As for myself, while anxious to keep in touch with my wayward brood, I find
the strain of accommodating myself to their varied requirements almost more
than I can stand. Pamela can only endure my companionship on the conditions
that I smoke (which makes me ill); that I emulate the excesses of her lurid
lingo (which makes me squirm), and that I paint my face (which makes me
look like a modern Messalina, which I am not). Gerald is prepared to accept
me as a "pal," provided that I play David to his Saul by regaling him on
Sunday mornings with negroid melodies, which he punctuates with snorts on
the trombone. If he knew that I went to early morning service all would be
at an end between us. Finally, Anthony wants me to remain as I was and
really am. So you see that I have to lead not a dual but a triple life, and
am only spared the necessity of making it quadruple by the fact that my
husband is fortunately dead. As Pamela gracefully remarked the other day,
"It was a good thing for poor father that he went West to sing bass in the
heavenly choir before we grew up." In conclusion I ought to admit that my
future is not without prospects of alleviation. Pamela has just announced
her engagement to an archdeacon of pronounced Evangelical views; Gerald is
meditating a prolonged tour in New Guinea with a Bolshevist mission;
Anthony contemplates neither matrimony nor expatriation.

I am, Sir, Yours respectfully,

A MIDDLE-AGED MOTHER.

THE CRY OF THE CHILD AUTHOR.

SIR,--As a novelist and dramatist whose work has met with high encomiums
from Mr. J.L. GARVIN, Mr. C.K. SHORTER, Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS and Lord HOWARD
DE WALDEN, I wish to impress upon you and your readers the hardships and
restrictions which the tyranny of parental control still imposes on