PART II

OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE FOR THE CHILDREN

I.--A GROWING TIME

=Meals out of Doors.=--People who live in the country know the value

of fresh air very well, and their children live out of doors, with

intervals within for sleeping and eating. As to the latter, even

country people do not make full use of their opportunities. On fine

days when it is warm enough to sit out with wraps, why should not tea

and breakfast, everything but a hot dinner, be served out of doors?

For we are an overwrought generation, running to nerves as a cabbage

runs to seed; and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain,

tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the

lengthening of life itself. They who know what it is to have fevered

skin and throbbing brain deliciously soothed by the cool touch of the

air are inclined to make a new rule of life, “Never be within doors

when you can _rightly_ be without.”

Besides the gain of an hour or two in the open air, there is this to

be considered: meals taken _al fresco_ are usually joyous, and

there is nothing like gladness for converting meat and drink into

healthy blood and tissue. All the time, too, the children are storing

up memories of a happy childhood. Fifty years hence they will see the

shadows of the boughs making patterns on the white tablecloth; and

sunshine, children’s laughter, hum of bees, and scent of flowers are

being bottled up for after refreshment.

=For Dwellers in Towns and Suburbs.=--But it is only the people who

live, so to speak, in their own gardens who can make a practice of

giving their children tea out of doors. For the rest of us, and

the most of us, who live in towns or the suburbs of towns, that is

included in the larger question--How much time daily in the open air

should the children have? and how is it possible to secure this for

them? In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social,

perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them

a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life,

the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air.

And this, not for the gain in bodily health alone--body and soul,

heart and mind, are nourished with food convenient for them when the

children are let alone, let to live without friction and without

stimulus amongst happy influences which incline them to be good.

=Possibilities of a Day in the Open.=--‘I make a point,’ says a

judicious mother, ‘of sending my children out, weather permitting,

for an hour in the winter, and two hours a day in the summer months.’

That is well; but it is not enough. In the first place, do not send

them; if it is anyway possible, take them; for, although the children

should be left much to themselves, there is a great deal to be done

and a great deal to be prevented during these long hours in the open

air. And long hours they should be; not two, but four, five, or six

hours they should have on every tolerably fine day, from April till

October. ‘Impossible!’ says an over-wrought mother who sees her way

to no more for her children than a daily hour or so on the pavements

of the neighbouring London squares. Let me repeat, that I venture to

suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to

me _absolutely best for the children_; and that, in the faith

that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are

demanded of them. A journey of twenty minutes by rail or omnibus, and

a luncheon basket, will make a day in the country possible to most

town-dwellers; and if one day, why not many, even every suitable day?

Supposing we have got them, what is to be done with these golden

hours, so that every one shall be delightful? They must be spent with

some method, or the mother will be taxed and the children bored.

There is a great deal to be accomplished in this large fraction of

the children’s day. They must be kept in a joyous temper all the time,

or they will miss some of the strengthening and refreshing held in

charge for them by the blessed air. They must be let alone, left to

themselves a great deal, to take in what they can of the beauty of

earth and heavens; for of the evils of modern education few are worse

than this--that the perpetual cackle of his elders leaves the poor

child not a moment of time, nor an inch of space, wherein to

wonder--and grow. At the same time, here is the mother’s opportunity

to train the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and to drop seeds of truth

into the open soul of the child, which shall germinate, blossom, and

bear fruit, without further help or knowledge of hers. Then, there is

much to be got by perching in a tree or nestling in heather, but

muscular development comes of more active ways, and an hour or two

should be spent in vigorous play; and last, and truly least, a lesson

or two must be got in.

=No Story-Books.=--Let us suppose mother and children arrived at

some breezy open “wherein it seemeth always afternoon.” In the first

place, it is _not_ her business to entertain the little people:

there should be no story-books, no telling of tales, as little talk

as possible, and that to some purpose. Who thinks to amuse children

with tale or talk at a circus or a pantomime? And here, is there not

infinitely more displayed for their delectation? Our wise mother,

arrived, first sends the children to let off their spirits in a wild

scamper, with cry, halloo, and hullaballoo, and any extravagance that

comes into their young heads. There is no distinction between big and

little; the latter love to follow in the wake of their elders, and, in

lessons or play, to pick up and do according to their little might. As

for the baby, he is in bliss: divested of his garments, he kicks and

crawls, and clutches the grass, laughs soft baby laughter, and takes

in his little knowledge of shapes and properties in his own wonderful

fashion--clothed in a woollen gown, long and loose, which is none the

worse for the worst usage it may get.

II.--‘SIGHT-SEEING’

By-and-by the others come back to their mother, and, while wits

are fresh and eyes keen, she sends them off on an exploring

expedition--Who can see the most, and tell the most, about yonder

hillock or brook, hedge or copse. This is an exercise that delights

children, and may be endlessly varied, carried on in the spirit of a

game, and yet with the exactness and carefulness of a lesson.

=How to See.=--‘Find out all you can about that cottage at the foot

of the hill; but do not pry about too much.’ Soon they are back, and

there is a crowd of excited faces, and a hubbub of tongues, and random

observations are shot breathlessly into the mother’s ear. ‘There are

bee-hives.’ ‘We saw a lot of bees going into one.’ ‘There is a long

garden.’ ‘Yes, and there are sunflowers in it.’ ‘And hen-and-chicken

daisies and pansies.’ ‘And there’s a great deal of a pretty blue

flower with rough leaves, mother; what do you suppose it is?’ ‘Borage

for the bees, most likely; they are very fond of it.’ ‘Oh, and there

are apple and pear and plum trees on one side; there’s a little path

up the middle, you know.’ ‘On which hand side are the fruit trees?’

‘The right--no, the left; let me see, which is my thimble-hand? Yes,

it is the right-hand side.’ ‘And there are potatoes and cabbages,

and mint and things on the other side.’ ‘Where are the flowers,

then?’ ‘Oh, they are just the borders, running down each side of the

path.’ ‘But we have not told mother about the wonderful apple tree;

I should think there are a million apples on it, all ripe and rosy!’

‘A _million_, Fanny?’ ‘Well, a great many, mother; I don’t know

how many.’ And so on, indefinitely; the mother getting by degrees a

complete description of the cottage and its garden.

=Educational Uses of ‘Sight-seeing.’=--This is all play to the

children, but the mother is doing invaluable work; she is training

their powers of observation and expression, increasing their

vocabulary and their range of ideas by giving them the name and the

uses of an object at the right moment,--when they ask, ‘What is it?’

and ‘What is it for?’ And she is training her children in truthful

habits, by making them careful to see the fact and to state it

exactly, without omission or exaggeration. The child who describes, ‘A

tall tree, going up into a point, with rather roundish leaves; not a

pleasant tree for shade, because the branches all go up,’ deserves to

learn the name of the tree, and anything her mother has to tell her

about it. But the little bungler, who fails to make it clear whether

he is describing an elm or a beech, should get no encouragement; not

a foot should his mother move to see his tree, no coaxing should draw

her into talk about it, until, in despair, he goes off, and comes back

with some more certain note--rough or smooth bark, rough or smooth

leaves,--then the mother considers, pronounces, and, full of glee, he

carries her off to see for herself.

=Discriminating Observation.=--By degrees the children will learn

_discriminatingly_ every feature of the landscapes with which

they are familiar; and think what a delightful possession for old age

and middle life is a series of pictures imaged, feature by feature,

in the sunny glow of a child’s mind! The miserable thing about the

childish recollections of most persons is that they are blurred,

distorted, incomplete, no more pleasant to look upon than a fractured

cup or a torn garment; and the reason is, not that the old scenes are

forgotten, but that they were never fully _seen_. At the time,

there was no more than a hazy impression that such and such objects

were present, and naturally, after a lapse of years, those features

can rarely be recalled of which the child was not _cognisant_

when he saw them before him.

