ANTITIES REGEENT
HELEN OF TROY
(Continued from Page 7) And Helen, answered: “Rever end art thou to me and dread, dear father of my lord; would that sore death had been my pleasure when I followed thy son hither, and left my home and my kinsfolk and my daughter in her girlhood and the lovely company of my age-fellows."
the For Paris was no longer hardy shepherd who watched the flocks on Mount Ida with Oenone. He lay on silk couches, making love and feasting, and allowed his warriors to die beyond the city walls.
Once, when he was spurred on to fight in single combat against Menelaos, he would have met his death had not Aphrodite shroud- ed him in thick darkness and fled back with him to the palace. Then, sobbing in his misery, he. felt the love for Helen sweep back around his heart more strongly than before.
The years dragged on. Hector the died and Achilles died, and heroes of Greece and Troy fell At like grass under a scythe.. last Paris himself was hit by one of the poisoned arrows of Hercu- les, and only then did he think of Oenone, for no one but she, the goddes of healing, could cure him.
Up the slopes of Mont Ida he was carried, and there by the streams they found her, fair as she had been when the gods first called Paris to give judgment. He said: "I
have wronged thee, Oenone, fairest and sweetest; and what may atone for the wrong? The fire burns in my veins, my head reels, and mine eye is dim."
known.
Oenone looked at him. But hardly could she recognise in the fever-contorted body at her feet the young god she had Twenty years of loneliness rose up around her, twenty years spent with the image of Helen before her eyes.
And she looked at him and slowly shook her head in silence.
They carried him down again into the valleys. He seemed dead as they lit the giant funeral pyre, but in the dancing light of the flames his lips parted and 3 mighty roar tore the shadows: "Helen, Helen, Helen!”? They threw his corpse into the blaze, when suddenly from the woods, a white shape came running, leapt, and joined his death. was Oenone.
In Troy two suitors were left to struggle for the Hand of Helen. Paris, They were brothers of
Helenus and Deiphobus who had surived the war which dragged on eternally for her sake. She chose Deiphobus, and they were married.
And one day it seemed that at last the siege was raised, for the watchmen on the walls saw dawn breaking on a deserted plain
deserted except for a gigantic wooden horse which had been built in the preceding weeks.
Character Counts For More
Than An Old School Tie Problem Of Choosing Right Place For Children.
OME years
SOME
I
he
ago when there. first a possibility of our having to come East to live,
asked a headmaster acquaintance whether thought it would be kinder leave the children, young 88 they were, at Home. Would
ool, even at that age, be better. them than life with us in an comfortably hot -- climate to hich they were not accustomed?
And it, was not only climate I had in mind and the fact that it might be detrimental to their health. I could not decide whe ther what they were likely to gain by going to school would compensate for what they would lose by being deprived of family life with us..
As a schoolmaster, I fully res- pected him to praise schools and to assure me that the children were bound
to profit by being sent to one, but to my surprise he said: "The ideal place for the education of children is the home: it is there they receive their most continuous education and the best people to give it are the parents given, of course, the right parents."
.
BETTER A BAD SCHOOL I have since read in a book that. has caused considerable stir ("That Dreadful School” by A. S. Néill) that it is better to send a child to a bad school than educate him, or her at home.
Well, we parents in the East, whether we are the right parents for our children or r merely foolish and ignorant ones. from whom they are better - separated, have little choice.
Circumstances compel us to send our children to school. We have not even the chance, open to parents at Home who share our view on the value of home- life, of sending them to a day school. In our case a boarding school it has to be.
In the case of small families and certainly of only children, this, one must admit, is not an unmixed blessing. A generation ago the nursery was a miniature world in which the lessons of give and take were learnt all un- consciously amongst many bro- thers and sisters against whom a child could measure itself.
These days an only child fussed
wife of each. But she called in vain, for Odysseus crouching in- side the wooden belly motioned his companions not to move.
