In the first place, I should be extremely cautious about their reading. Nothing, after all, is so influential as the printed word. The mere fact that it is printed seems to carry with it a kind of unjustified authority. Why should little boys and little girls have access to our daily papers, full from end to end of horrible crimes, tales of dishonesty in high places and advertisements that cause the mind to reel at their hypocrisy and rottenness? Why should they be permitted, when they wish to read, to take from the Public Library the latest best seller because Sissy Jones has just read it and says it is “great”? I should never allow a child of mine to read the daily papers, and I should never allow it to read the thousand and one maudlin children’s books that are printed every year at Christmas time. There is no reason whatever why, at an early age, children should not be supplied with good literature just as they are fed nourishing food. And yet, how comparatively few parents think of this in time! They buy for their children trivial, prettily illustrated, altogether unimportant little volumes because they come across them on a counter and because other parents are buying the same things. I shouldn’t any more supply a child of mine with this sort of mental slop than I should feed it adulterated milk. Why deliberately give children a taste for the second-rate and third-rate when the first-rate is at hand and they are at an age when they eagerly seize upon anything offered them?