Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/552

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538
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

result. I can not do better than end this article by quoting the resolution passed at the recent meeting of the Canada Medical Association: "That the system of education in force in the Dominion draws too largely upon the brain tissue of children and materially injures their mental and bodily health."

TO BÁRBARA.

(A Study in Heredity.)

By DAVID STARR JORDAN.

LITTLE lady, cease your play
For a moment, if you may;
Come to me, and tell me true
Whence those black eyes came to you.

Father's eyes are granite gray,
And your mother's, Bárbara,
Black as the obsidian stone,
With a luster all their own.
How should one so small as you
Learn to choose between the two?


If through father's eyes you look,
Nature seems an open book—
All her secrets written clear
On her pages round you, dear.
Better yet than this may be
If through mother's eyes you see;
Theirs to read—a finer art—
Deep down in the human heart.
How should one so small as you
Choose so well between the two?

Hide your face behind your fan,
Little black-eyed Puritan;
Peer across its edge at me
In demurest coquetry,
Like some Doña Plácida,
Not the Puritan you are.