CHAPTER VIII
The study of some particular child is of great interest. If the child be one with whom one is brought into daily contact the study may become most exhaustive and may prove the means of imparting a new and helpful knowledge of childhood generally.
The Study of Flowers and Children.
A noted botanist has devoted years to the study of the chickweed. He has added to his own and to the general knowledge of botany a vast store of information by his temporarily exclusive attention to this one plant. But he would be the last to deny the charm of a stroll through lanes or fields where multitudes of flowers claim passing attention and admiration. To pause every few minutes to observe a cluster of primroses, a bankof mercury, or even a pink-tipped daisy—to halt suddenly as a whiff of sweet perfume tells us of a hidden nest of violets—to gather two or three of the cowslips that spangle the meadows—all this may belong to the lightest side of the study of botany. But it has a charm that few can resist, and thus far at least the veriest beginner can follow.
So it is with the study of childhood. Almost everywhere we go on our daily road of life there are children to be found, children differing one from another as widely as the primrose from the violet, but each one worth our notice and possessed of a special charm.
The Loss to those who Fail to Notice Children.
It is extraordinary to find on talking to one and another how few people realise the pleasure that they lose by failing to observe the little wayside children. There are many persons capable of passing by withoutseeing the loveliest of wayside flowers, but there are more who take no heed at all of our wayside children. And yet, if the loss to the former is great, the loss to the latter is greater far. A flower can charm the eye or delight the sense of smell: it can interest the scientific observer who notes its construction and mode of growth; but that is all. There is no reflected light, no joy felt by the flower and flashed back in happy answering glance, be its eye never so bright. For most people there is no increase of knowledge from day to day, and certainly there is none of that increase of understanding between observer and observed which lends such charm to the chance meetings with the children who are about our path.
Self-important People.
Some people are too busy and rush along in too great a hurry. Some people are too self-important. They are grown up, and fancy that the fact that they are older has so greatly increased theirvalue that it would be lowering themselves to take notice of children. They will assert that they cannot be bored with them. They will brush them impatiently aside if they are too closely approached by children when other people are present. There is a certain amount of insincerity in all this, for when such people fancy that they are unobserved they not infrequently yield to the natural temptation of noticing and even playing with little children.
Keeping the Proper Balance.
Some people, again, fancy that to let children know that they are observed is bad for their character, and, of course, it is possible to make them self-conscious and conceited by taking too much notice of them. On the other hand, there is a danger of children becoming morbid, nervous, and secret if they find themselves ignored and unappreciated.A child’s nature is essentially responsive. It opens out and expands to a show of affection just as a flower to the sunshine, and, as a bud will become withered and diseased when continuously exposed to grey skies and rain, so the character of a child will suffer irretrievable damage from a prolonged course of neglect and cold looks.
Taking it, then, for granted that nothing but good is likely to follow from a habit of noticing the children whom we meet, it is interesting to remember how greatly our days have been brightened and our own enjoyment increased by this very thing.
The Children Under the Wall.
There is a long grey wall leading towards the centre of the village. It is what is called a “dry” wall, that is to say, it is built without mortar. There is, therefore, no great interest in it nor any special beauty except where thetints of the little lichens catch the eye of the close observer. The monotony is broken here and there by a bulge in the stonework where an elm-tree in the field has gradually pushed its roots against the foundations.
Two Nests of Children.
But the path beside the wall is seldom lacking in attractions. It is the daily playground of the children from the cottages which lie back from the road between where the wall ends and the big barn juts out endways on to the footpath. These cottages are but two in number and have all the picturesqueness of old gables and steep stone-slab roofs. Hoary and bent and lined with the passage of years they seem to speak of old age in every feature. But they echo to-day with the sound of children’s voices, and their old stone flags speak from morning to night with the patter of little footsteps. From these two houses come the troop ofchildren who play beneath the long grey wall. As a matter of fact there are ten of them altogether—six from one cottage, four from the other. Of these the two eldest boys of the six are just getting too old to play, and are generally doing jobs for mother, or even sometimes for the farmer for whom their father works, on the days when they are free from school. Then there is in each house a baby too small to be trusted anywhere except in its cot or in its mother’s arms. This leaves six children for the wayside, when the two little girls who are old enough to go to school have returned to superintend the amusements of the rest, or four who may be found there at any hour of the day when the weather is at all propitious.
Good Marnin’.
