FOOTNOTE:[2]By Jacob Abbott. (Harper and Brothers.)
[2]By Jacob Abbott. (Harper and Brothers.)
[2]By Jacob Abbott. (Harper and Brothers.)
Advice to wives usually begins with this sort of exhortation: When your husband returns from the office, greet him smilingly; exile from your face the traitorous lines of care, imprison in the silences of your mind the petty vexing trials of the day, dismiss to their own quarters the evidences of housework. Your husband's home is his castle; when he takes refuge there in flight from his enemies, the cares of his vocation, do not confront him with your own. We are all familiar with this strain. It sounds well. But, after all, the lord's castle is his lady's battlefield. If she is a very fine lady indeed, she may not have engaged in any personal encounters. If her resources and disposition permit, she may hire mercenaries to do her fighting for her. In that case herbattles have been sham battles, and she has no relic of carnage to hide. If, however, she is not one of those who regard one child as a nuisance and two as an intolerable burden, and therefore prefers to conduct the campaign of their training herself, she can hardly be sure of turning nightly the battlefield of that home into the semblance of an impregnable castle. The fact is, any woman who regards motherhood as a vocation quite as worthy of respect as yelling on the Stock Exchange (and that I believe is a very, very respectable vocation indeed) will find it a serious drain on her physical and nervous resources.
However much a woman may court martyrdom, I never heard of one who deliberately invited vexation of spirit. She may find a genuine happiness in the weariness she has incurred for the sake of some great object; but she finds no happiness in the annoyances she encounters purposelessly. Now, it is just these vexations,these annoyances, which it is a part of her vocation to avoid. So far from being an incident of motherhood, they are an impediment.
Most of these annoyances, these vexations, with which a mother has to contend, come from a maladjustment between her children and their environment. Quarrels among themselves, irritability and disobedience toward her, impositions upon the servants, pertness with their elders, insubordination toward their teachers, altercations with their playmates, and friction with the neighbors—it is affairs of these sorts that fray a woman's nerves and wrack her mind. No woman can long endure these things. There are not many courses open to her. She can die, or she can rid herself of her children by consigning them to servants who are paid for accepting her responsibility. In either case she no longer concerns us. Let us suppose, however, that she remains a mother. Then the only course that she canpursue is to attempt some mode of adjustment.
There are two ways in which she can act. She can undertake either to adjust her children to their environment, or to adjust their environment to them. Almost every mother adopts either one way or the other within the first two months of her first baby's life. The young lord of creation puts the problem squarely before her: Am I to begin my reign now—and I warn you it will be a case of whimsical autocracy—or must I take my place in the order of this household? If his mother is a washerwoman, he gets no answer; she goes about her washing and he finds his place without much remonstrance. The children of the poor are blessed with mothers who have this problem settled for them by the gaunt hand of necessity. If, however, this lordling has been born in the purple, even of very light shade, he has a good chance of seizing the sceptre at the very firstgrasp. He certainly will seize it and wield it relentlessly, if his mother decides to do the easiest thing. At the beginning and for some time it is easier to conform the household to the baby than the baby to the household. It is easier because strictly at the beginning it is necessary. Even the household of the washerwoman is swerved for a few days out of its regular course; but when the wash comes in again, the household is swerved back. The trouble comes in those families where the mother's will has to take the place of somebody else's wash. Of course there are cases which cannot be considered normal. The newcomer is puny and needs the constant attention that every invalid requires; or the mother's strength has been sapped, and she must, for everybody's sake, do the easiest thing. In such cases there is no choice. Ordinarily, however, the issue is not long postponed. The trained nurse, if there is one, can have a good deal to do in deciding it. Probably it will be mostdistinctly raised over a question of feeding. The foundation of absolute monarchy within many a plain American home has been laid by allowing the diminutive heir apparent to engage in midnight feasting when every consideration of orderliness commanded sleep. It is on such an occasion that a man, if he has any chivalry in him, will sustain his wife's good resolution. If he chooses to be anything more to his household than a purveyor, he will not have to wait long to make good his determination.
The difference between a household adjusted to a child and a child adjusted to a household is the difference between unstable and stable equilibrium. Quietness, peace, and an aspect of repose may be found in both cases; but in the one case every new movement threatens an upset.