III.--‘PICTURE-PAINTING’

=Method of.=--So exceedingly delightful is this faculty of taking

mental photographs, exact images, of the ‘beauties of Nature’ we go

about the world for the refreshment of seeing, that it is worth while

to exercise children in another way towards this end, bearing in mind,

however, that they see the near and the minute, but can only be made

with an effort to look at the wide and the distant. Get the children

to look well at some patch of landscape, and then to shut their eyes

and call up the picture before them; if any bit of it is blurred, they

had better look again. When they have a perfect image before their

eyes, let them say what they see. Thus: ‘I see a pond; it is shallow

on this side, but deep on the other; trees come to the water’s edge on

that side, and you can see their green leaves and branches so plainly

in the water that you would think there was a wood underneath. Almost

touching the trees in the water is a bit of blue sky with a soft white

cloud; and when you look up you see that same little cloud, but with

a great deal of sky instead of a patch, because there are no trees

up there. There are lovely yellow water-lilies round the far edge of

the pond, and two or three of the big round leaves are turned up like

sails. Near where I am standing three cows have come to drink, and one

has got far into the water, nearly up to her neck,’ etc.

=Strain on the Attention.=--This, too, is an exercise children

delight in, but, as it involves some strain on the attention, it is

fatiguing, and should only be employed now and then. It is, however,

well worth while to give children the habit of getting a bit of

landscape by heart in this way, because it is the effort of recalling

and reproducing that is fatiguing; while the altogether pleasurable

act of seeing, _fully and in detail_, is likely to be repeated

unconsciously until it becomes a habit by the child who is required

now and then to reproduce what he sees.

=Seeing Fully and in Detail.=--At first the children will want a

little help in the art of seeing. The mother will say, ‘Look at the

reflection of the trees! There might be a wood under the water.

What do those standing-up leaves remind you of?’ and so on, until

the children have noticed the salient points of the scene. She will

even herself learn off two or three scenes, and describe them with

closed eyes for the children’s amusement; and such little mimics are

they, and at the same time so sympathetic, that any graceful fanciful

touch which she throws into her descriptions will be reproduced with

variations in theirs.

The children will delight in this game of ‘picture-painting’ all

the more if the mother introduce it by describing some great

picture-gallery she has seen--pictures of mountains, of moors, of

stormy seas, of ploughed fields, of little children at play, of an old

woman knitting,--and goes on to say, that though she does not paint

her pictures on canvas and have them put in frames, she carries about

with her just such a picture-gallery; for whenever she sees anything

lovely or interesting, she looks at it until she has the picture in

her ‘mind’s eye’; and then she carries it away with her, her own for

ever, a picture ‘on view’ just when she wants it.

=A Means of After-Solace and Refreshment.=--It would be difficult to

overrate this habit of seeing and storing as a means of after-solace

and refreshment. The busiest of us have holidays when we slip our

necks out of the yoke and come face to face with Nature, to be healed

and blessed by--

“The breathing balm,

The silence and the calm

Of mute, insensate things.”

This immediate refreshment is open to everybody according to his

measure; but it is a mistake to suppose that everybody is able to

carry away a refreshing image of that which gives him delight. Only a

few can say with Wordsworth, of scenes they have visited--

“Though absent long,

These forms of beauty have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye;

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration.”

And yet this is no high poetic gift which the rest of us must be

content to admire, but a common reward for taking pains in the act of

seeing which parents may do a great deal to confer upon their children.

The mother must beware how she spoils the simplicity, the

_objective_ character of the child’s enjoyment, by treating his

little descriptions as feats of cleverness to be repeated to his

father or to visitors; she had better make a vow to suppress herself,

‘to say nothing to nobody,’ in his presence at any rate, though the

child should show himself a born poet.

IV.--FLOWERS AND TREES

=Children should know Field-crops.=--In the course of this

‘sight-seeing’ and ‘picture-painting,’ opportunities will occur

to make the children familiar with rural objects and employments.

If there are farm-lands within reach, they should know meadow and

pasture, clover, turnip, and corn field, under every aspect, from the

ploughing of the land to the getting in of the crops.

=Field Flowers and the Life-History of Plants.=--Milkwort, eyebright,

rest-harrow, lady’s-bedstraw, willow-herb, every wild flower that

grows in their neighbourhood, they should know quite well; should be

able to describe the leaf--its shape, size, growing from the root or

from the stem; the manner of flowering--a head of flowers, a single

flower, a spike, etc. And, having made the acquaintance of a wild

flower, so that they can never forget it or mistake it, they should

examine the spot where they find it, so that they will know for the

future in what sort of ground to look for such and such a flower. ‘We

should find wild thyme here!’ ‘Oh, this is the very spot for marsh

marigolds; we must come here in the spring.’ If the mother is no

great botanist, she will find Miss Ann Pratt’s _Wild Flowers_[3]

very useful, with its coloured plates, like enough to identify the

flowers by, common English names, and pleasant facts and fancies that

the children delight in. To make collections of wild flowers for

the several months, press them, and mount them neatly on squares of

cartridge paper, with the English name, habitat, and date of finding

of each, affords much happy occupation and, at the same time, much

useful training: better still is it to accustom children to make

careful brush drawings of the flowers that interest them, of the whole

plant where possible.

=The Study of Trees.=--Children should be made early intimate with

the trees, too; should pick out half a dozen trees, oak, elm, ash,

beech, in their winter nakedness, and take these to be their yearlong

friends. In the winter, they will observe the light tresses of the

birch, the knotted arms of the oak, the sturdy growth of the sycamore.

They may wait to learn the names of the trees until the leaves come.

By-and-by, as the spring advances, behold a general stiffening and

look of life in the still bare branches; life stirs in the beautiful

mystery of the leaf-buds, a nest of delicate baby-leaves lying in

downy warmth within many waterproof wrappings; oak and elm, beech

and birch, each has its own way of folding and packing its leaflets;

observe the ‘ruby-budded lime’ and the ash, with its pretty stag’s

foot of a bud, not green but black--

“More black than ash-buds in the front of March.”

=The Seasons should be followed.=--But it is hard to keep pace with

the wonders that unfold themselves in ‘the bountiful season, bland.’

There are the dangling catkins and the little ruby-red pistillate

flowers of the hazel--clusters of flowers, both of them, two sorts

on a single tree; and the downy staminate catkins of the willow; and

the festive breaking out of all the trees into lovely leafage; the

learning the patterns of the leaves as they come out, and the naming

of the trees from this and other signs. Then the flowers come, each

shut up tight in the dainty casket we call a bud, as cunningly wrapped

as the leaves in their buds, but less carefully guarded, for these

‘sweet nurslings’ delay their coming for the most part until earth has

a warm bed to offer, and the sun a kindly welcome.

=Leigh Hunt on Flowers.=--“Suppose,” says Leigh Hunt, “suppose flowers

themselves were new! Suppose they had just come into the world, a

sweet reward for some new goodness.... Imagine what we should feel

when we saw the first lateral stem bearing off from the main one, and

putting forth a leaf. How we should watch the leaf gradually unfolding

its little graceful hand; then another, then another; then the main

stalk rising and producing more; then one of them giving indications

of the astonishing novelty--a bud! then this mysterious bud gradually

unfolding like the leaf, amazing us, enchanting us, almost alarming us

with delight, as if we knew not what enchantment were to ensue, till

at length, in all its fairy beauty, and odorous voluptuousness, and

mysterious elaboration of tender and living sculpture, shines forth

the blushing flower.” The _flowers_, it is true, are not new;

but the _children_ are; and it is the fault of their elders if

every new flower they come upon is not to them a _Picciola_, a

mystery of beauty to be watched from day to day with unspeakable awe

and delight.

