even courageous doubters; we are are merely indifferent. We settle our personal problems out of church in accordance with some half-formulated standard of morality. As to our conduct, it is not noticeably different from that of people to whom prayer and a just Jehovah are guiding actualities. But will our children be content if we give them these stones for faith? Will they be satisfied with a diluted scientific explanation of the universe? If things proceed by contraries, a religious revival is due; if children are inevitably reactions from their parents, we may breed a race of Savonarolas or Billy Sundays. What will be our attitude? What shall we give them of the old traditions as equipment for their discovery of the new? How can we conscientiously teach them creeds in which we have ceased to believe? And yet how can we as a practical matter withhold from them any idea of God until they are old enough to consider the whole question logically? Whether we like it or not, some information is bound to reach them. Children all have grandmothers and nurses and an insatiable ability to ask "Why?" The five-year-old daughter of some friends who had with the best intentions kept the subject of religion out of their conversation said to her mother the other day, "Mother, have you ever heard about God?" With some hesitation the mother admitted that she had, but the child, with perfect assurance, took the matter into her own hands. "Well, any time you want to know anything about Him, just ask me." We must meet this type of religious confidence with tolerance; we must not be too ready with our agnosticism, but allow our children freedom to create their own philoso

phies of life, the same freedom for believers, if such they be, that we as doubters once coveted.

We new parents have already tipped the cumbersome table of parental tradition with skeptical modern fingers, but the past is still about us; ghostly voices whisper, "What about respect, affection, gratitude?" those time-honored filial virtues. Well, what about them? Gratitude is certainly more becoming to the person who wears it than to the one who demands it. Why should our children be grateful to us? "Because we gave them life," women of the older generation would say complacently. Some modern women have gone to the other extreme, contending, with morbid pride, that they cannot bear the idea of having children, the terrible responsibility of giving life to some one who does n't ask for it. Absurd! Life is not a gift to be accepted with polite thanks or rejected with unreasoning curses. Life is only a personal opportunity. Another familiar remark relating to gratitude is almost as unreasonable: "Well, I spent the best years of my life bringing up my children, and I think they ought to repay me now." And "repay" includes not kindness and help in case of need, but frequently an impossible subordination. How bitterly such parents have been disappointed, and what villains their children have been called and have felt themselves in their own souls! All because few parents realize that life is not arranged that way. If we insist upon balancing our books, we must do it day by day; our rewards in bringing up our children are immediate, and cannot be deferred until some final settlement.

Respect, affection, confidence-new

parents, as well as old, we are all pathetically eager to win and keep them. But we must not stoop or aspire to conquer. We must neither insist harshly, as fathers are apt to do, on our rights; nor point with hysterical fingers, as mothers will, to our sacrifices. Freud has taught us many difficult lessons, among them the unpleasant fact that we generally hate the people who make sacrifices for us. If we are courageous enough to apply this to our situation as parents, we may win from our children an unreluctant devotion, an affection that will leave them free. Confidence is another matter. It is human nature to confide the most secret and sacred portions of our souls to strangers; to friends, perhaps; to relatives sometimes; to parents very seldom. We run too great a risk of accidental betrayal, of unwelcome reminders, if we talk intimately with those who are nearest to us. This is especially true during the mysterious years of adolescence. We as parents cannot reasonably hope for the unguarded and complete relationship for which we long; but if we treat whatever does come our way with the same delicacy and respect we show to a stranger, we may establish a basis of real friendship with our children.

And it is friendship we want, is n't it? Friendship and fun and a share in the happiness of youth. The old-fashioned parents, undoubtedly, sought the same things; but they had such obstacles of decorum to overcome, they went such awkward and incriminating ways to secure them; they so foolishly boasted of complete absorption in their children's lives! As new parents let us be wise enough to consider our own lives important.

Women, particularly, need to maintain a decent respect for themselves as persons; not as wives alone, not as mothers only. It is an encouraging fact that an increasing number of women are demonstrating to-day that a job outside the home often makes a woman more interesting not only to herself and her friends, but to her husband and children. Children will not seek to escape from the narrowness of the family circle if we can transform it into a many-sided unit in open contact with the world.

It is not that parents in the past have loafed on the job; rather that they have gone at it with such grim determination, such unrelieved seriousness.

Perhaps our generation's most novel contribution to the parental attitude will be a spirit of fun. The spirit symbolized in the MacMonnies statue of a mother romping with her baby, which so shocked the puritan propriety of Boston, the natural overflow of joy, the frolicking gladness that Eunice Tietjens caught in her beautiful poem, "The Bacchante to her Babe":

"So, merry little roll of fat,

Made warm to kiss and smooth to pat
And round to toy with, like a cub,
To put one's nozzle in and rub,
My god to laugh with,
Love to chaff with,

Come and dance beneath the sky,
You and I!