There are two kinds of households, the adjustable and the unadjustable. A child, let us say, wakes in the morning. If he isaccustomed to an adjustable household, there is an end of sleep for those who have the care of him. For the sake of peace to the others some one has to keep him quietly amused until the time of rising. That some one, we all can guess, is the mother. At breakfast it is the child that is first served, and when he is finished with eating it is his new demands that interrupt the meal. The mother does her household tasks under the child's supervision. In order to avoid the necessity of leaving them to rush upon every demand to the nursery, she manages to have him in the room with her. Tethering him to the leg of a table, barricading him behind chairs, occupying his mind now with one bauble, now with another, she succeeds, with the exercise of an acquired versatility, in securing for him safety from harm, for the furniture measurable immunity from damage, and for herself a comparatively noiseless morning. When the time for his nap arrives, she, as the availablemember of the household, leaves everything else and puts him to sleep. After he wakes and is dressed, a caller arrives. For an instant forgetful, she starts to leave the young ruler. A wail recalls her. A gurgle of satisfaction rewards her for taking him in her arms. The visitor is now a part of the household and must be properly adjusted. At the sight of the caller the baby makes violent protest. Then comes the period of coaxing, unsatisfactory to the child, troublesome to the mother, and disconcerting to the guest. Irreconcilable, the youngster is handed over to some one for the nonce, and the visitor concludes the call and departs to the accompaniment of mourning. The despot is easily restored to good humor as soon as he sees again his favorite subject. The one annoying episode of the day is easily set down against the account, not of the child, not of his mother, but of the caller. "That black gown she wore" many a time does duty as an explanation for what is reallythe product of an adjustable household. Aside from the more immediate and obvious disadvantages of the adjustable household, there is this: that it hardly fits the child for living in an unadjustable world.
The child who greets the morning in an unadjustable household finds at hand enough to amuse him until it is time for his bath. His mother has not led him to expect anything else. I remember a little fellow whom I used to see a few years ago. Of delicate organism, decidedly high-strung, very sensitive to sound and motion, he needed as much attention as any well baby ever did. Regularly every morning, after giving him his breakfast and getting him ready for the day, his mother took him to the nursery, left him on the padded floor, gave him his few blocks, and left him to his devices. She was free to go downstairs then about her work. She was not beyond earshot. When the sun was high, she wrapped him upwell, put him in his carriage, and, wheeling him out on the porch, left him again alone. In the afternoon the process was reversed: first the sunny porch, then the quiet nursery. Times for play with him came to an end according to her judgment, not his. Because she loved him and understood her vocation as mother, she established in this nervous child the habit of encountering the world with placidity. This is the way of the mother who determines that her household shall be unadjustable.
There are those who regard childhood as a period when the individual becomes, to use Stevenson's phrase, "well armored for this world." It is this conception of childhood as a preparation for after-life that underlies Huxley's essay on liberal education. There are others who would say, with a recent writer, that childhood is not to be regarded as a preparation for youth that in turn becomes a preparation for manhood, but rather is to be made "beautiful and glorious in and for itself,not a vestibule to a vestibule to a vestibule." Whichever of these two views we take, we shall find, I think, that the only way of escape from disorder and confusion is not by adjusting the child's environment to him, but by adjusting him to his environment.
The one unescapable part of our children's environment is—ourselves. Over them we are always impending. At inconvenient times we rise in their way and impede their most absorbing occupations. On their excursions into the wilds of fancy it is we who obtrude and with philistine complacency drive them back into the gross world of wash-basins and table manners. Three small boys are busy blasting. One is a workman; a second is the fuse; the third is the hole, and is about to explode for the sixth time. Who interrupts with some trivial but insistent remark about less noise or clean clothes? One of us. And the worst of it is that we who are so troublesomely recurrent, andwho are their source of supplies, seem to be incapable of appreciating the delights of becoming at will a trolley-car, an alligator, a goblin, or a hole in the ground. That is the sort of environment we are; and if we are going to adjust our children to it, we ought to understand how knurly it is. When we understand that, we shall perhaps see the importance of giving our children a chance to explode without being flung repeatedly against our prosy protuberances. Sometimes we can manage that by simply giving them room for their own Arcady. (And it is not our business to insist that their Arcady be our sort.) Sometimes it will be necessary to manage this otherwise. We may, for instance, live in a flat. In that case we may actually have to exercise some imagination and suggest to them an occupation which will keep them from a too rasping contact with us. The first requisite, then, for peace is a reasonable degree of non-interference.