What bits of sunshine they make! Let the day be as dull and the road as monotonous as possible it cannot be altogether cheerless when a couple of little chaps with sunny tousled hair andruddy cheeks stop pulling their soap box full of mud and stones to laugh up in your face and say “Good marnin’, Sir,” though it be four o’clock in the afternoon. Whereby hangs a tale. These two urchins are somewhere between two and four years old, and it had been their habit to greet a friend with a friendly pat and a shout of “Hey!” Thereupon one day, the friend, thinking that their manners might now be taken in hand and it being then shortly after breakfast, said “You must say ‘Good morning, Sir,’” which after one or two tries they very creditably did, and have continued at all hours from that day forward.
Friendly Children.
But further down the wall is a little group of three. One, a still smaller boy, evidently the next in order of the fair-haired family. He cannot yet keep up with his brothers, and so is taken in hand bythe two dark-haired little girls who look up shyly and smilingly from beneath long-fringed lashes. The younger, “Nellie,” has been ill and is a queer little figure pinned up in a shawl which reaches to the ground; the elder is a fat roundabout lady of nearly four, with dark beady eyes, and a trick of sliding a grubby little hand into that of her special friends when they stop for a minute’s chat. She is full of character and thoroughly appreciates the importance of being in charge of the other two, looking up with an absurd apologetic smile when the little invalid thrusts forward a few bits of dusty grass and a much-mauled daisy as an offering to the powers that be.
But, meantime, school has come out, and the number of wayside children is rapidly increasing. A girl of ten or so is quietly knitting as she strolls homewards, her busy fingers hardly stopping as she smiles and curtseys, turning as anafterthought to ask whether she may bring some water-cresses to the house.
Over the Garden Wall.
Leaning over a garden wall is a delightful little person. She has a very short way to go home and knows that tea will not be ready yet. So she stops as soon as she is inside the wicket to indulge in a further look at the “busy world,” of the lane in which she lives, and to seize any chance there may be of a gossip. The garden ground inside the wall is considerably above the level of the road—a most convenient thing for this sturdy little lady of five, for it enables her to lean her arms upon the wall and her face upon her arms, and so to survey the world in much comfort.
Should any one approach whom she wishes to avoid, nothing is simpler than to crouch down and hide until the undesirable passer-by is out of sight. Should, however, a friend appear who is welcome,but whose presence causes a sudden fit of shyness, the rosy cheeks are quickly hidden in the dimpled arms and a cloud of dark curls tossed over all until a finger judiciously inserted somewhere where the crease of the fat little neck may be supposed to be causes a chuckle of delight, and a crimson face and two great blue eyes are momentarily lifted to be buried again in an instant beneath the mass of soft dark hair. But this is a regulation bit of by-play which never lasts long. Confidences are soon exchanged and news imparted about the sort of day it has been in school and the health of a doll which fell to her lot at the last treat. Then sometimes—when she is in her tenderest humour—a pair of bright red lips are put up for a kiss, and she trots off down the path to where mother is waiting under the porch of clematis.
And so it would be possible to go on for long enough.
In the Country.
By the roadside, in the field ways, by the pathway near the brook, at many a cottage doorway, by many a wicket-gate, our country children, in the beauty of healthfulness and youth, add a hundredfold to the happiness of those who passing by have eyes to see and hearts to understand.
And in the Town.
But there are others. It is impossible to pass along the side streets of our many towns without finding the little wayside children. They are mostly those who are of that specially attractive age which makes them just too young to go to school and just too old to be kept in the house, so they get somewhere between the two places, and are generally playing in the gutter.
They have not often the same beauty as the country children, and they have not the same readiness to accept the approaches of “grown-ups.” Theirsurroundings almost from their birth make them suspicious and on their guard against possible dangers. But they are children for all that. They will notice and respond to a friendly smile. It is wonderful how a sharp and anxious little face is beautified by the smile that after a moment of doubt will come in answer.
Go down a long street of mean houses, each one the counterpart of every other, and see if there be anything to brighten the way that can compare with the laughter and the play of the wayside children. It is more difficult perhaps to appreciate these little ones, but it should be remembered that a friendly greeting is worth more to them than to a country child who gets a dozen such on its way from school. The reflected light, the responsive happiness is not so evident at first sight as in the case of country children, but it is even more real when once confidence has been established.
How a Child’s Friendship was Won.
A man whose daily walk led him down a certain dingy street saw a tiny boy with grimy face and badly developed limbs playing with a banana skin in the gutter. The man nodded to him—the boy shrank away in terror. Next day the man nodded again. The boy had decided there was nothing to be afraid of, and spat at the man. Next day the boy only stared. The day after he shouted “Hi!” as the man went on. In time the little fellow smiled back at the greeting which he now began to expect. Finally the triumph was complete when the boy—a tiny chap—was waiting at the corner and seized the man’s fingers in his dirty little fist. It was a dismal street, but it became one of the very brightest spots in all that man’s walk through life.