knowing all about it, and discouraging the crude ideas of Bensington.
"Bigger indisputably. But listen to what he says! Will it make them
happier? That's his point. Curious, isn't it? Will it make them better?
Will they be more respectful to properly constituted authority? Is it
fair to the children themselves?? Curious how anxious his sort are for
justice--so far as any future arrangements go. Even nowadays, he says,
the cost, of feeding and clothing children is more than many of their
parents can contrive, and if this sort of thing is to be permitted--!
Eh?

"You see he makes my mere passing suggestion into a positive proposal.
And then he calculates how much a pair of breeches for a growing lad of
twenty feet high or so will cost. Just as though he really believed--Ten
pounds, he reckons, for the merest decency. Curious this Caterham! So
concrete! The honest, and struggling ratepayer will have to contribute
to that, he says. He says we have to consider the Rights of the Parent.
It's all here. Two columns. Every Parent has a right to have, his
children brought up in his own Size....

"Then comes the question of school accommodation, cost of enlarged desks
and forms for our already too greatly burthened National Schools. And to
get what?--a proletariat of hungry giants. Winds up with a very serious
passage, says even if this wild suggestion--mere passing fancy of mine,
you know, and misinterpreted at that--this wild suggestion about the
schools comes to nothing, that doesn't end the matter. This is a strange
food, so strange as to seem to him almost wicked. It has been scattered
recklessly--so he says--and it may be scattered again. Once you've taken
it, it's poison unless you go on with it. 'So it is,' said Bensington.
And in short he proposes the formation of a National Society for the
Preservation of the Proper Proportions of Things. Odd? Eh? People are