Interference, however, we cannot always avoid. Then the question becomes one of interfering without friction. Any one can give commands to a child, or instruct him after a fashion, or punish him; but to exercise authority over a child and at the same time keep on good terms with him, that is an art in which we are not all equally adept. But it is an art we must master if we are to be free of unnecessary annoyance and a great deal of fruitless pother. We cannot be on good terms with a healthy child except on the basis of justice. That is one reason why an altercation with a child is a sign of failure in discipline: it is not sportsmanlike. It lacks the prime element of justice, an equal chance for each opponent. When we take a child for an antagonist, we do not enter a square fight; we have him at an unfair advantage. He knows it as well as we, and that is why, even if we win—as win we ought with size and strength and wit on our side—our victory is an ingloriousfailure. When he succumbs in the struggle, he has learned only one thing—that he must enlarge his resources. A small boy leaves his sled in the front hall. He is ordered to remove it and he refuses. Then comes the tussle. Rather than go to bed, he finally complies. The next time he awaits the approach of a visitor. This time he leaves his sled in the front hall and flees. He has learned his lesson—to pick the place and moment for battle when the enemy is at a disadvantage. The visitor, serenely unconscious of the fact, has diverted the enemy. The sled is whisked out of sight. No penalty now inflicted on the boy can be to him other than the manifestation of resentment and chagrin on the part of an outwitted adversary. In such a case what does justice suggest? There is the voice of one in authority.
"Your sled is in the front hall; put it away."
"But I don't want to. I'm playing."
The affair seems to be at an end. There is no insistence; there are no threats.
A day later. "Mamma! Mamma! Where's my sled?"
"Did you look in its place?"
"Yes, and it isn't there."
"Where did you leave it?"
"I don't know."
"Think."
(With shamed face) "I guess in the front hall."
"You had better look in the front hall, then."
"It isn't there."
"Did you expect to find it there?"
"No-o."
There is no ground for altercation here. Perhaps there may be need for explanation. The loss of a day's coasting in this case may be actually a severer punishment than the threatened hours in bed in the other case, but it comes in the course of justice, and the boy knows it. Nobody has won a victory, because there has beenno struggle; but somebody has learned a lesson. And through it all the boy remains on good terms with his environment.
Of course it would never do for a child to live in too just a world; his awakening upon entrance into the world that we grown folks have made for ourselves would be cruelly rude. He must have ample chance to learn how to meet injustice. Happily, such chance will frequently come his way without any solicitude on our part. One can discern something almost purposeful in the fact that the sense of justice is no part of the parental instinct. Indeed, it seems as if it had been made especially difficult for grown people to deal justly with children. For one thing, in order to be just with a child one must be prepared to believe anything, no matter how preposterous. Once on a time a little girl was going downstairs. In her arms she held a precious doll. She knew that it was a prized family possession. To her consternation she suddenly felt it leave herhold, and in an instant she saw it lying broken upon the stairs. When she was questioned by her mother, she announced simply that the doll had jumped from her arms. In spite of all that her mother said to her on the evil of willful untruth, she persisted in her story. Whether she was punished I do not know; but if she was, it was not because of an accident, but because of a falsehood. In any case, she suffered the indignity of being disbelieved. For a long time the feeling of injustice rankled in her. It was not until she had grown old enough to learn that a doll cannot leap that she relinquished her faith in the statement which had been treated by her mother as a lie. A dash of credulity would have established a good understanding with that child; but that was too much to expect. It is not easy to be credulous at the right times. That is one reason why we need never take pains lest we be too just with our children.
With the best of intentions, the most competent of us will now and then lapse into deeds of injustice. If we discovered them all, we should lead uneasy lives. A kind Providence, however, keeps us oblivious of most of them; and our children are slow in learning to preserve a grudge. When one of us, however, discovers that he has been unjust toward his child, what does he do? That depends on his standards. If his ambition is to be omniscient and infallible, he keeps the discovery to himself, and, if he corrects the injustice, manages by some subterfuge to make the correction, not an act of justice, but an act of grace. His policy might be epitomized in Jowett's motto for public men: with children his practice is, "Never retract, never explain; get it done, and let them howl." For one who does not care to pay the price of courage and self-respect, this rule can be made to work very well. One whose ambition, however, is to be authoritative with children will valuesincerity with them as a principle and not as an expedient. Karl has apparently been guilty of willful disobedience; he has done something he was told not to do. The punishment which regularly follows rebellion is announced. It then transpires that what seemed disobedience was really misunderstanding. What can be done? Since the maternal court does not crave infallibility, the error in sentence is acknowledged. So far from impairing confidence in the court, this proceeding actually tends to buttress it. The next time an adverse judgment is declared and sentence is inflicted, the culprit, even if he believes himself guiltless, will, if he thinks about it at all, suspect that the judge is attempting, not to preserve her dignity, but honestly to administer justice. A child can pay his parents no greater honor than by protesting, in the belief that he will be heard, that a threatened punishment would be unfair.