Meanwhile, we have lost sight of those half-dozen forest-trees which

the children have taken into a sort of comradeship for the year.

Presently they have the delight of discovering that the great trees

have flowers, too, flowers very often of the same hue as their leaves,

and that some trees put off having their leaves until their flowers

have come and gone. By-and-by there is the fruit, and the discovery

that every tree--with exceptions which they need not learn yet--and

every plant bears fruit, ‘fruit and seed after his kind.’ All this

is stale knowledge to older people, but one of the secrets of the

educator is to present nothing as stale knowledge, but to put himself

in the position of the child, and wonder and admire with him; for

every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes of

him for the moment another Newton.

=Calendars.=--It is a capital plan for children to keep a

calendar--the first oak-leaf, the first tadpole, the first cowslip,

the first catkin, the first ripe blackberries, where seen, and when.

The next year they will know when and where to look out for their

favourites, and will, every year, be in a condition to add new

observations. Think of the zest and interest, the _object_, which

such a practice will give to daily walks and little excursions. There

is hardly a day when some friend may not be expected to hold a first

‘At Home.’

=Nature-Diaries.=--As soon as he is able to keep it himself, a

nature-diary is a source of delight to a child. Every day’s walk

gives him something to enter: three squirrels in a larch tree, a jay

flying across such a field, a caterpillar climbing up a nettle, a

snail eating a cabbage leaf, a spider dropping suddenly to the ground,

where he found ground ivy, how it was growing and what plants were

growing with it, how bindweed or ivy manages to climb. Innumerable

matters to record occur to the intelligent child. While he is quite

young (five or six), he should begin to illustrate his notes freely

with brush-drawings; he should have a little help at first in mixing

colours, in the way of principles, not directions. He should not be

told to use now this and now that, but, ‘we get purple by mixing so

and so,’ and then he should be left to himself to get the right tint.

As for drawing, instruction has no doubt its time and place; but his

nature-diary should be left to his own initiative. A child of six will

produce a dandelion, poppy, daisy, iris with its leaves, impelled

by the desire to represent what he sees, with surprising vigour and

correctness.

An exercise book[4] with stiff covers serves for a nature-diary, but

care is necessary in choosing paper that answers both for writing and

brush-drawing.

‘=I can’t stop thinking.=’--‘But I can’t stop thinking; I can’t make

my mind sit down!’ Poor little girl! All children owe you thanks for

giving voice to their dumb woes. And we grown-up people have so little

imagination, that we send a little boy with an over-active brain to

play by himself in the garden in order to escape the fag of lessons.

Little we know how the brain-people swarm in and out and rush about!

“The human (brain) is like a millstone, turning ever round and round;

If it have nothing else to grind, it must itself be ground.”

Set the child to definite work by all means, and give him something to

grind. But, pray, let him work with things and not with signs--the

things of Nature in their own places, meadow and hedgerow, woods and

shore.

V.--‘LIVING CREATURES’

=A Field of Interest and Delight.=--Then, as for the ‘living

creatures,’ here is a field of unbounded interest and delight. The

domesticated animals are soon taken into kindly fellowship by the

little people. Perhaps they live too far from the ‘real country’

for squirrels and wild rabbits to be more to them than a dream of

possible delights. But surely there is a pond within reach--by road

or rail--where tadpoles may be caught, and carried home in a bottle,

fed, and watched through all their changes--fins disappearing, tails

getting shorter and shorter, until at last there is no tail at all,

and a pretty pert little frog looks you in the face. Turn up any

chance stone, and you may come upon a colony of ants. We have always

known that it becomes us to consider their ways and be wise; but now,

think of all Lord Avebury has told us to make that twelve-year-old ant

of his acquaintance quite a personage. Then, there are the bees. Some

of us may have heard the late Dean Farrar describe that lesson he was

present at, on ‘How doth the little busy bee’--the teacher bright, but

the children not responsive; they took no interest at all in little

busy bees. He suspected the reason, and questioning the class, found

that not one of them had ever seen a bee. ‘Had never seen a bee! Think

for a moment,’ said he, ‘of how much that implies’; and then we were

moved by an eloquent picture of the sad child-life from which bees

and birds and flowers are all shut out. But how many children are

there who do not live in the slums of London, and yet are unable to

distinguish a bee from a wasp, or even a ‘humble’ from a honey-bee!

=Children should be encouraged to Watch.=--Children should be

encouraged to _watch_, patiently and quietly, until they learn

something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy

caterpillar, dragon-fly, and whatever of larger growth comes in

their way. ‘The creatures never have any habits while I am looking!’

a little girl in some story-book is made to complain: but that was

her fault; the bright keen eyes with which children are blest were

made to see, and see into, the doings of creatures too small for

the unaided observation of older people. Ants may be brought under

home observation in the following way:--Get two pieces of glass 1

foot square, three strips of glass 11½ inches long, and one strip

11 inches long, these all ¼ inch wide. The glass must be carefully

cut so as to fit exactly. Place the four strips of glass upon one

of the sheets of glass and fix in an exact square, leaving a ½ inch

opening, with seccotine or any good fixer. Get from an ant-hill about

twelve ants (the yellow ants are best, as the red are inclined to be

quarrelsome), a few eggs, and one queen. The queen will be quite twice

as large as an ordinary ant, and so can be easily seen. Take some

of the earth of the ant-hill. Put the earth with your ants and eggs

upon the sheet of glass and fix the other sheet above, leaving only

the small hole in one corner, made by the shorter strip, which should

be stopped with a bit of cotton-wool. The ants will be restless for

perhaps forty-eight hours, but will then begin to settle and arrange

the earth. Remove the wool plug once a week, and replace it after

putting two or three drops of honey on it. Once in three weeks remove

the plug to drop in with a syringe about ten drops of water. This will

not be necessary in the winter while the ants are asleep. This ‘nest’

will last for years.

With regard to the horror which some children show of beetle, spider,

worm, that is usually a trick picked up from grown-up people.

Kingsley’s children would run after their ‘daddy’ with a ‘delicious

worm,’ a ‘lovely toad,’ a ‘sweet beetle’ carried tenderly in both

hands. There are real antipathies not to be overcome, such as

Kingsley’s own horror of a spider; but children who are accustomed to

hold and admire caterpillars and beetles from their babyhood will not

give way to affected horrors. The child who spends an hour in watching

the ways of some new ‘grub’ he has come upon will be a man of mark

yet. Let all he finds out about it be entered in his diary--by his

mother, if writing be a labour to him,--where he finds it, what it is

doing, or seems to him to be doing; its colour, shape, legs: some day

he will come across the name of the creature, and will recognise the

description of an old friend.

=The Force of Public Opinion in the Home.=--Some children are born

naturalists, with a bent inherited, perhaps, from an unknown ancestor;

but every child has a natural interest in the living things about him

which it is the business of his parents to encourage; for, but few

children are equal to holding their own in the face of public opinion;

and if they see that the things which interest them are indifferent

or disgusting to you, their pleasure in them vanishes, and that

chapter in the book of Nature is closed to them. It is likely that

the _Natural History of Selborne_ would never have been written

had it not been that the naturalist’s father used to take his boys on

daily foraging expeditions, when not a moving or growing thing, not

a pebble nor a boulder within miles of Selborne, escaped their eager

examination. Audubon, the American ornithologist, is another instance

of the effect of this kind of early training. “When I had hardly

learned to walk,” he says, “and to articulate those first words always

so endearing to parents, the productions of Nature that lay spread

all around were constantly pointed out to me.... My father generally

accompanied my steps, procured birds and flowers for me, and pointed

out the elegant movements of the former, the beauty and softness of

their plumage, the manifestations of their pleasure, or their sense

of danger, and the always perfect forms and splendid attire of the

latter. He would speak of the departure and return of the birds with

the season, describe their haunts, and, more wonderful than all, their

change of livery, thus exciting me to study them, and to raise my mind

towards their great Creator.”

