THE TOM-BOY.
“For shame, Maria!”
I turned my head. A little girl was just clambering down from a pile of boards in a vacant lot near the house. It was Saturday afternoon; and all the long week “Maria” had been shut up in a school, from nine o’clock till two, although she was only seven years old; and every afternoon, when she should have been playing, she was trying to cram her poor bewildered head with great long lessons, which some stupid person had made for little children, full of great big words, which it was impossible for her to understand, even if she could manage to commit them to memory. No wonder Maria was glad when Saturday afternoon came and lessons and school were over for one week at least; no wonder she skipped off into “the vacant lot,” and climbed up and down the pile of boards, to stretch her poor little cramped limbs, and to see if there was really any life left in them; and a very good time she had been having of it, too; jumping off of one end of thepile down on the soft grass, then making a “teeter,” by pulling out one of the boards and balancing it on the others; she on one end, now sailing up so high! and Sarah Jane Clarke on the other, going down so low! and now and then both would roll off into the grass and laugh so merrily; then they would pelt each other with handfuls of grass, and chase each other round the pile of boards, till their pale cheeks were as red as fresh-blown roses; to be sure Maria had torn a hole in a shilling calico apron; but that is easily repaired, much more easily than a crooked spine, much more easily than a diseased brain; but I suppose Mrs. Mott did not think of this when she frowned on her little daughter, and said, “For shame, Maria, what a tom-boy.” She never had heard, as I have, a poor worn-out little girl, tossing from side to side in her bed, at night, repeating parts of her grammar and geographyin her sleep, and dreaming that she was being punished for not getting them more perfectly. She never stood over a little girl who was dying—dying because her little brain had been worked at school harder than her little feeble growing body could bear. Ah, if she had, she would have been so glad to have seen the rose bloom on the pale cheeks of her little daughter, that Saturday afternoon, that she would never have minded the torn apron, or made thechild ashamed of what was really proper and good for her to do; what it would have been well for Maria had she done every afternoon of her life.
“Tom-boy?” no, a girl is not a tom-boy for playing “teeter” and climbing boards; no more than her brother is a girl, because he sometimes sits on a chair. I say romp; I say shout; I say fly kites; play ball; drive hoop; climb sheds and fences, tear your aprons (mind you learn to mend them yourself), soil your hands and faces, tangle your hair, do any thing that’s innocent, butdon’tgrow up with crooked backs, flat chests, sallow faces, dull eyes and diseased brains;yourmother, and yours, and yours, I hope, think as I do about these things. Ask them.
Maria’s mother did not think so. So she went on frowning at her little daughter, every time she saw her using her limbs, and reproved her as severely for tearing her apron as she would had she told a lie, and perhaps more so. So Maria studied and grew crooked, grew crooked and studied until she was sixteen years old; then her mother sent her to Professor Cram-all’s school “to be finished.” This gentleman used to give his young ladies longer and harder lessons than their brothers had in college, and was very proud of his scholars and his school. So Maria used to sit up everynight till eleven and twelve o’clock, getting her lessons, beside being in school from nine in the morning till three; and Maria’s mother thought it was a grand school, and Professor Cram-all, the very king of teachers. Well, Maria staid there two years, and “got finished,” and when she came from there, she went straight to a “water-cure establishment” (your mother will tell you what that is), and there she is now, trying to get her poor crooked back straightened. Poor sick girl, what good does all her Greek and Latin do her now? Ah! had her mother only let her play as well as study, study less and play more, until her limbs grew stronger. I know she thinks so now, when she drives out to the water-cure establishment, to see her dying daughter. And yet her mothermeantto do right—when she was young, she never was taught at all, and so she grew up very ignorant; this often made her ashamed when she was a lady, and so she determined that her daughter, Maria, should know every thing; and in her hurry to do this she forgot her poor little childish body altogether. So I say, again, to all of you, don’t mind being called “a tom-boy”—run, jump, shout, fly kites, climb boards, tangle your hair, soil your hands and tear your aprons, and Nature will reward you with strong straight backs, full chests, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and a long life.