Even that mother who finds otheroccupations more dignified and gratifying than that of motherhood cannot wholly escape the necessity of deciding whether the ground of her dealings with her children shall be justice or something else. In delegating responsibility to servants, she must decide whether she will delegate authority also. The woman who puts her children in the charge of a hired maid and then declares, "I will never require a child of mine to obey a servant," deliberately chooses to be unjust to her children. That she is also unjust to the servant is not so grave a matter. The servant can, if she wishes, find another mistress; but the child is compelled to be content as he can with that mother. Such a woman is usually quite powerless to secure obedience toward herself. When her daughters are grown, she wonders why they do not become her friends; when her sons are grown, she wonders why they exhibit no desire for her companionship.
The only footing for comradeship isfair dealing. Even a sense of humor, essential as that is, will not take its place. Who would be a comrade with his children must first be just with them.
Why we expect children to be more tranquil than a parliamentary body or a ministers' meeting I do not know and cannot imagine. To be troubled because children quarrel is to deplore one of their chief prerogatives—the prerogative of being themselves. The time to be troubled is not when they quarrel merely, but when they quarrel in the wrong way or about wrong things. To teach children how to quarrel and what to quarrel about is one of the duties of parents.
Together with some compensating advantages, an only child has one indisputable misfortune: there is no one in the family he can really quarrel with. No altercation he might have with a grown-up could be dignified with the name of quarrel. All his quarreling hemust do outside his home. Consequently, he cannot receive from his parents all the attention that he might receive if he were, say, one of six. When he finally encounters other children, he does not know the bounds either of expediency in tolerating their idiosyncrasies, or of right in maintaining his own. With skill his parents may acquire artificially for themselves, as well as for him, the experiences which naturally befall a larger household. It is plain, therefore, that those parents are fortunate who have quarreling children. To them avenues of education are open which are closed to the parents of an only child.
I do not refer to those roads which, originating in the nursery, have led to the depths of theology or to the heights of moral discourse. The road which has landed more than one theologian in meditation upon the depraved nature of the child may well have had its beginning in childish quarrels. There was JonathanEdwards, for instance; he had ten sisters and about as many children. This suggests a fit subject for a thesis. Then that pleasanter if less picturesque way, bordered with the flowers and the weeds of rhetoric, which has brought the preacher and the versifier to sermons and rhymes for the edification of the young, must have received many a traveler from tributary paths of domestic strife. Isaac Watts, for instance, who being dead yet speaketh of dogs and bears and lions and children, was the eldest of nine. The avenues of education to which I refer, however, are open only to parents or vice-parents, and lead only to parental skill.
Some parents act as if they did not even know that these avenues exist. Consequently, when they encounter contention among their offspring, they fly in all directions at once. This undoubtedly makes for agility. For example:—
Waves of turmoil burst through the closed doors of the playroom, flood thestairway, and whelm to the ears the placid group of grown-ups in the living-room. As the visiting cousin nervously halts her small talk, and the tired mother lays down her knitting, the master of the house, with an air of finality, gesturing the others into subsidence, breasts the billows of sound. Upward, two steps in a stride, he makes an assault upon the playroom.
"What's all this about?" as he flings open the door. "Bless me! everybody can hear you all over the house. Your mother and I aren't undertaking to keep a zoo. Do you suppose that somebody can be running up here every five minutes? Besides, don't you know that your mother's cousin Bettina is visiting us, and that she is distracted by this sort of uproar? Now don't try to interrupt. What did you say? That Ruth threw a coal-car at you? Why, Ruth, my little girl! that's a very dangerous thing to do. If you had struck one of the boys in the eye, you might have madehim blind. I shall have to take the cars away, if you are going to do dangerous things with them. What's that? They're not Ruth's cars? What of it? Does that make them any the less dangerous? Now, don't interrupt again. Besides, Ruth, that was a very unladylike thing for a little girl to do. And, boys, you are at fault, too. Ruth would never have done that if you hadn't done something to her. Is that the way young gentlemen should treat a young lady? And Ruth is younger than you. She can't defend herself unless she does something like that. I shall have to punish you all; perhaps that will help you to learn how to behave. Now, you boys, go over to Ruth and ask her pardon; and, Ruth, you kiss them and tell them you're sorry. And now play together properly. See if you can't get along till tea-time without making a disturbance."
