottages of the poor in country villages, in our jails and workhouses, all alike-numbers of growing girls and slovenly women, who, had they been taken in hand in time, might have been trained with ease to fill efficiently these vacant posts, instead of being allowed to lead lives which are often nearly useless, and too often, lives of want and misery, if not of crime. Then, again, there is not one of our colonies that does not stand in the most grievous need of that which is the life and soul of all countries—namely, population; yet, again, we have in England thousands upon thousands of loafers and ne'er-do-wells-let alone our paupers! -many of whom are frequently in the direst want, and nearly all of whom are now so irretrievably set in the ruts of their wretched lives as to be utterly unable to profit by emigration, even if unlimited funds were forthcoming to send them out to the colonies. It is impossible to deny that, had these received proper attention when young, very much could have been done, with comparative ease, and great benefit and economy to all concerned, towards converting them into exactly the kind of men our colonies so sorely want to till their millions of acres of vacant, though fertile, land. In short, greater care is needed in nearly every branch of industry, especially to train the young to perform efficiently those particular duties in life for which they are destined. The 'raw material'-so to speakwe have in abundance, and it would actually cost less in the long-run to convert it into manufactured goods of the kind required, than to allow it to run to waste, as is now so largely done. The subject of 'technical education' for mechanics and others of a like class has been deservedly receiving much attention of late; but this short-sighted nation still requires to be made to see more clearly that technical education, of one sort or another, is required in nearly every vocation in life-as much for the son of a country squire, destined some day to become a member of parliament, as for the ragged and destitute children, many of whom might, with the greatest advantage to all concerned, be trained ing colonists. to become respectable domestic servants or thriv The whole subject is a very large one, and it is not intended in the present place to do more than treat briefly of one of its minor, though still important, branches-that of a colonial training for the sons of gentlemen and others of high birth and good education. Whether or not emigration is, on the whole, a desirable thing for the sons of clergymen, doctors, and the like, is a point which will not be discussed herein; it is enough to accept the fact that many such go out for better or for worse too often, it must be admitted, for the latter, though this is in most, if not all, cases clearly due to a total want of preparation for the life of a colonist. A recent writer, who must at least be credited with a good knowledge of his subject, says: 'From long experience, I should say that not over ten per cent. of the people above the rank of a labouring man who go to America succeed there, though the reason of this is not hard to find.' This reason, he goes on to explain, is, that the greater number go without the slightest idea as to what they are going to do, or how they are going to do it; nor have they, in many instances, either capital or practical knowledge enough to command success.' It is the object of the present paper to point out how the one great cause of this too frequent failure may be best avoided. The training usually undergone by young men of the middle and upper classes is of such an absurdly ridiculous kind, if intended to fit the object of it for the life of an emigrant, that one could hardly do otherwise than laugh at the whole matter, were it not clearly a case for serious commiseration. Let us select, for the sake of example, a case which is fairly typical of numberless others. We will imagine some country clergyman with perhaps a large family and an income of, say, three hundred pounds per annum-sufficient at anyrate to enable him to live respectably in his comfortable rectory, but not sufficient to enable him to give all his sons a thorough training in any particular trade or profession. Under these circumstances, one at least will probably be destined for a colonial life. The father of course sees the necessity of giving all his sons a good schooling, to commence with. The one whose fortunes we are following is accordingly sent to an establish ment where he obtains the usual amount of book-learning, which will include a more or less thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek, as well as a fair acquaintance with arithmetic, geography, science, modern languages, and with that wearisome catalogue of the misdeeds of the great potentates of past ages, commonly called history. The youth leads a fairly easy genteel life; his vacations are spent in visiting school-fellows, in picnics, boating-parties, cricket-matches, and similar recreations. In time, perhaps, he is promoted to one of the larger public schools, where he will probably make many friends and pick up a good deal of polish, but will learn little or nothing that will be of use to him in his after-life in the colonies. Yet, when this young man leaves school at the age of seventeen or eighteen, his father too often fondly imagines that he has done all that was required to fit his son for a colonial life. Had the son been destined, as some of his brothers probably are, either for the church, the army, the bar, the navy, or the medical profession, the preliminary training he has already undergone would have fitted him fairly well for the further training he would have to undergo; but, as he is destined for the colonies, it may be truly said that not only has he not received a training fitting him for his future life, but he has positively received a kind of training likely to unfit him for it. grant's feeling of mental distress at finding himself, when