July 12.
A few weeks ago, an English azine "Time and Tide" offer-td prizes for the best essays by children on "Why children ace move sensible than grown-ups." remarkably candid opinions ye expressed by the young concerning the foolishness adults in general, One youth. lwod eleven gives as one of hiv reasons, that "Children have not teen living so long as grown wps and their minds have not teen able to get so muddled up. This is rather a severe indict: nent against our systems of higher education. A young lady (ten informs us that "children more sensible because they have time to think," Here is something to make us pause and consider, Edison once asserted that most people don't think, they only think that they thi Too many of us are in such hurry that we are only too pleased to lot other folks do our thinking for us and are quite ready to accept their verdicts. The result is that whole nations have been led astray by rut Jess propagandists. When hu-inanity realizes that it needs more time to think seriously ever its problems, most of them will disappear.
Another competitor aged nine writes, "Children are more sentible than grown-ups because frown-ups think to themselves aad say, We learned all we needed to learn when we were children, so we need not bother to practice now we are grown men and women'." Again many of us must plead guilty to this accusation, But here is some. thing that really "gets home Wis by a girl of 15.
"A child knows when he is happy: 'AK he needs is a sunny field in the fantry with any amount of mud, se that he may get as dirty as he Tikes, and when he is dirty, he just swims in a stream near by whilst, anid much laughter, he tries to catch an elusive eel." A grown-up seems to be, from the age of about twenty-five, pursuing something, he knows not what, which is as elusive as the aforesaid He rashes about from morn night with a watch in his pocket, always secking something, and not until he is broken down in health and in his second childhood does he realize that, ever since his youth, he has been pursuing happiness, a thing he had ressessed in hi childhood. So we! find that only me rerson really sensible, somes to his senses age too late to find those things he had sought all his life." young lady is not rather too or German. good to live. Still most of us do spend our days in one long rush and scramble after this elusive eel happiness and continually go about the chase in the wrong way.
And taken in conjunction with this though, the following from the pen of a mite of nine is perhaps the best of all the opinions expressed, "Our mothers and fathers worry so mud. that everything goes out of their minds," A severe indictment against three fourths of the civilized races. Worry is one of the greatest curses of life It reduces efficiency fifty per cent, and happiness ninety. The average man crawls out of bed the morning full of forebodings as to all the dreadful things that are sure to happen during the day. He rushes through breakfast with one eye on the newspaper and the oth2: on the clock and both ears oper to catch the slightest sign of mirth on the part his family. Laughter at the breakfast table would appear to him rank blasphemy, He goes through the clay looking for troup) most, of which do not mater ize, and, when night comes, heaves a weary sigh and says, "thank God that's over." We envy children their care-free spirit, and they on their part are evidently amused at our anxious countenances. One can only hope that all the young writers whose wise comments on their elders' folly we have been quoting, will not forget their Wisdom when they too join the "grownups",
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.