Satisfied that he has settled an acute difficulty, this composite father, in whose voice has sounded some tones that I darenot disown, descends the peaceful stairs. What he has actually done has been to throw into hopeless unsettlement a situation that was after a fashion already half settled. If the children are quiet, it is because they are dazed by the feats of an acrobatic adult mind. They have watched their father make a circuit of the situation, cross at least a half-dozen paths that led safely out, and, ignoring all, return to the point of departure. The benefit they have received from the performance is not at all the benefit he believes he has imparted. It has not been, as he fancies, the benefit of discipline; it has been the benefit of diversion. As for himself, he has received that most welcome of benefits—a mental frame of complacency.
Not being as nimble as he, we may find it worth our while to stop for a moment at each path that he passed and explore it. What we are prone to forget is that from almost every difficulty of this kindthere are several exits, and that there is no progress made in attempting to travel more than one at a time. In this case, all need for the display of gymnastics might have been avoided by the consideration of a few simple questions.
One question has precedence of all others: Shall I interfere or not? To decide that question in the negative is to eliminate all the others. That it is necessary to do this, the conjunction of a quarrel and a luncheon party may demonstrate. The critical time comes when there is no luncheon party. To allow children some chance to settle their own differences is as certainly an act of discipline as it is to settle every difference for them. It is none the less discipline for the children because it seems to be chiefly self-discipline. A younger sister once had a grievance; she made her protest with a strident whine. Annoyed by the outburst, her mother descended upon the whole crew, wormed out themerits of the case, and with an even hand apportioned among the offenders penalty or reproof. Having profited, as it happened, by this occurrence, the small girl, the next time she wished to gain an advantage over the others, resorted to the same whining outcry. Immediately the three older children fell to playing church. With a loud and discordant hymn, they designed to drown the sound of protest. Though at this time in the right, they preferred not to take the risk. Already well trained by her children, that mother was quick to remain where she was. It sometimes requires alertness to do nothing. Just though her interference had been, she saw that it not only had encouraged in one child an annoying mode of complaint, but also had suggested to the others a noisy mode of averting judgment. Thereafter it seemed easier for her to hesitate before participating in her children's controversies. How can children experiment with the principles with which their eldershave tried to endow them, except upon those occasions when those didactic elders do not interfere? How, on the other hand, can those same elders see what effect their precepts have had, unless the children can begin a quarrel on the chance that they may end it themselves? Deliberately to determine not to interfere in a children's quarrel comes not of grace but of labor. Any one can lapse into indifference as to the merits of a dispute between two youngsters, but only one who has come through affliction to self-control can at the same time maintain an acute interest in the triumph of the just cause and keep his hands off. The virtue of non-interference is not a gift, it is an achievement.
Occasions which demand interference, however, occur frequently enough to supply with plenty of exercise any normally active parental mind. Whenever it is clearly best that the children should not be allowed to end their quarrel themselves, the parent who is not in search merelyof self-complacency can ask himself a number of questions. Usually, the time for asking and answering those questions is very brief. The exercise is vigorous while it lasts. On the way from the living-room to the nursery, the hastening parent can, for example, perform this rapid mental scale passage: To what purpose am I interfering? Is it to suppress a noise? or to avert a danger? or to teach courtesy? or to instruct in morals? or to do justice? or to establish an amicable basis? Later, and perhaps more deliberately, he will run over this scale of questions: What means shall I use? Shall it be force? or argument? or ridicule? or explanation? or advice? or instruction? or command? or punishment? It requires practice to pounce upon the note principally out of tune in a wealth of discord, and then to choose the one tool that will set it right; but then, there is no vocation more exciting than parenthood.