fresh from a comfortable home, compelled to undergo-very likely among rough and ignorant strangers-things which his previous bringing-up has rendered distasteful to himat first, at anyrate-to work in the open fields from dark to dark, to eat the coarsest of coarsely prepared food, and to lodge in a wretched shanty, if not for a time in the open air; for, even supposing that the emigrant is a determined young fellow, well supplied with the pluck and energy of youth, that he struggles against, and in time overcomes his difficulties, still his lamentable want of experience is but partially removed. The success of his whole life as a colonist is still imperilled. He knows little or nothing of agricultural matters, has probably never handled a plough or milked a cow, does not know how to swing an axe, to put up a fence, or build the roughest of log-shanties; perhaps hardly even knows how to harness a horse. Yet, if he is ever to get on, he must know all these things; and if the luckless youngster endeavours to start farming on his own account before he has thoroughly learned them, he will probably pay for the necessary experience a very large part, if not the whole, of his very limited capital. His knowledge of Latin and Greek, his acquaintance with algebra and history, will not in any way assist him to acquire the experience he must have. The poorest and worst-educated farmlabourer, however newly arrived, occupies for the time a more desirable position in life than a freshly arrived gentleman's son of the class indicated. The manual labour, the rough life, and the coarse food are only what the former is accustomed to; while every settler would sooner employ him than the gentleman's son, because he has a practical acquaintance with his trade. Such a picture as that now sketched is not a pleasant one to contemplate; yet it cannot be denied that thousands of well-bred young Englishmen, on first emigrating, have experienced hardships and vexations quite as great as those described; and it is certain that the parents of most of these must be accused of culpable ignorance or negligence in sending out their sons under such conditions. Of those who have succumbed under the hardships, and have drifted into the large towns, only to become whisky-drinkers and gamblers, but little need be said, though they are not a few. The writer has already stated that it is not his intention to discuss the abstract desirability of emigration for gentlemen's sons; but he cannot resist saying that, if the emigration is to be carried on under such conditions as those described, it had far better not be carried on at all. This, however, leads directly to the ques tion: Can nothing be done to alter this state of things?' When this elegantly dressed, finely polished, book-learned young man finds himself in due course in one or other of the colonies, he at once takes up his abode at some good club or hotel in one of the principal towns, calls on old acquaintances, presents his letters of introduction -if he have any-and professes himself to be on the lookout for employment. The idea of leaving the town, of going out into the country districts, and of taking service with some plodding settler, living in a rough farmhouse, and doing most of the work of the farm with his own hands, is, naturally enough, quite foreign and repulsive to his whole nature. He has probably never done a stroke of really hard manual labour in all his life—has, in fact, never been brought up to do anything of the kind. Yet, practically speaking, almost the only kind of employment the colonies can offer to new-comers is directly manual, and is usually connected with agriculture; and when the small stock of money which the emigrant brought out is exhausted, he will be compelled by necessity to take to this kind of work. If in Australia, he probably gocs up into the bush or the back-country and helps to herd cattle; if in New Zealand, he may go to sheep-tending; if in the Canadian north-west, he may drift-as many have already done-into the ranks of the mounted police, or he may turn-to and work for his board for some settler living in a rude and comfortless shanty on the prairie. When this period arrives, the hardships, more or less inseparable at first from a settler's The only answer obviously is that, by rational life in a new country, come upon the 'green-means, very much could undoubtedly be done to horn' with ten times the severity they need have remedy it. These means would consist for the done, had only his well-intentioned though mis- most part in the adoption of a special course of taken parent done what all those who have any practical instruction for those destined for a acquaintance with the subject must regard as colonial career. If this be not done, the greater the only rational thing to do under the circum- part of the blame for the too frequent non-success stances-namely, to train his son with the special of well-educated young men in the colonies must view of fitting him to the life for which he is be laid at the door of the parents and others who are responsible for their training, rather than upon the young men themselves. destined. But the matter does not end with the emi Journal It is hardly to be expected that before the age of thirteen or fourteen years any boy should exhibit such marked characteristics as would enable a parent to decide whether or not his son was fitted for a colonist's life; but after passing that age, the question can usually be answered with fair accuracy. At this period of life, therefore, those youths who are destined for a colonial career should be taken from the ordinary schools, and sent to others at which they would undergo a course of instruction specially planned with a view to fit them for commencing life in the colonies at, say, the age of seventeen to nineteen. It is essential that the practical nature of such an education should be its main characteristic. Whilst ordinary school-work should be in no way neglected, the