Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1944)

and must go to bed, without lally-gagging. Between whiles, they may be as noisy, as wild and whoopish as they please. But where their schedules are concerned, there must be order. THEY must not have money they do not earn. We have told the two older boys, and will continue to impress upon all four of them, that we intend to give them the best schooling we possibly can but that when their educations are completed, they must go to work. We tell them that no man should have money he does not earn. The sooner the youngsters learn this, the better for their integrity and self-respect as adults. Our youngsters are learning it. ’They are not given gratuitous allowances. The older boys shine their own shoes, keep their dresser drawers in order, pick up after themselves. All four boys help their mother skim milk, churn butter, garden. For these over-all chores, Donnie and Ronnie are paid fifty cents a month; Tommie and Lonnie, twenty-five cents. In addition, Donnie keeps the service yard clean and Ronnie has charge of the front patio. If they slack or skimp on their jobs, their wages are “docked.” If they put in extra time, they get “overtime.” And if they are enterprising enough to think of extra chores to do, they are paid accordingly. The point being, they do not get something for nothing; and, at the same time, they are realizing the value of the laborer’s being worthy of his hire. THEY must face reality. Pain is reality. * It is something every individual faces, in greater or lesser degree, at one time or another. When the children are badly hurt and scream or cry, that is justifiable. For the Spartan boy belongs, I think, to literature rather than to life. But if they whimper or whine over some superficial scratch or bruise, they are quickly shamed out of it. Or if they have some unpleasant ordeal to face — an apology, perhaps, to a teacher at school for a misdemeanor — they know they must do it themselves, that we will not act as buffers or go-betweens. When they are old enough, I intend to take them through hospital wards, jails, juvenile courts, tenements, county workhouses. I want them to see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears the lot of the underprivileged and the maimed and the weak. So that they may have in their hearts compassion for those less fortunate and gratitude for their own kinder fortune. THEY must be tender toward women. As ' little boys, they must be courteous and gentle with little girls. This is in the hope that, as men, they will make good husbands and fathers, gentle and wise and strong. To give them this sense of tenderness and protection for girls was one of the many reasons for our deciding to adopt two little sisters for the four brothers. The boys named them, by the way, after many a family council. Barbara Blandina will be called Bonnie and Cornelia Roberta will be called Connie. THEY must study music , dancing, art. ' Whether they are interested in the arts, or not; whether they have any special aptitude for any one of them, or not, they must be at least familiar with them. An appreciation of music, dancing, painting and sculpture puts color into the life of any man, and a song, and a dream. . . . So we think, and hope, and pray that if they laugh, these children of ours, and move about the earth, make up their own minds, do not whimper over nothings, have tenderness for the weak and tolerance for the crippled of mind as well as body, they will be fit to be called men. Good men, and strong. The End.