=What Town Children can Do.=--Town children may get a great deal of

pleasure in watching the ways of sparrows--knowing little birds, and

easily tamed by a dole of crumbs,--and their days out will bring them

in the way of new acquaintances. But much may be done with sparrows. A

friend writes:--“Have you seen the man in the gardens of the Tuileries

feeding and talking to dozens of them? They sit on his hat, his hands,

and feed from his fingers. When he raises his arms they all flutter up

and then settle again on him and round him. I have watched him call a

sparrow from a distance by name and refuse food to all others till

‘_petit chou_,’ a pretty pied sparrow, came for his destined

bit. Others had their names and came at call, but I could not see

any distinguishing feature; and the crowd of sparrows on the walk,

benches and railing, formed a most attentive audience to the bright

French talk which kept them in constant motion as they were, here one

and there another, invited to come for a tempting morsel. Truly a St

Francis and the birds!”

The child who does not know the portly form and spotted breast of the

thrush, the graceful flight of the swallow, the yellow bill of the

blackbird, the gush of song which the skylark pours from above, is

nearly as much to be pitied as those London children who ‘had never

seen a bee.’ A pleasant acquaintance, easy to pick up, is the hairy

caterpillar. The moment to seize him is when he is seen shuffling

along the ground in a great hurry; he is on the lookout for quiet

quarters in which to lie up: put him in a box, then, and cover the

box with net, through which you may watch his operations. Food does

not matter--he has other things to attend to. By-and-by he spins a

sort of white tent or hammock, into which he retires; you may see

through it and watch him, perhaps at the very moment when his skin

splits asunder, leaving him, for months to come, an egg-shaped mass

without any sign of life. At last the living thing within breaks out

of this bundle, and there it is, the handsome tiger-moth, fluttering

feeble wings against the net. Most children of six have had this

taste of a naturalist’s experience, and it is worth speaking of

only because, instead of being merely a harmless amusement, it is a

valuable piece of education, of more use to the child than the reading

of a whole book of natural history, or much geography and Latin. For

the evil is, that children get their knowledge of natural history,

like all their knowledge, at second hand. They are so sated with

wonders, that nothing surprises them; and they are so little used to

see for themselves, that nothing interests them. The cure for this

_blasé_ condition is, to let them alone for a bit, and then begin

on new lines. Poor children, it is no fault of theirs if they are not

as they were meant to be--curious eager little souls, all agog to

explore so much of this wonderful world as they can get at, as quite

their first business in life.

“He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.”

=Nature Knowledge the most important for Young Children.=--It would

be well if all we persons in authority, parents and all who act for

parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge

to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which

they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get

in touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of

delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his

degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the

marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.

=Mental Training of a Child Naturalist.=--Consider, too, what an

unequalled mental training the child-naturalist is getting for

any study or calling under the sun--the powers of attention, of

discrimination, of patient pursuit, growing with his growth, what will

they not fit him for? Besides, life is so interesting to him, that he

has no time for the faults of temper which generally have their source

in _ennui_; there is no reason why he should be peevish or sulky

or obstinate when he is always kept well amused.

=Nature Work especially valuable for Girls.=--I say ‘he’ from force

of habit, as speaking of the representative sex, but truly that

_she_ should be thus conversant with Nature is a matter of

infinitely more importance to the little girl: she it is who is most

tempted to indulge in ugly tempers (as child and woman) because time

hangs heavy on her hands; she, whose idler, more desultory habits of

mind want the spur and the bridle of an earnest absorbing pursuit;

whose feebler health demands to be braced by an out-of-door life full

of healthy excitement. Moreover, it is to the girls, little and big, a

most true kindness to lift them out of themselves and out of the round

of petty personal interests and emulations which too often hem in

their lives; and then, with whom but the girls must it rest to mould

the generations yet to be born?

VI.--FIELD-LORE AND NATURALISTS’ BOOKS

=Reverence for Life.=--Is it advisable, then, to teach the children

the elements of natural science, of biology, botany, zoology? On the

whole, no: the dissection even of a flower is painful to a sensitive

child, and, during the first six or eight years of life, I would not

teach them any botany which should necessitate the pulling of flowers

to bits; much less should they be permitted to injure or destroy any

(not noxious) form of animal life. Reverence for _life_, as a

wonderful and awful gift, which a ruthless child may destroy but never

can restore, is a lesson of first importance to the child:--

“Let knowledge grow from more to more;

But more of _reverence_ in us dwell.”

The child who sees his mother with reverent touch lift an early

snowdrop to her lips, learns a higher lesson than the ‘print-books’

can teach. Years hence, when the children are old enough to understand

that science itself is in a sense sacred and demands some sacrifices,

all the ‘common information’ they have been gathering until then, and

the habits of observation they have acquired, will form a capital

groundwork for a scientific education. In the meantime, let them

_consider_ the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air.

=Rough Classification at First Hand.=--For convenience in describing

they should be able to name and distinguish petals, sepals, and so

on; and they should be encouraged to make such rough classifications

as they can with their slight knowledge of both animal and vegetable

forms. Plants with heart-shaped or spoon-shaped leaves, with whole or

divided leaves; leaves with criss-cross veins and leaves with straight

veins; bell-shaped flowers and cross-shaped flowers; flowers with

three petals, with four, with five; trees which keep their leaves

all the year, and trees which lose them in the autumn; creatures

with a backbone and creatures without; creatures that eat grass and

creatures that eat flesh, and so on. To make collections of leaves and

flowers, pressed and mounted, and arranged according to their form,

affords much pleasure, and, what is better, valuable training in the

noticing of differences and resemblances. Patterns for this sort of

classification of leaves and flowers will be found in every little

book of elementary botany.

The power to classify, discriminate, distinguish between things that

differ, is amongst the highest faculties of the human intellect,

and no opportunity to cultivate it should be let slip; but a

classification got out of books, that the child does not make for

himself and is not able to verify for himself, cultivates no power but

that of verbal memory, and a phrase or two of ‘Tamil’ or other unknown

tongue, learnt off, would serve that purpose just as well.

=Uses of ‘Naturalists’ Books.=--The real use of naturalists’ books

at this stage is to give the child delightful glimpses into the

world of wonders he lives in, to reveal the sort of things to be

seen by curious eyes, and fill him with desire to make discoveries

for himself. There are many[5] to be had, all pleasant reading, many

of them written by scientific men, and yet requiring little or no

scientific knowledge for their enjoyment.

=Mothers and Teachers should know about Nature.=--The mother cannot

devote herself too much to this kind of reading, not only that she may

read tit-bits to her children about matters they have come across,

but that she may be able to answer their queries and direct their

observation. And not only the mother, but any woman, who is likely

ever to spend an hour or two in the society of children, should make

herself mistress of this sort of information; the children will adore

her for knowing what they want to know, and who knows but she may give

its bent for life to some young mind destined to do great things for

the world.

VII.--THE CHILD GETS KNOWLEDGE BY MEANS

OF HIS SENSES

=Nature’s Teaching.=--Watch a child standing at gaze at some sight

new to him--a plough at work, for instance--and you will see he is

as naturally occupied as is a babe at the breast; he is, in fact,

taking in the _intellectual_ food which the working faculty of

his brain at this period requires. In his early years the child is all

eyes; he observes, or, more truly, he perceives, calling sight, touch,

taste, smell, and hearing to his aid, that he may learn all that is

discoverable by him about every new thing that comes under his notice.

