doubtless attributable in part to the circumstances of the investigation. About one hundred were said not to be in good health, and another hundred to be in outright bad health. In one hundred and thirty-three out of two hundred and fiftyeight cases the temperament was described as "nervous.” Precocity was another often-mentioned trait; but on the average the beginning of school-life was from a year and a half to two years later than is usual, and in the performance of schoolwork the questionnaire responses also revealed a marked inferiority on the part of many "only children."

In their social relations only eighty were reported as "normal," while one hundred and thirty-four out of a total of two hundred and sixty-nine got along badly with other children, usually because they were unwilling, or did not know how, to make concessions, and were stubbornly set on having their own way. Of two hundred and forty-five in attendance at school, more than one hundred were recorded as not being normally interested. in active games, sixty-two of these scarcely playing at all.

"If left to their own devices," Mr. Bohannon infers from the reports on the inactive sixty-two, "they are pretty sure to be found in the school-room with their teachers at intermission. A number of A number of the boys prefer to play with the girls at strictly girls' games, such as keeping house with dolls, and generally come to be called girl-boys."

Effeminacy, in fact, is a frequent characteristic of the male only child, and was noted in case after case described in the replies to the questionnaire. Selfishness was set down as the dominant trait in ninety-four "only children" of both sexes, and many others were described as being unusually bad-tempered, vain, naughty, or untruthful.

These depressing findings have since been confirmed by other investigators, some of whom have contributed specially to our knowledge of the state of the only child in adult life. Thus the well-known English psychologist Havelock Ellis,

studying the life-histories of four hundred eminent men and women, found the astonishingly low percentage of 6.9 for only children, indicating unmistakably the persistence of the intellectual inferiority brought out by the Bohannon questionnaire. There would also seem to be no doubt that egotism and social inadaptability characterize the adult only child no less than the immature one.

"In later life," affirms the American neurologist A. A. Brill, who has made a special study of the only child from both. a medical and a psychological point of view, "he is extremely conceited, jealous, and envious. He begrudges the happiness of friends and acquaintances, and he is therefore shunned and disliked." Besides which, speaking from wide experience as a practising specialist in New York, Doctor Brill insists that the only child, at any age of life, is peculiarly liable to fall a victim to hysteria, neurasthenia, and other serious functional nervous and mental maladies; and his belief, as I happen to know from their personal statements to me, is shared by other observant neurologists, such as Doctors James J. Putnam and I. H. Coriat of Boston.

This is a point of special interest, for the reason that recent medical research has made it certain that the maladies in question are one and all rooted in faulty habits of thought, usually resultant from errors of training in childhood. Chief among these errors, according to all modern neurologists, is an upbringing which tends to develop excessive occupation with thoughts of self. But this is precisely the kind of upbringing given the majority of "only children." Here again the Bohannon investigation affords impressive evidence. One of the queries included in the questionnaire bore on the treatment accorded the only child when at home, and it is indeed significant that in about seventy-five per cent. of the replies received it was stated that the policy of the parents was one of extreme indulgence.

"Had her own way in everything," "Her parents gratify her every whim," "She is surrounded by adults who indulge

her too much," "Humored," "Petted," "Coddled," are some of the expressions frequently employed to describe the parental treatment. Many of the replies sent to Mr. Bohannon also testify to an overanxiety with respect to the child's welfare that might easily give rise to undue feelings of self-importance and to an unhealthy habit of introspection. "His mother was always unduly anxious about him when he was out of her sight," "She is thought to be quite delicate, and great care is taken of her; she is kept in a warm room and seldom allowed to go out," "His home treatment has made a baby of him," may fairly be cited as typical statements returned by Mr. Bohannon's respondents.

Is it any wonder that the average only child grows up deficient in initiative and self-reliance? Is it any wonder that, under the stress of some sudden shock, he reacts badly, allowing himself to be overwhelmed by it, even to the extent of becoming a neurasthenic wreck? In short, can it be doubted that the handicap under which he too often has to struggle through life is not a handicap imposed by nature, but is solely of his parents' making?

Sometimes this is all too clearly appreciated in later life by the child himself, and the parental error is bitterly resented; or, if the sense of filial piety be sufficiently strong, is splendidly excused. As in this fragment from an autobiographical statement by an only child :

Of the selfishness of which a frank woman accused me my parents were up to that time quite as unconscious as I. She had asked my mother to drive with her to the home of a friend in a neighboring town, where the two were invited to spend the night. My mother declined, on the ground that I, at that time about nine, could not comb my hair and pin my collar properly for school in the morning; and as we then had no maid, and my father could at best only have buttoned my frock, the objection seemed insurmountable. But the family friend called me by the ugly title of naughty, selfish little girl, and chided mother for al

lowing me to monopolize her time, contending that she was making me selfish and dependent.

Perhaps she was. But I protest that it could hardly have been otherwise, considering that she had in full measure the worldold desire of mothers to spend themselves for their children, and only one child to spend herself on. It had not occurred to my mother, I am confident, that her habit of ministering to me constantly was pampering; nor had I, in going to her for services that I might easily have learned to perform for myself, made demands in the manner of the arrogant spoiled child.

