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by us in a day. We must allow them time, and we must always
remember that marriage is a mystery to be fully interpreted only
by those who have entered into its bonds.
2. Parental Relationships. Home life in our age is most
sharply questioned here and criticism is equally applicable to
rich and poor. Selfish and independent children, daughters out
of sympathy with their mothers, sons whose confidences g0 to
friends rather than to parents are subjects of common talk. And
while the facts are by no means universally applicable, they exist
to a sufficient extent to take us anxious. It is no use deploring
them, they must be faced.
The difficulties are hot apparent early, for probably there
never was a time when children in general were more beloved,
nor when young unmarried men in particular showed more
devotion to them. In parental relationships the dissonance
appears later on, and chiefly because in a rapidly moving age the
child moves more rapidly than the parent who carries the
handicap of parenthood, while the child is stripped of load to run
the race. External influences also invade home life, such as
books with their new explicitness of the facts of life, sports and
amusements which have thrown boys and girls together in a new
way outside their homes. Girls now do not think only of
marriage, but watch for ““ careers” as a possible alternative, at
any rate for a time, and they exhibit unexpected propensities for
wage-earning. There is a strong probability that boys and girls
feel themselves to be sensible men and women outside their
homes and somewhat foolishly youthful and inexperienced within
them. It must honestly be said—and always remembering the
exceptions—that when such conditions produce trouble the
parents are chiefly responsible. It lies with us all to move and
have our being in our own age, to see with young eyes as well
as with old, and to continue our own education in so doing.
Half the resistance to change that we present is the resistance
of inertia not of conviction, and no one knows this better than
the children, and where such is true of us we are rendered
incapable of offering the right resistance to the wrong change
when need arises.

What we call lack of parental control is the great charge flung
against parents to-day only to be flung back again, as a wave from
a headland, with the counter-charge of unresponsive children.
But there is at least one illustration of the justice of this charge
which we cannot put aside without notice. The altogether
abnormal conditions caused by the presence of military camps
and the excitements of the war have brought to light the
unrestraint of quite young girls to an unexpected degree. Little
though we want to exaggerate what is probably only an
aggravation of a problem always with us, vet the significance of