Everybody knows how a baby fumbles over with soft little fingers, and

carries to his mouth, and bangs that it may produce what sound there

is in it, the spoon or doll which supercilious grown-up people give

him to ‘keep him quiet.’ The child is at his lessons, and is learning

all about it at a rate utterly surprising to the physiologist, who

considers how much is implied in the act of ‘seeing,’ for instance:

that to the infant, as to the blind adult restored to sight, there is

at first no difference between a flat picture and a solid body,--that

the ideas of form and solidity are not obtained by sight at all, but

are the judgments of experience. Then, think of the vague passes in

the air the little fist makes before it lays hold of the object of

desire, and you see how he learns the whereabouts of things, having as

yet no idea of direction. And why does he cry for the moon? Why does

he crave equally, a horse or a house-fly as an appropriate plaything?

Because far and near, large and small, are ideas he has yet to grasp.

The child has truly a great deal to do before he is in a condition to

‘believe his own eyes’; but Nature teaches so gently, so gradually, so

persistently, that he is never overdone, but goes on gathering little

stores of knowledge about whatever comes before him.

And this is the process the child should continue for the first few

years of his life. Now is the storing time which should be spent

in laying up images of things familiar. By-and-by he will have to

_conceive_ of things he has never seen: how can he do it except

by comparison with things he has seen and knows? By-and-by he will

be called upon to reflect, understand, reason; what material will he

have, unless he has a magazine of facts to go upon? The child who has

been made to observe how high in the heavens the sun is at noon on

a summer’s day, how low at noon on a day in mid-winter, is able to

_conceive_ of the great heat of the tropics under a vertical sun,

and to _understand_ that the climate of a place depends greatly

upon the mean height the sun reaches above the horizon.

=Overpressure.=--A great deal has been said lately about the danger of

overpressure, of requiring too much mental work from a child of tender

years. The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much,

but in giving him the wrong thing to do, the sort of work for which

the present state of his mental development does not fit him. Who

expects a boy in petticoats to lift half a hundredweight? But give the

child work that Nature intended for him, and the quantity he can get

through with ease is practically unlimited. Whoever saw a child tired

of seeing, of examining in his own way, unfamiliar things? This is the

sort of mental nourishment for which he has an unbounded appetite,

because it is that food of the mind on which, for the present, he is

meant to grow.

=Object Lessons.=--Now, how far is this craving for natural sustenance

met? In infant and kindergarten schools, by the object lesson, which

is good so far as it goes, but is sometimes like that bean a day on

which the Frenchman fed his horse. The child at home has more new

things brought under his notice, if with less method. Neither at home

nor at school is much effort made to set before the child the abundant

‘feast of eyes’ which his needs demand.

=A Child learns from ‘Things.’=--We older people, partly because of

our maturer intellect, partly because of our defective education,

get most of our knowledge through the medium of words. We set the

child to learn in the same way, and find him dull and slow. Why?

Because it is only with a few words in common use that he associates

a definite meaning; all the rest are no more to him than the vocables

of a foreign tongue. But set him face to face with a _thing_,

and he is twenty times as quick as you are in knowing all about it;

knowledge of things flies to the mind of a child as steel filings to

a magnet. And, _pari passu_ with his knowledge of things, his

vocabulary grows; for it is a law of the mind that what we know, we

struggle to express. This fact accounts for many of the apparently

aimless questions of children; they are in quest, not of knowledge,

but of _words_ to express the knowledge they have. Now, consider

what a culpable waste of intellectual energy it is to shut up a child,

blessed with this inordinate capacity for seeing and knowing, within

the four walls of a house, or the dreary streets of a town. Or suppose

that he is let run loose in the country where there is plenty to see,

it is nearly as bad to let this great faculty of the child’s dissipate

itself in random observations for want of method and direction.

=The Sense of Beauty comes from Early Contact with Nature.=--There is

no end to the store of common information, got in such a way that it

will never be forgotten, with which an intelligent child may furnish

himself before he begins his school career. The boy who can tell you

off-hand where to find each of the half-dozen most graceful birches,

the three or four finest ash trees in the neighbourhood of his home,

has chances in life a dozen to one compared with the lower, slower

intelligence that does not know an elm from an oak--not merely chances

of success, but chances of a larger, happier life, for it is curious

how certain _feelings_ are linked with the mere observation

of Nature and natural objects. “The _æsthetic_ sense of the

beautiful,” says Dr Carpenter, “of the sublime, of the harmonious,

seems in its most elementary form to connect itself immediately with

the Perceptions which arise out of the contact of our minds with

external Nature”; while he quotes Dr Morell, who says still more

forcibly that “All those who have shown a remarkable appreciation of

form and beauty date their first impressions from a period lying far

behind the existence of definite ideas or verbal instruction.”

=Most Grown Men lose the Habit of Observation.=--Thus, we owe

something to Mr Evans for taking his little daughter Mary Anne with

him on his long business drives among the pleasant Warwickshire lanes;

the little girl stood up between her father’s knees, seeing much and

saying little; and the outcome was the scenes of rural life in _Adam

Bede_ and _The Mill on the Floss_. Wordsworth, reared amongst

the mountains, becomes a very prophet of Nature; while Tennyson draws

endless imagery from the levels of the eastern counties where he was

brought up. Little David Copperfield was “a very observant child,

though,” says he, “I think the memory of most of us can go farther

back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the

power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite

wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that

most grown men who are remarkable in this respect may with greater

propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired

it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain

freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are

also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood”;--in

which remark Dickens makes his hero talk sound philosophy as well as

kindly sense.

VIII.--THE CHILD SHOULD BE MADE FAMILIAR

WITH NATURAL OBJECTS

=An Observant Child should be put in the way of Things worth

Observing.=--But what is the use of being ‘a very observant child,’

if you are not put in the way of things worth observing? And here is

the difference between the streets of a town and the sights and sounds

of the country. There is plenty to be seen in a town, and children

accustomed to the ways of the streets become nimble-witted enough.

But the scraps of information to be picked up in a town are isolated

fragments; they do not hang on to anything else, nor come to anything

more; the information may be convenient, but no one is the wiser for

knowing on which side of the street is Smith’s, and which turning

leads to Thompson’s shop.

=Every Natural Object a Member of a Series.=--Now take up a natural

object, it does not matter what, and you are studying one of a group,

a member of a series; whatever knowledge you get about it is so much

towards the _science_ which includes all of its kind. Break

off an elder twig in the spring; you notice a ring of wood round

a centre of pith, and there you have at a glance a distinguishing

character of a great division of the vegetable world. You pick up a

pebble. Its edges are perfectly smooth and rounded: why? you ask.

It is water-worn, weather-worn. And that little pebble brings you

face to face with _disintegration_, the force to which, more

than to any other, we owe the aspects of the world which we call

_picturesque_--glen, ravine, valley, hill. It is not necessary

that the child should be told anything about disintegration or

dicotyledon, only that he should _observe_ the wood and pith

in the hazel twig, the pleasant roundness of the pebble; by-and-by

he will learn the bearing of the facts with which he is already

familiar--a very different thing from learning the reason why of facts

which have never come under his notice.

=Power will pass, more and more, into the hands of Scientific

Men.=--It is infinitely well worth the mother’s while to take some

pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children

spend hours daily amongst rural and natural objects; and, in the

second place, to infuse into them, or rather, to cherish in them,

the love of investigation. “I say it deliberately,” says Kingsley,

“as a student of society and of history: power will pass more and

more into the hands of scientific men. They will rule, and they will

act--cautiously, we may hope, and modestly, and charitably--because

in learning true knowledge they will have learnt also their own

ignorance, and the vastness, the complexity, the mystery of Nature.

But they will be able to rule, they will be able to act, because they

have taken the trouble to learn the facts and the laws of Nature.”