Look out with those round wondering

eyes,

And squirm, and gurgle and grow wise!"

We may grow wise along with our children in our new rôle of parents; at any rate, let us take our parts with spontaneous gladness.

NE morning when big white clouds were shouldering each other's shoulders, rolling on the rollers of a big blue sky, Wiffle the Chick came along where the Potato Face Blind Man sat shining the brass bickerjiggers on his accordion.

"Do you like to shine up the brass bickerjiggers?" asked Wiffle the Chick. "Yes," he answered. "One time a long time ago the brass bickerjiggers were gold, but they stole the gold away when I was n't looking." Then he blinked the eyelids over his eyeballs and said: "I thank them, because they took gold they wanted. Brass feels as good to my fingers as gold." And he went on shining up the brass bickerjiggers on the accordion, humming a little line of an old song, "To-morrow

will never catch up with yesterday because yesterday started sooner."

"Seems like a nice morning, with the sun spilling bushels of sunshine,' he said to Wiffle the Chick, who answered: "Big white clouds are shouldering each other's shoulders, rolling on the rollers of a big blue sky."

"Seems like it 's April all over again," he murmured almost like he was n't talking at all.

"Seems just that way-April all over again," murmured Wiffle almost like she was n't talking at all.

So they began drifting, the old man drifting his way, the girl drifting her way, till he drifted into a story. And the story he told was like this and in these words:

"Deep-Red Roses was a lovely girl

with blue skylights like the blue skylights of early April in her eyes. And her lips reminded people of deep-red roses waiting in the cool of the summer evening.

"She met Shoulder Straps one day when she was young yet. He promised. And she promised him. But he went away. One of the long wars between short wars took him. In a faraway country, then, he married another girl. And he did n't come back to Deep-Red Roses.

"Next came High High Over one day when she was young yet. A dancer he was, going from one city to another city to dance, spending his afternoons and evenings and late nights dancing, and sleeping in the morning till noon. And when he promised, she promised. But he went away to another city and after that another city. And he married one woman and then another woman. Every year there came a new story about one of the new wives of High High Over, the dancer. And while she was young yet Deep-Red Roses forgot all about her promise and the promise of High High Over, the dancer who ran away from her.

"Six Bits was the next to come along. And he was not a soldier or a dancer or anything special. He was a careless man, changing from one job to another, changing from paperhanging to plastering, from fixing shingle roofs where the shingles were ripped to opening cans with canopeners. Six Bits gave Deep-Red Roses his promise, and she gave him her promise. But he was always late keeping his promise. When the wedding was to be Tuesday, to be Tuesday, he did n't come till Wednesday. If it was Friday, he did n't come till Sat

urday. So there was n't any wedding.

"So Deep-Red Roses said to herself: 'I am going away and learn, I am going away and talk with the wives of High High Over, the dancer, and maybe if I go far enough, I will find the wife of Shoulder Straps, the soldier; and maybe the wives of the men who promised me will tell me how to keep promises kept. Yes, I must learn how to keep promises kept.'

"And she packed her baggage till her baggage was packed so full there was room for only one more thing. So she had to decide whether to put a clock or whether to put a lookingglass in her baggage.

"My head tells me to carry the clock, so I can always tell if I am early or late,' she said to herself; 'but my heart tells me to carry a looking-glass, so I can look at my face and tell if I am getting older or younger.'

"At last she decides to take the clock and leave the looking-glass, because her head says so. She starts away. She goes through the door, she is out of the house, she goes to the street, she starts up the street.

"Then her heart tells her to go back and change the clock for the lookingglass. She goes back up the street, through the door, into the house, into her room. Now she stands in front of the clock and the looking-glass saying, "To-night I sleep home here one more night and to-morrow morning I decide again.'

"And now every morning Deep-Red Roses decides with her head to take the clock. And she takes the clock and starts away and then comes back because her heart decides she must have the looking-glass.

"If you go to her house this morning you will see her standing in the door

way with blue skylights like the blue sky of early April in her eyes and lips that remind you of deep-red roses in the cool of the evening in summer. And you will see her leave the doorway and go out of the gate with clock in her hands. And then if you wait, you will see her come back through the gate, into the door, back to her room, where she puts down the clock and takes up the looking-glass.

"After that she decides to wait until to-morrow morning to decide again what to decide. Her head tells her one thing, her heart tells her another. And between the two she stays home. And sometimes she looks at her face in the looking-glass and says to herself, 'I am

Wiffle the Chick fingered the end of her chin with her little finger and said:

"It is a strange story. It has a stab in it. It would hurt me if I could n't look up at the big white clouds shouldering their shoulders rolling on the rollers of the big blue sky."

"It is a good story to tell when April is here all over again, and I am shining up the brass bickerjiggers on my accordion," said the Potato Face Blind Man.

And he hummed over again the song line, "To-morrow will never catch up with yesterday because yesterday started sooner."