Life — February 22, 1917 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

316 ‘TRE Baby Raising by Correspondence THe first correspondence school for baby raising has made its debut. As might be expected, it is located in Kansas. It has been started for the benefit of babies al- ready born and those yet to come. Within a few days after it began, it had an enrollment of over fifty. Its mem- bership is now much larger and is constantly growing. Its membership is not confined to Kansas but every prospec- tive mother is cligible, no matter where she lives. The course of instruction includes a monthly letter. These letters, written by experts, are designed to prepare young mothers in every way—physically, mentally and morally— for their duties. Learning how to take care of a baby by correspondence is very much like learning how to swim. Yet, admitting this, much can be said in favor of the new idea that has come out of Kansa: nything that calls the attention of mothers to the importance of taking care of their babies— that, so to speak, advertises the idea—is good. American mothers so fortunate as to have babies ought surely to be- come interested in them, and in what can be done to make them grow up sound in wind and limb and intellect. Cer- tainly it is more important for mothers to know how to take care of a baby than it is to know how to put on a tire. Kansas has done well. Spirits ONAN DOYLE, the inventor of Sherlock Holmes, bas recently come out with a statement of his belief in life after death, and in disembodied spirits. He has, in this respect, joined the group of distinguished men which included Oliver Lodge, Alfred Wallace and William James—although during his lifetime William James guarded discreetly a complete surrender to the psychic. Most of these distinguished gentlemen, while admitting their belief in spirits freely, have been careful to state that the barrier between us and the spirit land is at present ApaMm (proposing) : WHY DO YOU KEEP ME IN SUSPENSE? (Wildly) 1s THERE ANOTHER MAN “THAT'S WHAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW.” so great that any practical communication js worthless. When, for example, we hire a lawyer to give us advice we may obtain for our money something that is of practi- cal value. But when we consult the spirits, although cer- tain manifestations may convince us that they exist and are all about us, no practical results appear to follow. Spirits do not get us anywhere. The Society for Psychical Research is, probably, up to the present moment, about as useless as any organization there ever was in the world. Yet such is the patience of the human mind that men go on, generation after generation, hoping, like Micawber, that something spiritually practical may turn up. Dormitat Munsey ONDON OPINION, a veracious British comic paper, says (December 3oth) that the New York Sun, in the course of a recent review of Mr. Howells’ “ Leatherwood ” remarked : Thirty-five years ago Howells was so well known for his individual style, for his insistence on a realism in fiction almost photographic at times, that an Eng- lish comic opera company in “ Patience” irreverently coupled his name with that of Henry James while parodying a type of young men of the period—the type of the young men whom they were supposed to use as characters in their stories. Oh, my! Did the Sun really do that! “A Howell & James young man” was Gilbert's line, Howell & James, haberdashers, being very well known in London. comicbooks.com