=Intimacy with Nature makes for Personal Well-being.=--But to enable

them to swim with the stream is the least of the benefits this early

training should confer on the children; a love of Nature, implanted

so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born

in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing

pursuits, health, and good humour. “I have seen,” says the same

writer, “the young man of fierce passions and uncontrollable daring

expend healthily that energy which threatened daily to plunge him

into recklessness, if not into sin, upon hunting out and collecting,

through rock and bog, snow and tempest, every bird and egg of the

neighbouring forest.... I have seen the young London beauty, amid all

the excitement and temptation of luxury and flattery, with her heart

pure, and her mind occupied in a boudoir full of shells and fossils,

flowers and seaweeds, keeping herself unspotted from the world, by

considering the lilies of the field, how they grow.”

IX.--OUT-OF-DOOR GEOGRAPHY

=Small Things may teach Great.=--After this long digression, intended

to impress upon mothers the supreme importance of stirring up in their

children a love of Nature and of natural objects--a deep-seated spring

to send up pure waters into the driest places of after-life--we must

return to the mother whom we have left out of doors all this time,

waiting to know what she is to do next. This pleasant earth of ours

is not to be overlooked in the out-of-door education of the children.

‘How do you get time for so much?’ ‘Oh, I leave out subjects of no

educational value; I do not teach geography, for instance,’ said an

advanced young theorist with all sorts of certificates.

=Pictorial Geography.=--But the mother, who knows better, will find a

hundred opportunities to teach geography by the way: a duck-pond is

a lake or an inland sea; any brooklet will serve to illustrate the

great rivers of the world; a hillock grows into a mountain--an Alpine

system; a hazel-copse suggests the mighty forests of the Amazon;

a reedy swamp, the rice-fields of China; a meadow, the boundless

prairies of the West; the pretty purple flowers of the common mallow

is a text whereon to hang the cottonfields of the Southern States:

indeed, the whole field of pictorial geography--maps may wait until

by-and-by--may be covered in this way.

=The Position of the Sun.=--And not only this: the children should be

taught to observe the position of the sun in the heavens from hour to

hour, and by his position, to tell the time of day. Of course they

will want to know why the sun is such an indefatigable traveller, and

thereby hangs a wonderful tale, which they may as well learn in the

‘age of faith,’ of the relative sizes of sun and earth, and of the

nature and movements of the latter.

=Clouds, Rain, Snow, and Hail.=--“Clouds and rain, snow and hail,

winds and vapours, fulfilling His word”--are all everyday mysteries

that the mother will be called upon to explain faithfully, however

simply. There are certain ideas which children must get from within

a walking radius of their own home if ever they are to have a real

understanding of maps and of geographical terms.

=Distance= is one of these, and the first idea of distance is to be

attained by what children find a delightful operation. A child walks

at his usual pace; somebody measures and tells him the length of his

pace, and he measures the paces of his brothers and sisters. Then such

a walk, such a distance, here and there, is solemnly paced, and a

little sum follows--so many inches or feet covered by each pace equals

so many yards in the whole distance. Various short distances about

the child’s home should be measured in this way; and when the idea of

covering distance is fully established, the idea of time as a means

of measurement should be introduced. The time taken to pace a hundred

yards should be noted down. Having found out that it takes two minutes

to pace a hundred yards, children will be able for the next step--that

if they have walked for thirty minutes, the walk should measure

fifteen hundred yards; in thirty-five minutes they would have walked a

mile, or rather seventeen hundred and fifty yards, and then they could

add the ten yards more which would make a mile. The longer the legs

the longer the pace, and most grown people can walk a mile in twenty

minutes.

=Direction.=--By the time they have got somewhat familiar with the

idea of distance, that of _direction_ should be introduced.

The first step is to make children observant of the progress of the

sun. The child who observes the sun for a year and notes down for

himself, or dictates, the times of his rising and setting for the

greater part of the year, and the points of his rising and setting,

will have secured a basis for a good deal of definite knowledge. Such

observation should take in the reflection of the sun’s light, the

evening light reflected by east windows, the morning light by west

windows; the varying length and intensity of shadows, the cause of

shadows, to be learned by the shadow cast by a figure between the

blind and a candle. He should associate, too, the hot hours of the

day with the sun high overhead, and the cool hours of the morning and

evening with a low sun; and should be reminded, that if he stands

straight before the fire, he feels the heat more than if he were in a

corner of the room. When he is prepared by a little observation of the

course of the sun, he is ready to take in the idea of direction, which

depends entirely upon the sun.

=East and West.=--Of course the two first ideas are that the sun rises

in the east and sets in the west; from this fact he will be able to

tell the direction in which the places near his own home, or the

streets of his own town, lie. Bid him stand so that his right hand is

towards the east where the sun rises, and his left towards the west

where the sun sets. Then he is looking towards the north and his back

is towards the south. All the houses, streets and towns on his right

hand are to the east of him, those on the left are to the west. The

places he must walk straight forward to reach are north of him, and

the places behind him are to the south. If he is in a place new to him

where he has never seen the sun rise or set and wants to know in what

direction a certain road runs, he must notice in what direction his

own shadow falls at twelve o’clock, because at noon the shadows of all

objects fall towards the north. Then if he face the north, he has, as

before, the south behind him, the east on his right hand, the west on

his left; or if he face the sun at noon, he faces south.

=Practice in finding Direction.=--This will throw an interesting light

for him on the names of our great railways. A child may become ready

in noticing the directions of places by a little practice. Let him

notice how each of the windows of his schoolroom faces, or the windows

of each of the rooms in his home; the rows of houses he passes in his

walks, and which are the north, south, east and west sides of the

churches he knows. He will soon be prepared to notice the direction

of the wind by noticing the smoke from the chimneys, the movement of

branches, corn, grass, etc. If the wind blow from the north--‘The

north wind doth blow and we shall have snow.’ If it blow from the

west, a west wind, we expect rain. Care must be taken at this point to

make it clear to the child that the wind is named after the quarter it

comes from, and not from the point it blows towards--just as he is

English because he was born in England, and not French because he goes

to France. The ideas of distance and direction may now be combined.

Such a building is two hundred yards to the east of the gate, such

a village two miles to the west. He will soon come across the

difficulty, that a place is not exactly east or west, north or south.

It is well to let him give, in a roundabout way, the direction of

places as--‘more to the east than the west,’ ‘very near the east but

not quite,’ ‘half-way between east and west.’ He will value the exact

means of expression all the more for having felt the need of them.

Later, he should be introduced to the wonders of the mariner’s

compass, should have a little pocket compass of his own, and should

observe the four cardinal and all the other points. These will afford

him the names for directions that he has found it difficult to

describe.

=Compass Drill.=--Then he should do certain compass drill in this

way: Bid him hold the N of the compass towards the north. “Then, with

the compass in your hand, turn towards the east, and you will see a

remarkable thing. The little needle moves, too, but moves quite by

itself in just the other direction. Turn to the west, and again the

needle moves in the opposite direction to that in which you move.

However little you turn, a little quiver of the needle follows your

movement. And you look at it, wondering how the little thing could

perceive you had moved, when you hardly knew it yourself. Walk

straight on in any direction, and the needle is fairly steady; only

fairly steady, because you are sure, without intending it, to move a

little to the right or left. Turn round very slowly, a little bit at a

time, beginning at the north and turning towards the east, and you may

make the needle also move round in a circle. It moves in the opposite

direction to yourself, for it is trying to get back to the north from

which you are turning.”

