1919-09-18 — Page 3

AVERAGE GENIUS.

BY EVELYN SHARP.

haver really believed in the infant prodigy. Round about the mend of the last century he was horribly prevalent. You met him chiefly on the concert platform, dressed in black velvet and a lace collar with abundant curls that were evidently intended to convey the artless impression that he' was not a day over seven years old and meant to remain seven years old till he had secured a competency for his old

age. Ewas the real original Boy Who Never Grew Up; audiences went mad

over his perform-

ances on the piano or the violin. and no one suspected him of being the breadwinner for a large family of brothers and sisters who had no curis and no face collars and just added a year to their age every twelvemonth in the dull way that is common to us all. It is true that the child-genius pläy- ed extremely well. One's faith in him was shaken, not because he played badly, but because. after a time, he did not "play at all. He died out, like any other fashionable craze, as soon as the demand for him ceased. That was enough to set anyone thinking.

And then, the other day, a little book came into my hands that re-awakened all my ancient doubts as to the authenticity of the infant prodigy. Incidentally, it also suggested the explanation of his decline and fall. For it is clear that the success of the exceptional child must depend either upon the absence of genius in all the other children er upon the suppression" of it The exceptional child thrives, in fact upon the doctrine that ohildren the other children- should be seen and not heard. Directly that doctrine is killed, as, the twentieth century has killed it, the child-genius really has to be a genius in order to survive. Now, this little bookTraveller's Joy" it is called is the produc- tion of quite ordinary children, who in the last century would have been seen and not heard. And it proves, what one always suspected. that there is no such thing-except hundred perhaps once in a years or so an exceptional child, because all children, more or less, have enough natural talent to enable them to make a show of being exceptional if they are allowed free play for their imagination. In fact the average child of to-day is the exceptional child of the past.

If you dressed him up in black velvet and curled

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is left wondering whether this is because the children have read more prose then verse. and are unconsciously trying to reproduce

N. LAZARUS, OPHTHALMIC OPTICIAN.

GENERAL NEWS.

WORKMAN'S BUXORIES.

A mother of ten told Mr. Rooth,

his hair you would know him what they have read. Certainly the Thames Police Court magis-

at once.

St George's is a co-education chool, and it is to Form III. hat the collective authorship of

Traveller's Joy" is scribed. I am told that the verage use of the boys and girls that Form is ten years and

het

to be

there is far more invention in the

poems that are scattered through rate, recently, that for breakfast the book. King II. for instance-salmon and boiled eggs, and for he gave her husband smoked is much happier in his little quatrain

In October the leaves do fall From the trees so high and tall. And the days are short and

cold,

the fold.

tion:--

Lay a little bird, half-starved

dinner roast

lämb peas and potatoes, yet he kept late hours and called her bad names. The Magistrate: I don't believe there ne month and that is all And the sheep are brought to

is anybody but you who has such luxuries at home. He ought to know about the writers of

be very grateful to you. he little stories and poems

I will make up

This, by A. Austin, bas distine-send an officer to tell him to eat! the volume,

his salmon and lamb. peas and cept-a very important excep- on that they did not know,

Potatoes like a respectable man, then composing their contribu- ons that these were to be rinted. There was no black- elvet.or lace-collar atmosphere bout its As an expression, berafore, of the imaginative bility of "an average set of ealthy children this little collec- on has a distinct interest.

the stories. The most ordinary

in the snow.

Once in the winter long, long ago, So with bread and with milk 1did until in the Spring it could chirp

feed the poor thing.

and sing.

And still I did feed it. the poor

little thing. And, the bird it did grow. so long,

long ago.

the latter, however, are often deemed by some sentence that It

bright suns glow.

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and, when he gets smoked salmon no possibility of there being any towards the project. The com- for breakfast, to go down on his untraced prisoners who were still mittee is headed by Princess knees and think Almighty God alive. that he has got it.

-INCOME TAX HATER.

COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS',

FEARS.

Margaretha of Denmark. Queen Alexandra's niece, who invites Danes to put peace stampe on Owing 15s. income tax, a tram: At the conference of the United all letters, cards, and printed driver was arrested for the non-Kingdom Commercial Travellers' matter. Peace stamps will also payment of the amount, and when Association at Dublin, recently, a

[be on sale in all Entente and searched at the police station had motion was brought forward by there will be special committees neutral countries eventually, and £202 on him. He became very Mr. Hammond (Blackpool) view-

The verses are vastly superior And when in the summer, the violent on that occasion, and biting with alarma the growth of formed in all these countries. through a policeman's thick amalgamations and trusts. Steps In England the scheme is did fit and By in the blue sum-trousers.