The noise of a quarrel may be its mostserious offense. We can admit that fact without accepting as an invariable rule the maxim of our nervous, overwrought ancestors, Children should be seen and not heard. At times it seems, indeed, as if the present age were too phlegmatic. There are people for whose nerves children should be made to have some regard; there are invalids who do not thrive on din; there is necessary work which cannot be done in the midst of a racket; there are neighbors who declare, with some show of right, that they regard monopoly in noise as against public policy. So, whether for the sake of cousin Bettina's nerves, or a tired mother's rest, or a busy father's conference with a creditor, or merely for the sake of reputation with the neighbors, it may be best to disregard all other factors and insist on quiet. That seems clear enough. The trouble with us pretentious grown-ups is that usually when we undertake to stop a quarrel because it is disturbing, we delude ourselves intothinking that we have some high moral purpose. We can expose our own fatuity by simply inquiring of ourselves, when we begin our preachment, Would we have interfered if this quarrel had not been so strepitous? It is one of the annoyances in the training of children that if we are to be honest with them, we must be honest with ourselves. I do not see how that can be helped. And with children honesty is prerequisite to authority. To pretend that we chiefly want them to be good at a time when really we chiefly want them to be quiet is to renounce all influence over them when really we arrive at the point of chiefly wanting them to be good. That is reason enough for being honest with them. So when we set out towards a quarrel with the determination of suppressing a noise, we shall, if we are honest, deal with the quarrel, not as turpitude, but as noise. We may not be able to persuade the contestants of the existence of nerves, or headaches, orcreditors, or neighbors, or even of our own reasonableness; but we shall at least probably succeed in conveying to them the genuineness of this single idea that is uppermost in our own mind: if you can't quarrel quietly, you shall not quarrel at all. If later we wish to impress upon them the necessity of being considerate of others, we can use that specific quarrel as an illustration without risking with them our reputation for singleness.
A quarrel may involve something which, even more than noise, demands instant interference. Two small boys were in an altercation. The older had a ball. The younger wanted that ball with a consuming hunger. The nearest weapon at hand was the discarded shaft of a golf club. Seizing it, he began his attack with reckless fury. The sound of a blow upon a piece of furniture followed by an outcry of fear brought their father to the room. His thought was not for anybody's manners or morals, nor for the disturbance,nor for a just settlement of the contest; it was for the defenseless boy's head. There was but one possible measure: immediate and forcible confiscation of the club. This was frankly not punishment—which would have involved a moral judgment—but simply humane intervention. The announcement that the club was to remain confiscated for a week merely emphasized the extent of the intervention, not the severity of a punishment. The incident might have served as an occasion for a lecture upon the danger of the wanton use of weapons; as a matter of fact, I believe, it was, of a sort; but—
"Oh, daddy, it was my ball!"
"No, daddy, really it wasn't!"
All such discussion as to the merits of the dispute was quashed. Likewise was stifled all inclination on the part of the intervening parent to deliver a lesson on the evils of an ungovernable temper. That might not have been confusing, if it could have been made distinct from theact of intervention; but it was not necessary. The fault was not an excess of temper so much as a thoughtless or ignorant use of power. At least, that was the judgment on which this father acted. Whether he was right or wrong is not to the point; what is to the point is that he formed his judgment, acted upon it, and did not obscure the issue by confusing the consequences—or possible consequences—of a deed with its moral character.
Just as the physical consequence of a quarrel may be more important than its moral aspects, so may be its significance as an exhibition of manners. When their elders hopelessly intermingle precepts as to the amenities with deliverances upon ethics, children can hardly be blamed if they come to regard murder as in the same category with the wearing of tan boots to the accompaniment of a frock coat. An altercation marked by vulgarity, or even by nothing more thandelinquencies in courtesy, may be more distasteful to grown-ups than one involving meanness or deceit. In such a case we may give interference the form of an expression of disgust, and keep the issue clear. If, however, we allow it to take the form of punishment, we might as well admit to ourselves that we are engaged not in disciplining children but in relieving our own feelings, and be grateful that we have at hand such an outlet for our emotions.
Occasionally there arises a quarrel which supplies a text for a moral lesson. A quarrel of this sort arose one day between a small boy of five or six and his sister a year or two older. The mother of these two had issued a command to the younger that he take off his wet shoes. In a few minutes she heard the sound of struggle. It called for investigation. There on the nursery floor was the lad, tearful and angry; near at hand his sister, reproachful and indignant. It appeared that his neglect of the order had arousedher to action. He resented her assumption of authority; she resented his resentment. The case was not as simple as it appeared to be. Punishment of the small boy without explanation would have seemed to him like punishment for disobedience toward a sister who was without authority. On the other hand, a rebuke of the sister for unwarranted assumption of authority would have seemed to her like a rebuke for loyalty to her mother. It was a case, not primarily for punishment or even for rebuke, but for moral instruction, or, if you prefer, explanation.