=Boundaries.=--The children having got the idea of direction, it

will be quite easy to introduce that of boundaries--such and such a

turnip field, for instance, is bounded by the highroad on the south,

by a wheat crop on the south-east, a hedge on the north-east, and

so on; the children getting by degrees the idea that the boundaries

of a given space are simply whatever touches it on every side. Thus

one crop may touch another without any dividing line, and therefore

one crop bounds the other. It is well that children should get clear

notions on this subject, or, later, they will be vague when they learn

that such a county is ‘bounded’ by so and so. In connection with

bounded spaces, whether they be villages, towns, ponds, fields, or

what not, children should be led to notice the various crops raised

in the district, why pasturelands and why cornfields, what manner of

rocks appear, and how many sorts of trees grow in the neighbourhood.

For every field or other space that is examined, they should draw a

rude plan in the sand, giving the shape roughly and lettering the

directions as N, S, W, etc.

=Plans.=--By-and-by, when they have learned to draw plans indoors,

they will occasionally pace the length of a field and draw their plan

according to scale, allowing an inch for five or for ten yards. The

ground-plans of garden, stables, house, etc., might follow.

=Local Geography.=--It is probable that a child’s own neighbourhood

will give him opportunities to learn the meaning of hill and dale,

pool and brook, watershed, the current, bed, banks, tributaries of

a brook, the relative positions of villages and towns; and all this

local geography he must be able to figure roughly on a plan done with

chalk on a rock, or with walking-stick in the gravel, perceiving the

relative distances and situations of the places he marks.

X.--THE CHILD AND MOTHER-NATURE

=The Mother must refrain from too much Talk.=--Does so wide a

programme alarm the mother? Does she with dismay see herself talking

through the whole of those five or six hours, and, even at that, not

getting through a tithe of the teaching laid out for her? On the

contrary, the less she says the better; and as for the quantity of

educational work to be got through, it is the fable of the anxious

pendulum over again: it is true there are countless ‘ticks’ to be

ticked, but there will always be a second of time to tick in, and no

more than a single tick is to be delivered in any given second.

=Making a New Acquaintance.=--The rapid little people will have

played their play, whether of ‘sight-seeing’ or ‘picture-painting,’

in a quarter of an hour or so; for the study of natural objects, an

occasional ‘Look!’ an attentive examination of the object on the

mother’s own part, a name given, a remark--a dozen words long--made at

the right moment, and the children have begun a new acquaintance which

they will prosecute for themselves; and not more than one or two such

presentations should occur in a single day.

Now, see how much leisure there is left! The mother’s real difficulty

will be to keep herself from much talk with the children, and to

hinder them from occupying themselves with her. There are few things

sweeter and more precious to the child than playful prattle with her

mother; but one thing is better--the communing with the larger Mother,

in order to which the child and she should be left to themselves. This

is, truly, a delightful thing to watch: the mother reads her book or

knits her sock, checking all attempts to make talk; the child stares

up into a tree, or down into a flower--doing nothing, thinking of

nothing; or leads a bird’s life among the branches, or capers about in

aimless ecstasy;--quite foolish, irrational doings, but, all the time,

a _fashioning_ is going on: Nature is doing _her_ part, with

the vow--

“This child I to myself will take:

She shall be mine, and I will make

A lady of my own.”[6]

=Two Things permissible to the Mother.=--There is one thing the mother

will allow herself to do as interpreter between Nature and the child,

but that not oftener than once a week or once a month, and with look

and gesture of delight rather than with flow of improving words--she

will point out to the child some touch of especial loveliness in

colouring or grouping in the landscape or in the heavens. One other

thing she will do, but very rarely, and with tender filial reverence

(most likely she will say her prayers, and speak out of her prayer,

for to touch on this ground with _hard_ words is to wound the

soul of the child): she will point to some lovely flower or gracious

tree, not only as a beautiful work, but a beautiful _thought_ of

God, in which we may believe He finds continual pleasure, and which

He is pleased to see his human children rejoice in. Such a seed of

sympathy with the Divine thought sown in the heart of the child is

worth many of the sermons the man may listen to hereafter, much of the

‘divinity’ he may read.

XI.--OUT-OF-DOOR GAMES, ETC.

The bright hours fly by; and there is still at least one lesson

on the programme, to say nothing of an hour or two for games in

the afternoon. The thought of a _lesson_ is uninviting after

the discussion of much that is more interesting, and, truly, more

important; but it need only be a little lesson, ten minutes long, and

the slight break and the effort of attention will give the greater

zest to the pleasure and leisure to follow.

=The French Lesson.=--The daily French lesson is that which should

not be omitted. That children should learn French _orally_, by

listening to and repeating French words and phrases; that they should

begin so young that the difference of accent does not strike them, but

they repeat the new French word all the same as if it were English and

use it as freely; that they should learn a few--two or three, five

or six--new French words daily, and that, at the same time, the old

words should be kept in use--are points to be considered more fully

hereafter: in the meantime, it is so important to keep tongue and ear

familiar with French vocables, that not a lesson should be omitted.

The French lesson may, however, be made to fit in with the spirit of

the other out-of-door occupations; the half-dozen words may be the

parts--leaves, branches, bark, trunk of a tree, or the colours of the

flowers, or the movements of bird, cloud, lamb, child; in fact, the

new French words should be but another form of expression for the

ideas that for the time fill the child’s mind.

=Noisy Games.=--The afternoon’s games, after luncheon, are an

important part of the day’s doings for the elder children, though

the younger have probably worn themselves out by this time with the

ceaseless restlessness by means of which Nature provides for the due

development of muscular tissue in them; let them sleep in the sweet

air, and awake refreshed. Meanwhile, the elders play; the more they

run, and shout, and toss their arms, the more healthful is the play.

And this is one reason why mothers should carry their children off to

lonely places, where they may use their lungs to their hearts’ content

without risk of annoying anybody. The _muscular_ structure of the

organs of voice is not enough considered; children love to indulge

in cries and shouts and view-halloos, and this ‘rude’ and ‘noisy’

play, with which their elders have not much patience, is no more than

Nature’s way of providing for the due exercise of organs, upon whose

working power the health and happiness of the child’s future largely

depend. People talk of ‘weak lungs,’ ‘weak chest,’ ‘weak throat,’

but perhaps it does not occur to everybody that strong lungs and

strong throat are commonly to be had on the same terms as a strong

arm or wrist--by exercise, training, _use_, work. Still, if the

children can ‘give voice’ musically, and move rhythmically to the

sound of their own voices, so much the better. In this respect French

children are better off than English; they dance and sing through a

hundred roundelays--just such games, no doubt, mimic marryings and

buryings, as the children played at long ago in the market-place of

Jerusalem.

‘=Rondes.=’--Before Puritan innovations made us a staid and

circumspect people, English lads and lasses of all ages danced out

little dramas on the village green, accompanying themselves with the

words and airs of just such _rondes_ as the French children sing

to-day. We have a few of them left still--to be heard at Sunday-school

treats and other gatherings of the children,--and they are well worth

preserving: ‘There came three dukes a-riding, a-riding, a-riding’;

‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s’; ‘Here we come

gathering nuts in May’; ‘What has my poor prisoner done?’ and many

more, all set to delightful sing-song airs that little feet trip to

merrily, the more so for the pleasant titillation of the words--dukes,

nuts, oranges,--who could not go to the tune of such ideas?

The promoters of the kindergarten system have done much to introduce

games of this, or rather of a more educational kind; but is it not a

fact that the singing games of the kindergarten are apt to be somewhat

inane? Also, it is doubtful how far the prettiest plays, learnt at

school and from a teacher, will take hold of the children as do the

games which have been passed on from hand to hand through an endless

chain of children, and are not to be found in the print-books at all.

=Skipping-rope and Shuttlecock.=--Cricket, tennis, and rounders are

_the_ games _par excellence_ if the children are old enough

to play them, both as giving free harmonious play to the muscles,

and also as serving the highest moral purpose of games in bringing

the children under the discipline of rules; but the little family we

have in view, all of them under nine, will hardly be up to scientific

games. Races and chases, ‘tig,’ ‘follow my leader,’ and any romping

game they may invent, will be more to their minds: still better are

the hoop, the ball, the shuttlecock, and the invaluable skipping-rope.

