150 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

Santa Barbara, San Francisco. My wife
reports it as a constant theme of conversati
with her women friends. " What did you
about ? " I sometimes venture to ask her wh<
she returns from one of her lunches or tea parties)
" Oh, the old thing—the difficulty of controlling
the children. They asked me whether we had
the same difficulty in England."

My own experience in this matter, as in many
others that concern the human aspects of America*,
has been varied, and I find it difficult to dra
conclusions. I think the statements recorde
above represent the prevailing feeling amon^
parents. In some of the houses where I hav<
stayed as a guest I have found the children quit'
charming in their manners, full of fun an<
intelligence, easy to make friends with and
obviously devoted to their parents. In othe;
the parents and the children seemed to be leadin
separate lives; the tie between them reduced t
little more than the cash-nexus between
children who run up the bill and the parents w]
" foot it."

Perhaps the Declaration of Independen
which every American child is supposed to b
familiar with—I see it hung up conspicuously
in all the schools—has something to do with
this. They are beginning to act it earlier than
Thomas Jefferson expected. Many American
boys and girls " declare their independence " of
parental authority and assert their inalienable