As an occasion for the doing of justice, a quarrel among children often presents great perplexities. It is hard for a mother to be a just judge between her children. This is partly because she is so practiced in partiality for her children that she revolts at the apparent hardness of impersonal fairness; partly because she frequently cannot ascertain the facts. A mother who loves justice while she lovesher children will not be quick to ascend the bench. Sometimes, however, she must. There was once called, for instance, the case of Ronaldvs.Dan. After a statement of the case made in turn by the two litigants, and confirmed or corrected by the visiting playmate Davy, the facts seemed to be as follows: The boys were cutting advertising pictures out of newspapers. Each of the boys had his own pile of newspapers which was his property. Dan had on one of his papers a picture which he did not care for, but which Ronald cared for very much. No sooner had Ronald expressed his desire for this picture than Dan crumpled the paper up in his hand and threw it into the waste-basket. Hence the complaint. The act was undeniably one of meanness; it was done with the intent to exasperate; but it transgressed no rights. The paper was Dan's property, to be disposed of as he pleased. Ronald had not the slightest claim upon it. This was clearlyunderstood. While the trial was in progress, Davy, the witness, fished the paper out of the waste-basket, where it had become the personal property of nobody, cut out the picture, smoothed its wrinkles, and presented it to the grateful Ronald. Justice to Dan had compelled the recognition of his right to do with his own as he pleased. Judgment rendered for the defendant. Could any mother be satisfied with that outcome? So far as determining whether punishment was to be measured out, that ended the case. Strictly observing as between herself and her children their property rights, that judge could not refuse to enforce those rights as among themselves. This case, however, raised another question than that of justice.
This was the question of future amity. The generous action of Davy, the witness, made it possible to use the incident for furthering not only just but also happy relations among the children. It made the defendant somewhat ashamed ofhimself, although of course it did not in the least obscure to his mind the consciousness that the judge had dealt with him justly. It moreover restored the sun to the complainant's cloudy face. Thus at the same time it impressed on the mind of the guilty a sense of his own meanness and effaced the memory of that meanness from the mind of the aggrieved. It is not always that a judge has a Davy at hand. It will not, however, necessarily confuse matters if she act the part of Davy herself. It is sometimes possible thus to give a practical demonstration of the fact that the spoils of justice are not always satisfying.
As in walking, so in living with our fellows, some friction is necessary. To deprive a child of friction with other children is to keep him in slippery places. Unless we wish to teach him how to elude his kind, we shall not begrudge him his wholesome contests of skill, of wit, of strength, of temper. We shall only takecare that he does his fighting fairly and not on too slight a provocation, that he knows how to yield to the weakness of another, that he does not learn to whine or snivel, that he does not become a tale-bearer, that he can take defeat or rebuke without callousness and without a whimper, that he becomes capable of forgetting his resentments and his personal triumphs over others, and that of all his victories, he learns to value most those which he wins over himself.
The master of the house had returned from a visit to the country home.
"Whom do you suppose I saw to-day?"
The children could not imagine.
"Old Robert. And what do you think he said?"
The guesses flew wide.
"No; you're all wrong. What he said was, 'How are the little men?'"
Then up rose Deacon, as the old colored man had dubbed him, the youngest, blandest, tricksiest of the trio; and he laughed in derisive resentment.
"I think old Robert is funny. He calls us little men. I don't think people will like old Robert if he calls 'em names."
Names! Will children never cease to shock us by their points of view? Old Robert, like a well-baked pie, had put allthe richness of his highly flavored feeling for the lads into that one phrase. He made it serve him as a message of loyalty, respect, affection, comradeship.
Old Robert had probably never heard of James Mill; and if he had, he would not have cited him as an authority; for old Robert did not act according to the logic of his phrase. James Mill, however, did just that; he proceeded on the theory that it is wholesome to treat children as if they were miniature men and women. He began with his first-born by fitting to him an intellectual frock coat and tall hat. Why he waited till the youngster was three years old no one, so far as I know, has ever explained. Without much further delay he also gave him a religious outfit. This, though decidedly less conventional than his intellectual wardrobe, had the same adult cut. It was not the Benthamite fashion of his religious garb, but its mature lines, that gave John Stuart Mill his air of fascinating priggishness and suave conceit.
Our taste, unlike James Mill's, may be for orthodoxy. We need not on that account despair of imbuing our children with religious precocity and self-assurance. Before he was ten years old, John Stuart Mill had learned that Christianity was immoral, and that there was no personal God. There is no reason why any child at the same age may not know all the mysteries of predestinarianism, and be old in the experiences of sanctification. All we need is the diligence, the courage, the determination of James Mill.