pupils should gradually be accustomed, as an integral part of their education, to perform real, outdoor, manual labour. A literary master-as distinguished from a practical master-should, therefore, be provided, exactly as in an ordinary school. Side by side with his arithmetic, languages, and the like, each pupil should be taught to handle the plough; to do rough carpentering and blacksmith's work of various kinds, including the building of bridges and houses, the shoeing of horses, and the repairing of carts, farm-implements, and machinery; to do simple cookery; to take charge of and manage horses and other live-stock; and generally, to perform with his own hands most of the ordinary operations of an English farm. In addition to the foregoing essentials, it is very desirable that the pupils should have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the theory of farming, of the principles of geology, and of the charge of engines and other machinery. There are, of course, other things which it would be advantageous for the pupil to know something of, such as the rudiments of book-keeping, landsurveying, dam-building, seamanship, and other matters mentioned in the rather alarmingly long list of necessary accomplishments given by Majorgeneral Feilding in his valuable paper, Whither shall I send my son?' (Nineteenth Century, July 1883). It may be thought by some that the list of requirements given above is unnecessarily long; but it should be remembered that, in young countries, the 'division of labour' is not nearly so complete as in older ones: every man is in no slight degree a 'jack-of-all-trades.' A part of each day should be devoted to each kind of instruction. At certain stated hours, one class should turn to outdoor work, another to school-work, while another might be learning how to cook. Early rising should certainly be enjoined by the rules of the establishment; and, amusing as the idea may seem at first, it would be well if, during the pleasanter portions of the year, the pupils were given some experience of camp-life. Clearly, if the object is to fit the pupils for a colonial life, the accommodation provided should be of a plain and inexpensive kind; and as the institution should be situated in the country, where rents and the expenses of living are low, and as the work done by the pupils whilst learning would to some extent benefit the institution, it is certain that the cost of such an education would be considerably less than that of ordinary schooling; while at the same time it would most effectually prepare the pupils for their future career, instead of actually unfitting them for it. It is quite unnecessary to enumerate other small details as to how the establishment should be conducted. Such a training as that described would undoubtedly have about it much that would amuse and fascinate youths of sixteen or seventeen years; and it may be very safely stated that lads who were too delicate to undergo such a course of training, or to whom such a life would be distasteful, would certainly fail in the colonies, and consequently, should never be sent there. Undoubtedly, the foregoing scheme of education could be most effectively carried out by the establishment of a 'Colonial Training College' on an extensive scale, with a regular staff of teachers, and a sufficiently large extent of farm-land attached. This would of course involve the expenditure of a considerable sum of money; but if done in a rational manner, there ought to be no question of the institution being a self-supporting and remunerative concern, while the benefits it would confer upon the pupils would be very great. Much good could, however, be accomplished by the adoption of far simpler means. There are many large farmers in the eastern counties and elsewhere who might profitably utilise one of the large and rambling, though comfortable old houses-now so often filled with the families of several labourers— belonging to their 'off-hand' farms, as a school, with a competent master-perhaps the clergyman of the parish-engaged to superintend the scholastic studies of, say, twenty or thirty pupils, and another teacher to direct their practical outdoor work. The pupils should, under proper supervision, be required to take part in the actual work of the farm; they would have the chance of becoming good shots-a matter of some importance in the colonies; and they would enjoy all the other advantages of English country life. The farmer, on the other hand, ought to be able, if he managed his undertaking skilfully, to profit, in these times of agricultural depression, both by the unpaid-for labour of his pupils and by the more direct proceeds of the establishment. The scheme thus roughly sketched out is well worth a trial. It is true that there are Agricultural Colleges of various kinds both in England and in the colonies; but very few, if any, of these exactly answer the requirements of the case. Those in this country are, very naturally, better fitted for training English farmers than colonial settlers; while youths sent to those in the colonies would have to undergo an unnecessarily early separation from home and friends, and would lose the great benefits derivable from the influence of English refinement and a sound English education. At the present time there are in England several institutions more or less nearly answering to the required description. The Agricultural School at Aspatria, near Carlisle, trains some of its pupils for the colonies on moderate terms. Accommodation for a limited number of pupils and excellent opportunities for properly training them are provided on the Eastwood Manor Estate, of seven hundred acres, near Bristol; but the terms are above the means of the class from which the majority of emigrants are drawn. An institution at Hollesley Bay, Suffolk, under the name of 'The Colonial College and Training Farms, Limited,' promises very closely to answer to the requirements of the case. It is to be regretted that the