We rushed in blithely the other day to talk to a woman's club up New York State on how to bring up children. Quoting from W. H. Hudson, we said firmly that they should never be spanked or even chided very much. "Let them run about and shift for themselves," we said airily. "The instinct of the child is often more sound than that of the grown-up. He is closer to old race instincts and memories than his parent." Then we finished up with our mule story and asked for questions. We expected that somebody would ask whether Ethel Barrymore was a good actress, and did we like the novels of H.G. Wells, or one or two other easy questions like that, to which a lecturer need say nothing more than "yes" or "no" or "assuredly." Instead of that somebody said, "How many children have you brought up?" We could only answer that there was one, and that he wasn't very far up yet, nor had we been trusted with complete charge of him. At that point objections and questions became general and exceedingly difficult. Probably we gave some ground. There was, as we remember it, the admission that there were times in which a spanking might seem a very tempting solution of a difficult problem, although we did qualify it by urging that no moral interpretation be introduced into the punishment. We once knew a mother who used to say, "Gladys, you have been a bad girl, and so to-morrow at half-past eleven I'm going to spank you." That pose of cool and calm deliberation, of even-handed justice, of godlike inflexibility, has always seemed to us unbecoming in a parent. If he spanks a child he ought to be frank enough to say that he does it because he is angry and can't think up anything better. However, it is probable that we were too much flustered to develop our position at any great length. We felt uncomfortably as if we had agreed to talk to a G. A. R. Post on the Battle of Gettysburg. One mother told us that she had raised four children with frequent spankings and that one was now a college professor while the other three were exceedingly successful in the wholesale hardware business. She said she had never regretted it. All four had grown up God-fearing and dutiful. A still more devastating revelation of experience in child raising was yet to plague our confidence and complacency. "I'm an old woman," said one hearer, as we started to retire in none too good order, "and I can talk to you frankly. I have a daughter now who is old enough to have children of her own. I brought her up on that go-as-you-please system you have been talking about, and do you know what has become of her?" We blanched a little and wondered just how frank she was going to be before we said "No." "She calls herself a Socialist," said the old lady, and our lines broke away into full retreat at all points. * * *