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Show jj. If J W.S GOULD AND MISS GLORIA COPYRIGHT BY IHTERhATlONAL HRCRZinB COrtPflHY Before they were born I took every care of my own health and lived as much as possible pos-sible in the open air. Before Edith was born I spent months on our yacht cruising around, as it was summer, in fact, she was born at sea. Then I have nursed my babies myself, except twice when illness rendered it impossible for me to do so. I do not believe be-lieve in sterilized milk nor patent baby-foods. baby-foods. A baby is like a little puppy. If you want it to grow fine and strong and fat, you must give it the right start, and nothing has yet been discovered that takes the place of the food that nature intended for a child. "In raising my children my plan has been to bring them up to be simple and hardy. Not one of my children has 5 LEARN from the scientists t-tj of the census bureau and VV others who have made a itudy of that interesting but flf (( (f: erratic bird, the stork, that 9 9 9 its favorite habitat is. in the 0 of the poor rather than in the nnlncps nf the rich, and that in no hardy. Not one of my children has XrtGOrt GOULD GOR GF J. GOULD) JR. iif ' lis - -, ; ill ms yjyAi gould THE ED1WMD GLORIA diversion for our children to en-courage en-courage them in athletic sports. We have a polo-ground, and a riding-ring, and tennis' and squash-courts, and the children have their ponies and ride and drive a great deal. The boys were particularly interested in I polo, and Kingdon, my oldest son, at 15 was considered one of the best polo-players in the I country. Jay was also a fine other place in the world is it more seldom sel-dom seen than along Fifth avenue. g . The home of Mr. George J. Gould, Jffir however, is an exception to this rule. V Seven times the domestic bird has vis- lted and blessed that abode, each time, Jyj leaving a baby so strong and lusty, so big and beautiful, that it fully justified Ul I the fond parents' declaration that it1 On I was the finest child ever born. Bet- I ter still, the Gould children have I I grown up to be almost perfect speci- d gg? mens of physical health, and they are VV so intelligent and so natural and unaf- fected in character that it seema V nII worth while to tell how this result has been accomplished, and how a v. wise father and mother have enabled- their children to lead the simple life B in the midst of millions and a luxury that makes that of the fabled Sybar- 'Hi nL 1 St3S GOULD . - n j o .:v': Xy Jt . WV?:j'-- :VX, -ti a yyy -yy-y. . yy-y'yyyyyyyy ever had on a stitch of flannel, not even a flannel petticoat. They have warm wraps when they go out of doors, but in the house they wear little socks and low-necked and short-sleeved cotton or woolen clothes. They live also on the simplest and plainest food cereals and eggs, tender steaks and good roast meat, with plenty of vegetables and fruit, and the simplest sort of dessert when they have any at all. No pies and pastry, and no nibbling at candy all day for them. I also put great stress on absolute regularity in eating, and no matter who else waits, the children have their meals exactly on the stroke of the clock. "We are a very domestic family, and the children have their breakfast and lunch, which is really their dinner, with Mr. Gould and myself, but until they are 16 years old they have their supper at a little after six o'clock, and only have something very light to eat. They never come to dinner, unless upon their birthdays it is permitted as a great treat. Why, Marjorie never came to dinner regularly until last year, and she is still so attached to the nursery tea that I si v -i i r u I when we are down at Georgian Court she MRS COULD AND TH MISSES EDITH AND Gl OfilA ites look like a makeshift with which one could get along if one had to. When you want to dive to the heart of a mystery mys-tery the French shrug their shoulders and spread out their hands, and say: "Cherchez la femme." If you desire to find the key to any family situation situa-tion and know why the children of the household are what they are virile or weakly, sturdy little lit-tle men and women or flabby jellyfish, potential citizens of worth or mere cumberers of the ground you must act as if the old French adage read: "Cherchez la mere." It is the mother that counts where children are concerned-, and so I sought out Mrs. George J. Gould, and asked her for her recipe for bringing up a family. I found her in their magnificent suite of apartments, at the Plaza hotel, surrounded, surround-ed, like Cornelia, by her jewels. There was her daughter Marjorie, a lovely, slim slip of a girl, one of the debutantes and belles of the season, come in to tell of the delights of the ball of the night before. There was Edith, a sturdy little miss of seven, hanging upon her mother's shoulder. shoul-der. There was George, a shy lad of 12, poking his head in between the portieres from time to time. The other children were absent, and a motor mo-tor was being sent to her school for Vivian, and another to Columbia university for Kingdon and .fay, for the day was bitter cold and snowy.' Baby Gloria, who is only two and a half years old, was spending the winter at Georgian Court with her grandmother, and trinkets were being got ready to send to her there. The room itself was a very temple of motherhood, mother-hood, for its empire tone had been ruthlessly sacrificed sac-rificed before family affection and love of things homelike, and