The Schools are to Blame

THE child of thirty years ago, when he went to school, passed by regular and apparently inalterable gradations from Low Penny to High Penny, and so to Tupenny, Fourpenny, Sixpenny, and on to the mature dignity of the First Standard. I for one have no regrets for those vanished year's when “A CAT SAT ON A MAT” within the drab covers of a hopelessly ugly book. I have had to pay a good deal more than a penny or twopence for my children's earliest readers, but they are things of beauty. They are handsomely bound, the paper is good, the print is large and clear, the margins are generous, and the illustrations are the work of artists like Frank Adams and A. E. Jackson who combine graceful execution with a sympathetic understanding of the ingenuousness of childhood.