That night Troy fell.
the
over by at least two grown-ups, cann
get this valuable early training and risks <growing up with an exagg ated idea of his own is sadl
an idea which when the vic- into a world where he is of little moment,
WHICH SCHOOE SHALL IT BE?
tim is thro
But, even if those of us who live in tropical climates have no choice in the matter of sending our children to school, we have a very wide range of schools from To the con- which to choose. scientious parent this is indeed very difficult. We probably range to be at Home when school- days commence, but in due course we have to return to the East," leaving the children behind with no opportunity Judging for ourselves whether our choice has been fortunate and the school- the right one for them.
there was never any question of Until very short time ago,
asking whether it was the “right” school for children ware sent there to learn certain specific subjects, set out in the school curriculum, and to learn to play certain specific games. The sys- tem provided a mould into which all pupils were pressed and if the. child did not fit, well so much the worse for the child;
There has lately been pub- lished a succession of reminis- cences and auto-biographies by schoolmasters--some of them re- tired-reviewing their own experi-” ences and in some cases, challeng- ing existing methods, To the lay- man it is all very bewildering. Here are specialists, we say, who can- not agree: how can we judge bet- ween them and decide to which type of school to send the child- ren?
THE OLD SCHOOL, TIE Of snobbery there is still abundance. There are still parents who send their boy to such and such school merely be-- cause of its name, or because they have social aspirations and trust that in that "milieu" the child meet the “right” people.
Others are content to send a boy to a school where corporal: punishment is still the master's weapon. They do not trouble to find out what character training, if any, is given, probably because
rest surrounded by a golden aura which preserved her from taunts and evil words" gir
And slowly the heart of Mene-
flaming streets Menelaos found 98 was melted. The years of
Helen tearing panic-stricken through the darkness. He seized her and forced her back to the palace. Stumbling among corp- ses they came to the room where Deiphobus slept, and in front of her, Menelaos killed him where he lay.
But when it had been dragged into Troy, Helen told her husband that her countrymen were am- bushed inside it. He doubted her, and she offered to o give him -Somehow that might she saved proof. At night through the her life. She was forty-five-now, echoing streets, they went, to": It but the sweetnéks" "of her smile- together.
still hung around her lips. At. first it could win Jittle--the right to be treated as the slaves who still lived, to be carried back to Sparta in chains. But even in chains she stood out from the
Three times she made him walk round it while she cried the names of the heroes inside. With each name, she altered skilfully the pitch of her voice to imitate the
war which had slain his comrades would vanish suddenly as he look ed at her. And
across the waters the Aegean in their hand-
palace solen bade her
maids
set out bedstreads beneath the gallery, and fling on them fair purple blankets and spread, cover- lets above, and thereon lay thick mantles to be a clothing over 'all. So they went from the hall with torch in hand and spread-the- beds, and the henchmen led forth the guests. But Menelaos slept, as his custom was, in the inmost chamber of the loftly house, and by him lay long-robed Helen, that fair lady
they cannot think in terms other than of actual school subjects which will lead the child in due course to School Certifi cate and perhaps to Matricula- tion and the University, but in any case to a job. A job, that hideous word of one syllable which to the vast majority of mankind these days seems to stand for all they ask of life.
Again there are parents, alas, who choose a school because it excels in some particular game.
SOMETHING WRONG
I am very keen on cricket my- self. I should love to see my son score a century, or even one run, for England. I know that to learn to play well is valuable training for life.s
I know, too, that the Duke of Wellington said the Battle Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
ing Mother knows, that there is But I also know, as every think-
something wrong with the world which not only
to-day, as dividuals live in.
nations
fear of one another fear of so many things.
Webb Miller in his remarkable book "I found, no peace,
-Leaves- From A Woman's Notebook.
have visited country after coun try in which the foremost pre- cccupation of tens of millions is to obtain enough food each day to sustain life..... And he was referring not merely to what we choose to call uncivilised coun- tries, but also to Europe and America where universal educa-
tion has been es
established long enough to justify man's right to criticise it from the results as we see them in the present genera- tion.
MOTHERS' PROBLEM
We mothers do not quite know what we can do about it. We seem to be merely pawns in the game, but who shall blame us if we ask ourselves, in view of what we see, around us, whether the education. that was given the generations. immediately preceding us can have been all it was thought to be and whether we ought to be con- tent with it for our sons?
ark of
Fortunately, even in England where the older Public Schools are so securely established in our, national life and in our affections. where we change our habits so slowly and suspect every new idea, where success in certa stereotyped examinations considered the ball- cation and men gods if they excel idea is gradually dependable character is far mo important than either prowess at some particular game or even scholastic ↑ brilliance, - both which are apt to be a snare a delusion.
made t
he