everywhere on walls and mantles and tables there were photographs of the children chil-dren jay in tennis flannels when he won the championship of the world, Kingdon with his first mustache, marvelously like a young edition of the kaiser, Marjorie in her debutante gown, and baby pictures innumerable. In the midst of all this evidence of a mother's brooding love sat Mrs. Gould, a radiant figure in trailing pale-blue silk, as young looking almost as her own daughter, and I thought that if I were an artist I should like to paint her as a triumphant modern Madonna, a woman to whom motherhood has brought nothing but joy, and whose children are her crown of happiness. She has had all that women crave, has this woman who is a darling of the gods. First she had success and fame, which she won by her own genius; then she was given love and marriage and enormous wealth and high social position. She has beauty that is still undimmed, but the best that life has given her is her children, and it is good to hear her say so. "My acquaintances have sometimes pitied me," she said with a smile, "because I have had so many babies, hut I have not one child too many. I have never had a child that I did not want, or that has not found a warm welcome waiting for it. I think that is one reason why my children have all been so strong and have had such se-ene se-ene dispositions. 1 have Celt the responsibilities of motherhood. :.rd have tried to give my children as good a i bie by giving them sound bodies. often eats with the children by preference. "Of course I have so many other duties that it is not possible for me to be always with my babies, ba-bies, and so I kept a trained nurse for each one until he or she was two and a half years old, and past the teething-time; but there is never a night, even to this day, that I do not go into each room the last thing before going to bed, and tuck the covers down with my own hands, good and tight around each child. And I have nursed every one of my children with my own hands when they were sick. I had trained nurses, of course, but I sat up with the sick child, too. When Marjorie had that fearful spell of scarlet fever In France the summer before last, and when it seemed utterly ut-terly impossible for her to recover, her father and I never left her day or night for weeks. The doctors said that it was the most malignant case they ever saw, and that nothing but her marvelous marvel-ous strength pulled her through. They said that if she had been a French girl she certainly would have died. "I believe that the chief thing about raising children up to be well and strong is to bring them up in the country where they can have plenty of fresh air and room for exercise, and freedom. It was for the benefit of our children that we went down to Lakewood and built Georgian Court. The second floor of the house is devised especially for the children, and the sunniest room in it is for the baby and the next sunniest for the ex-baby; and we's always had great times and ceremonies when the reigning monarch had to give way for a new king or queen of the nursery and have his or her little belongings packed up and moved on. "Everything has been sacrificed for the good of the children. For ten years we lived at Georgian Court only in the winter, and took the babies every summer up to the quietest and dullest little place in the world in the Catskills, ten miles from anywhere. "At Georgian Court we provided every sort of player, but after Kingdon went to Columbia ln game was somewhat broken lip; so as there was a fine professional tennis-player at Lakewood liw took up court tennis instead. It is a game that requires re-quires unusual strength and quickness of motion; but he soon became so expert at it that when he was 17 he won the American championship, and when he was 18' he carried off the English chain-' pionship, which is, of course, the championship ol the world. "Neither Mr. Gould nor myself Is an advocate of boarding-schools. We believe that the very best associations that children can have during the formative years of their lives are home associations, associa-tions, and that no guardianship is equal to the loving watchfulness of a father and mother. Therefore There-fore we have kept our children right in the home nest, and have had them educated by tutors and governesses . "In educating the children we have tried to develop de-velop each one along the line of his or her own natural bent. For instance, Marjorie adoreH reading, read-ing, particular poetry and romance. She is a good musician and, as I said, speaks four languages; but she does not care for what you might call the drudgery of study, and I have not afflicted her with it. But Vivian has a profound mind. She loves to study and to delve into deep subjects. "I am very proud of my two big hoys. They aro clever, and they are strong, manly boys, and best of all, In a mother's eyes, they are good boys. Neither of them has ever caused me a moment's uneasiness or a single heart-pang. Kingdon in 21 and Jay is 20, and neither of them smokes or has ever tasted liquor. Not that 1 am a prohibitionist at ail, or have ever tried especially to keep such things away from them, but they just have no desire de-sire for stimulants. And that, 1 take It, is about the best indication of their health and strength, as well as a vindication of ray method of raising children, chil-dren, for after all, it's the healthy body that, gives a healthy mind and healthy impulses, ii-n't. It?" |