When charged with should be taken he said, through patronised by Queen Alexandra, mer sky,

assault at East Ham the chair-their Parliamentary agent, to and in France by Madame ess one finds very refreshing. This is all I know."

man told him that there was no stem this ominous trend of events Fincare, and the French com- reason why he should not pay in. These trusts were wiping out all

mittee includes M. Clemenceau, the Archbishop of Rheims, and

luminates with a simple direct-

example of this method is

For it's long, long ago.

on

story, by Brandon-Jones 1, Meiklejohn IL has two or three come tax. If the country had no competition, and in this way M. Anatole France. the crocodile that could find sets of verses, all of them good, income tax it would be like a man menacing the very existence of othing to est; "so it thought it but difficult to quote. "How the without wages, and would soon commercial travellers. Mr: INDIAN FLOSS FOR LIFE-BELTS. ould die. This tragedy was Flying Fish Could Fle" has be the wrong side of the Cowley (Liverpool), seconding! One of the most widely used erted, for when it lay much imaginative fancy. But road." If the East Ham Cor- the motion, said that the fast life-saving appliances, in ships wis it a carping criticism for sheer spirit and swing and poration, defendant's employers, movement in Great Britain was during the submarine campaign inventive nonsense The Tiger refused to pay him bis wages on far stronger than it ever was in was a life-jacket stuffed with. anything else?"somebody of the Niger. by Brandon-Jones a Saturday he would pull along America. He mentioned distillers" kapok," or floss. This floss has

I stands easily first.

ask how a

crocodile can

me and thought it was a log.

опе

d sat on it, so it ate him and not die." Similarly, in a ore ambitious effort entitled Life in North America," the iter, King H., disposes of his erwise undistinguished hero unvarnished sentence. But one day, when he was.out an arrow went into his ad and he was killed." Before. parently, he had time to say, This is too sudden." The human touch is not want- in these compositions, as in a her ordinary little tale by M. ngdon-Davies, which is en- ened by the cheery cynicism he concluding sentence And

This tale is quite new,

For once at the Zoo

There was a great tiger. Came straight from the Niger. He got in a rage.

And broke from his cage.. And ran to the Strand And knocked down the band, And smashed up a steeple. And killed several people. He went through the City. Oh, oh, what a pity! For he swallowed a king, What a terrible thing! And gobbled a person. And ate Edward Carson:

face. A fine of £10

was who had dispensed with all their very great buoyancy, a jacket imposed.

travellers, and urged that the containing 24oz of the fibre being MISSING WAR PRISONERS. question should be taken up as a capable of supporting an adult in In the House of Commons matter of public policy The the water. According to the ex- recently Captain Guest informed present industrial unrest waslisting official regulations the only Mr. Ronald McNeill that the mainly caused by the way in kapok that may be used for this military mission in Berlin, whose, which these trusts were forcing purpose is Java kapok, which fobject was to ascertain the fate of everything on the public. The consists of the long hairs sur-

missing British soldiers, had not resolution was passed unabim-rounding the seeds of yet completed its labours, but the ously.

tree which occurs abundantly in result so far was that a few names

WORLD PEACE STAMP. Ithe Dutch East Indies. A similar which they had recorded as miss At Copenhagen a fate was held material is, however, obtainable ing had been discovered as dead in recently to celebrate the inaugu- from India, but from a different the German records. The mission ration of the sale of a world peace tree, and this Indian floes cannot had reported that it appeared stamp, whereby it is hoped to under the existing regulations be from their investigations there raise twenty million francs for used for life-jackets. The result were very few cases of men who the rebuilding of Rheims Cathed trials made at the Imperia) were prisoners in Germany whose rel. The idea is a Danish one. Institute, details of whicit are names were not known to the and is due to the Danish writer, given in the current number And never was seen any more War Office. No such men had Mogens Falck, and has been ap the Bulletin of the Institute, show

to this day.

been found alive. Lists of the proved by the French "Govern- that the Indian floes can fully And the best, of it is that the missing, he added, were to be sent ment. Four hundred millions of satisfy the requiremeni children of Form III Care just to the military authorities in stamps have been printed here regs buoyancy, an edom like any other children of the Austria and Bulgaria, for com-on Dsalah paper in green, and Same age, all the world over. parison with eremy records, and accom to the Danish art na bitterly No Otherwise, of cour e, there would sleo to Constantinople, if the nies for the What be no real interest in “Traveller's military authorities there con

moved? Joy For the average is the sidered it feasible to undertake Sta of those charming stuff that the future is made of

—such a comparison, it wa

feated however, that there

y lived happily ever after.

il they forgot and were aghty again.”

And

so also in

Lale of the family expedition

in & lost child being

Sam by a harassed

Then he went ba bis way For ever and aye,

Manchester Guardian.

the destruc

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