scheme for the establishment of a suitable college on an extensive tract of land which has been acquired in Dorsetshire for that express purpose, as foreshadowed in Major-general Feilding's article already alluded to, has not yet been carried out, though it has not been abandoned. The case of the ordinary English 'farm-pupil' has little or no bearing upon the matter in hand; while, of the system under which young men are placed out with settlers in the colonies to be taught farming, the best that can be said is that it usually leads to fraud. SHARP SAYINGS. IN Ireland, a sharp fellow is said to be as 'cute as the fox of Ballybotherem, which used to read the papers every morning to find out where the hounds were to meet. It was probably an Irishman who said: 'Man is like a potato-never sure when he will get into hot-water.' But Pat has rivals in many countries, some of whom could run him close in repartee and sharp sayings. It must have been some foreigner taking off our national reserve who described the meeting of two Englishmen on a steamer in mid-ocean. One asked: Going across?' 'Yes. Are you?' And there the conversation ended.-A gentleman at a foreign restaurant who had just been assisted to a bottle of wine, was thus addressed by the smiling proprietor of the establishment: 'Now, what do you think of my wine, eh? Genuine first-rate stuff, isn't it?''O yes; as far as that goes,' replied the other, smacking his lips; it fairly makes one's mouth water.' -An item from a German paper says: "The cashier of a Prussian bank has absconded with a considerable sum of money, and will, according to astronomical calculations, be seen again in four hundred and fifteen years.' Many a boarding-house patron gets into hotwater when he ladles out the soup, says one of the American papers, which generally contain some smart sayings on various topics. Another paper commenting on the assertion that the human figure is six times the length of the feet, remarks, that the Chicago people must be about twelve feet high. With much humour and satire, we are informed how a lamentable mistake was lately made by a girl in St Louis. She married a man under the impression that he was her father's coachman, and he turned out to be a Mexican nobleman. She pronounced him a fraud, and wants to get rid of him. 'Can dogs find their way home from a distance?' is a question frequently asked. It is according to the dog. If it is one you want to get rid of, he can find his way back from Africa. If it is a good one, he is apt to get lost if he goes round the corner. A great writer says: A man ought to carry a pencil and note down the thoughts of the moment.'-'Yes,' remarks a Yankee editor; and one short pencil devoted exclusively to that use would last some men we know about two thousand years, and then have the original point on.' Some men, says another writer, are ever ready to offer a remedy for everything. The other day we remarked to one of these amateur apothe caries: An idea struck us yesterday; and before we could finish he advised us: 'Rub the part affected with arnica.' The man who said, 'A landlady who boards her lodgers, like the rest of us, has her weak and strong points, the weak being her coffee, and her strong, the butter,' would probably be ungallant enough to agree with the following: 'The reason why a woman always adds a postscript to her letter is because she's bound to have the last word, if she has to write it herself.' Equally uncomplimentary was the man who, reading that a woman's voice can be heard for two miles by a man in a balloon, remarked that perhaps that was the reason so few men go up in a balloon. A wit says the times are so dull that it is difficult for him even to collect his ideas. Perhaps this is the man, said to be so lazy that he has worked but once, and that was when he was labouring under a mistake. Another wag says: To forget a wrong is the best revenge, particularly if the other fellow is bigger than you.'-'I do not say that that man will steal," said a witness on a trial; but if I was a chicken, I'd roost high when he was around.' A humorist says: If you think no one cares for you in this cold world, just tell your__neighbours that you propose to keep hens. You will be surprised to see what an immediate interest they will manifest in you.' A philosopher declares that no thoroughly occupied man was ever miserable; but that philosopher is reminded by another that he probably never spent a forenoon among his friends trying to borrow a five-shilling piece. 'The wisest of all sayings,' said a member in a club, 'is the old Greek maxim, "Know thy self."-"Yes,' remarked another; 'there's a deal of wisdom in it; "Know thyself," but never introduce a friend.' A country-woman made an amus ing remark to a thirsty tourist who had emptied several cups of milk and asked for more. Bringing him a large bowl filled with milk, she said: One would think, sir, you had never been weaned !'-A young married man gazing at two trunks in the hall belonging to his mother-inlaw, sadly observed: She has brought her clothes to a visit; would that she had brought her visit to a close.' As witty was the critic's com ment on hearing that a lawyer had composed a poem on 'My Conscience.' 'It ought to sell well,' said he; 'the public are fond of novelties.' Speaking of dancing, a clergyman hit the right nail on the head when he remarked 'that people usually do more harm with their tongues than with their toes.'-'What is the usual definition of conscience?' asked a man of his pastor. A man's rule for his neighbour's conduct is about the way it comes out practically,' was the apt reply.-'What a number of ladies there were at church this morning wearing sealskin cloaks!' exclaimed Smith's wife. 'I counted no less than twenty-seven.' 'Do you think that is the proper way to occupy one's mind while at church?' replied Smith. I didn't notice a single one.' 'One can scarcely be expected to notice such things, when one's asleep,' was the sharp retort. |