In these qualities some of our forbears had the advantage of us. They knew very definitely what they wished their children to do and to believe. Among them was an American contemporary of James Mill, the Rev. Carlton Hurd. There are people still living who gratefully recall the ministration of this kindly, stalwart New England divine. He so ran as not uncertainly; so fought he, not as one that beateth the air. And his certitude did not forsake himin the training of his little daughter. It may seem almost grotesque to couple the English author and employee of the East India Company with the Orthodox American parson. The one held beliefs antipodal to those of the other. James Mill, moreover, not being able to believe in a God so stern as to create this evil world, made up what was lacking in the cosmos by cultivating in himself an iron sternness toward his son; on the other hand, Parson Hurd, as he is still affectionately called, being fully persuaded of the existence of a God capable of infinite wrath, seemed to cherish in himself, as sort of compensation, a most touching solicitude for his daughter. In only one respect did Parson Hurd resemble James Mill,—in having and holding to a body of convictions which were, to his mind, not only indisputable, but also, in substance at least, essential to the proper adornment of the mind of a child. The letter in which he tells the story of Marion Lyle Hurd isthe narrative of a complete and orderly religious experience.
Marion died at the age of four years. When she was eight months old, her parents read to her from leaflets for Sabbath Schools. They explained to her, when she was a year and a half old, in answer to questions from her, the origin and use of the Bible. They noted that when she had reached the age of two "her mind was seriously exercised with religious things." At that time she would sometimes kneel down and would say:—
"Mother, I am going to pray. What shall I say to God?"
"Ask God to make you good and give you a new heart."
"What is a new heart, Mother?"
"This was familiarly explained," writes her father, "and at the same time she was particularly informed of the way of salvation by Jesus Christ, and the steps God had taken to save sinners. We endeavored to impress upon her mind that she wasa sinner and needed forgiveness; and God would forgive her sins, and give her a new heart through Jesus Christ." That from this time "she chiefly devoted her few remaining days to the acquisition of religious knowledge" her father finds to be "a consoling reflection." He adds, with conscientious caution, "If she was truly converted, we cannot tell when the change took place." Her parents hoped, however, after she had died two years later, that she had "entered 'the city of our God.'" Though they had no means of perceiving the approach of the disease of the brain which occasioned her death, they realized that the sensitiveness and activity of her mind warned them "to lead Marion with the gentlest hand; to make her way as quiet and even as possible." In this third year the books which were read to her included Parley's "Geography" and "Astronomy," Gallaudet's "Child's Book on the Soul," and "Daily Food for Christians." In her fourth year her books,which she read to herself, were, besides the Bible, "Child's Book on Repentance," "Life of Moses," "Family Hymns," "Union Hymns," "Daily Food," "Lessons for Sabbath Schools," "Henry Milnor," Watts's "Divine Songs," "Memoir of John Mooney Mead," "Nathan W. Dickerman," Todd's "Lectures to Children," and "Pilgrim's Progress." As these titles indicate, she was "particularly fond of reading the biography of good little children." Of all her books, however, Bunyan's masterpiece seems to have been the most instructive. Her knowledge of the allegory was tested by questions. She knew why Christian went through the river while Ignorance was ferried over. She knew what was meant by the Slough of Despond and the losing of the Burden. "When we come to Christ," said she, "we" (not Christians, or people, or you, but we) "lose our sins." And she sought from her father a certificate to enter the City. "We cannot doubt," comments herfather, "Marion understood much of what was intended to be taught in that book, which Phillip says, in his life of John Bunyan, contains the essence of all theology. Certainly, she was familiar with every step of the pathway of holiness trod by Christian, from the city of Destruction through the river of death to the 'Celestial City.'" And later he adds that she evinced "a familiar acquaintance with all parts of that allegory and its doctrine." Though he makes clear in his letter that "it is not the piety of the full grown and mature christian, that we are to look for in a child," he makes equally clear that in all essential particulars her piety was complete. It included even a regard for the significance of eternal reward and penalty. From Doddridge's "Expositor," both by examining the pictures and reading "the sacred text" under the direction of her father, she derived many ideas of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection at the end of the world."Marion," continues the narrative, "after closely inspecting the countenances given in those pictures, both to the just and unjust, in the resurrection, would say,
"'Oh! how the wicked look, when they rise from the dead!' adding in a serious and solemn manner,