The compelling power of mother-love and father-love must, of a truth, be recognized in extenuation of the spoiling of the only child. But the fact of the spoiling remains, and the fact also that when the spoiling is achieved, the parental pride and joy will be turned to grief and bitter lamentation. The pity of it is that the only child, simply because he is the only child, ought to grow up healthier, wiser, and more efficient than other children.

For, as psychologists are insisting more and more emphatically, the health, happiness, and efficiency of adult life depend preponderantly on the home influences of early childhood; and, obviously, in a home where the parental attention can be concentrated on a single child, better results should be attained than when the work of training involves a division of the attention among several children. Unfortunately, when it is a question of training. an only child, too many parents seem to take it for granted that training is entirely unnecessary, that their child is innately so good that he will develop of his own accord into one of the best of

men.

In reality, as modern psychology has made very clear, every child at the outset of his life is much like every other child, a plastic, unmoral little creature, exceedingly impulsive and exceedingly receptive, readily impressed for good or evil by the influences that surround him. Childhood, to repeat a truism hackneyed to psycholo

gists, but seemingly unappreciated by most people, is preeminently the suggestible period of life. It is then, when the critical faculty still is undeveloped, that whatever ideas are presented to the mind are most surely absorbed by it, to sink into its subconscious depths, and there form the nucleus for whole systems of thought afterward manifesting as habits. Herein lurks the special peril to the only child afflicted with over-loving, over-anxious parents.

Their perpetual solicitation for him, acting as a suggestion of irresistible force, tends to engender in him a mental attitude out of which may afterward spring, according to the subsequent circumstances of his life, a cold, heartless, calculating selfishness, or a morbid self-anxiety perhaps eventuating in all sorts of neurotic. symptoms. If, as a boy, he is too closely and constantly associated with his mother, the force of suggestion again, acting through the imitative instinct, may lead to a development of those feminine traits frequently characteristic of male only. children, and often involving pathological conditions of dire social as well as individual significance. Further still, by restricting unduly the intercourse of only children with playmates of their own age, as is often done, one of the finest agencies in development through the power of suggestion is left unutilized. There is a world of truth in the lament of the only child from whose autobiography I have already quoted:

All this carefulness kept me uncontaminated by the naughtiness of little street Arabs, but it also limited my opportunity to imitate where imitation is easiest-among those of my own age; it stunted the initiative and inventiveness that might, in normal conditions, have developed in me; and it left me lacking in adaptability. I sometimes disloyally wonder if my chances of being a tolerable citizen might not have been as good if I had been permitted to "run wild," and thus secure for myself the companionship I could not have at home.

Of course association with other children means at least an occasional hard knock, and hard knocks are above all else what the doting mother wishes to avoid for her darling boy. She forgets that they are certain to be experienced soon or late, and that the earlier her boy is fitted to withstand them, the better they will be withstood. She forgets, too, that if the suggestions emanating from playmates are not invariably suggestions for good, they may easily be counteracted, without sacrificing the advantages to be gained from association with playmates, by proper training in the quiet of the home.

Always, let me repeat, it is the home training the force of parental example and instruction-that counts for most. If the only child turn out well, the credit must go to the parents; if, alas! he turn out badly, if he become a monster of selfishness or a neurotic weakling, the blame must likewise be theirs.

No, you need not be shocked. There

is a very distinct curse upon Christmas, and these reformers who are "getting into everything nowadays" have the right of it in the thankless campaign they are waging. They are out to "reform Christmas." How patently absurd! you say. The very idea of Christmas is in itself an idea of spiritual reformation, for the time being at least. Whether Christmas means to us the deepest significance of the Christian religion or merely, as Arnold Bennett puts it, "The Feast of Saint Friend," it means to "me" (with New Year's day that follows it) my yearly spiritual housecleaning, my yearly return to the fundamental humanities in thought and deed, where the magnate and the tramp or the "society leader" can find such very valuable common interests. I was the better for last Christmas, or I shall be the better for this Christmas. That is your idea.

But if the Christmas spirit is only a genial sentimental glow, with no actual renovation of heart and mind to reinforce it certainly, you knew what I was going to say. Well, I do give you credit for the best intentions in the world. You want to do something? Why not remove the curse of Christmas?

Ah, we 're coming to it now. The timehonored method of expressing the spirit of Christmas is in your giving. So you give. You are generous, we are all generous, -and you give lavishly, perhaps, at least

with that generous glow permeating you, up to the limit of your means. But it is the way in which you give that is wrong. There lies the curse of Christmas, a very mean little viper tightly coiled in the fragrant center of the rose of generosity. Let me leap from flowery phrases right into the midst of those facts commonly known. as "hard and cold." You had better come along. You have come this far.

I know a girl who has been "behind the counter" in a big store during the Christmas "rush." She has written what follows. But she has omitted many things. In the first place, she has been very taciturn about such human weaknesses as backache and black spots before the eyes in the midst of checking and packing at an hour when the benevolent Christmas purchasers are comfortably chatting around the evening lamp after dinner or refreshing themselves with pleasant dreams after a hard day. In the second place, she has omitted. to mention how it feels to stand up through a day of the Christmas rush before the onslaught of frantic shoppers, their unbelievable whims and vagaries, their insistent indignation at the slightest delay, their unceasing flow of foolish inquiry and heedless impatience, their-well, as a choleric person, I am afraid I should call it shortly "their utter inhumanity"; yes, and I should imagine her feeling must approximate that of a soldier in the trenches under fire from some of those