For the rope, the very best use is for each child to skip with her

own, throwing it _backwards_ rather than forwards, so that the

tendency of the movement is to expand the chest. Shuttlecock is a

fine game, affording scope for ambition and emulation. Her biographer

thinks it worth telling that Miss Austen could keep up in ‘cup and

ball’ over a hundred times, to the admiration of nephews and nieces;

in like manner, any feat in keeping up the shuttlecock might be

noted down as a family event, so that the children may be fired with

ambition to excel in a game which affords most graceful and vigorous

play to almost every muscle of the upper part of the body, and has

this great recommendation, that it can be as well played within doors

as without. Quite the best play is to keep up the shuttlecock with

a battledore in each hand, so that the muscles on either side are

brought equally into play. But to ‘ordain’ about children’s games

is an idle waste of words, for here fashion is as supreme and as

arbitrary as in questions of bonnet or crinoline.

=Climbing.=--Climbing is an amusement not much in favour with mothers;

torn garments, bleeding knees, and boot-toes rubbed into holes,

to say nothing of more serious risks, make a strong case against

this form of delight. But, truly, the exercise is so admirable--the

body being thrown into endless graceful postures which bring every

muscle into play,--and the training in pluck, daring, and resource so

invaluable, that it is a pity trees and cliffs and walls should be

forbidden even to little girls. The mother may do a good deal to avert

serious mishaps by accustoming the younger children to small feats of

leaping and climbing, so that they learn, at the same time, courage

and caution from their own experiences, and are less likely to follow

the lead of too-daring playmates. Later, the mother had best make up

her mind to share the feelings of the hen that hatched a brood of

ducklings, remembering that a little scream, a sharp and sudden ‘Come

down instantly!’ ‘Tommy, you’ll break your neck!’ gives the child a

nervous shock, and is likely to cause the fall it was meant to hinder

by startling Tommy out of all presence of mind. Even boating and

swimming are not without the reach of town-bred children, in days when

everybody goes for a summer outing to the neighbourhood of the sea or

of inland waters; and then, there are swimming-baths in most towns. It

would be well if most children of seven were taught to swim, not only

for the possible usefulness of the art, but as giving them an added

means of motion, and, therefore, of delight.

=Clothing.=--The havoc of clothes need not be great if the children

are dressed for their little excursions, as they should be, in

plainly made garments of some loosely woven woollen material, serge

or flannel. Woollen has many advantages over cotton, and more over

linen, as a clothing material; chiefly, that it is a bad conductor;

that is to say, it does not allow the heat of the body too free an

exit, nor the heat of the sun too free an entrance. Therefore the

child in woollen, who has become heated in play, does not suffer a

chill from the sudden loss of this heat, as does the child in linen

garments; also, he is cooler in the sunshine, and warmer in the shade.

XII.--WALKS IN BAD WEATHER

=Winter Walks as necessary as Summer Walks.=--All we have said

hitherto applies to the summer weather, which is, alas for us! a very

limited and uncertain quantity in our part of the world. The question

of out-of-door exercise in winter and in wet weather is really more

important; for who that could would not be abroad in the summer time?

If the children are to have what is quite the best thing for them,

they should be two or three hours every day in the open air all

through the winter, say an hour and a half in the morning and as long

in the afternoon.

=Pleasures connected with Frost and Snow.=--When frost and snow are

on the ground children have very festive times, what with sliding,

snow-balling, and snow-building. But even on the frequent days when it

is dirty under foot and dull over head they should be kept interested

and alert, so that the heart may do its work cheerfully, and a

grateful glow be kept up throughout the body in spite of clouds and

cold weather.

=Winter Observations.=--All that has been said about ‘sight-seeing’

and ‘picture-painting,’ the little French talk, and observations to

be noted in the family diary, belongs just as much to winter weather

as to summer; and there is no end to the things to be seen and noted.

The party come across a big tree which they judge, from its build, to

be an oak--down it goes in the diary; and when the leaves are out, the

children come again to see if they are right. Many birds come into

view the more freely in the cold weather that they are driven forth in

search of food.

“The cattle mourn in corners where the fence screens them.”

“The sun, with ruddy orb

Ascending, fires the horizon.”

“Every herb and every spiry blade

Stretches a length of shadow o’er the field.”

“The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves.”

“The redbreast warbles still, but is content

With slender notes, and more than half suppress’d;

Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light

From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes

From many a twig the pendent drops of ice

That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below.”

There is no reason why the child’s winter walk should not be as

fertile in observations as the poet’s; indeed, in one way, it is

possible to see the more in winter, because the things to be seen do

not crowd each other out.

=Habit of Attention.=--Winter walks, too, whether in town or country,

give great opportunities for cultivating the habit of attention. The

famous conjurer, Robert Houdin, relates in his autobiography, that

he and his son would pass rapidly before a shop window, that of a

toy-shop, for instance, and each cast an attentive glance upon it.

A few steps further on each drew paper and pencil from his pocket,

and tried which could enumerate the greater number of the objects

momentarily seen in passing. The boy surpassed his father in quickness

of apprehension, being often able to write down forty objects, whilst

his father could scarcely reach thirty; yet on their returning to

verify his statement, the son was rarely found to have made a mistake.

Here is a hint for a highly educational amusement for many a winter’s

walk.

=Wet Weather Tramps.=--But what about the wet days? The fact is, that

rain, unless of the heaviest, does the children no harm at all if they

are suitably clothed. But every sort of waterproof garment should be

tabooed, because the texture which will not admit rain will not allow

of the escape of the insensible perspiration, and one secret of health

for people who have no organic disease is the prompt carrying off of

the decayed and harmful matters discharged by the skin.

=Outer Garments for.=--Children should have woollen rain-garments--made

of coarse serge, for instance,--to be changed the moment they return

from a walk, and then there is no risk of catching cold. This is the

common-sense of the matter. Wet cloths are put upon the head of a

fever patient; by-and-by the cloths dry, and are dipped again: what

has become of the water? It has evaporated, and, in evaporating, has

carried off much heat from the fevered head. Now, that which eases the

hot skin of fever is just the one thing to be avoided in ordinary

circumstances. To be wet to the skin may do a child no more harm than

a bath would do him, if the wet clothes do not dry upon him--that is,

if the water does not evaporate, carrying off much heat from his body

in the process. It is the loss of animal heat which is followed by

‘colds,’ and not the ‘wetting,’ which mothers are ready to deplore.

Keep a child active and happy in the rain, and he gets nothing but

good from his walk. The case is altered if the child has a cold

already; then active exercise might increase any inflammation already

set up.

I do not know whether it is more than a pretty fancy of Richter’s,

that a spring shower is a sort of electric bath, and a very potent

means of health; certainly rain clears the atmosphere--a fact of

considerable importance in and about large towns. But it is enough for

our purpose to prove that the rain need do no harm; for abundant daily

exercise in the fresh air is of such vital importance to the children,

that really nothing but sickness should keep them within doors. A mere

time and distance tramp is sufficiently joyous for a wet day, for,

taken good-humouredly, the beating rain itself is exhilarating. The

‘long run’ of the schoolboy, that is, a steady trot, breaking now and

then into a run, is capital exercise; but regard must be had to the

powers of the children, who must not be overdone.

=Precautions.=--At the same time, children should never be allowed to

sit or stand about in damp clothes; and here is the use of waterproof

rain-wraps--to keep them dry on short journeys to church, or school,

or neighbour’s house, where they cannot very well change their

garments.

XIII.--‘RED INDIAN’ LIFE

=Scouting.=--Baden Powell’s little book about _Scouting_ set us

upon a new track. Hundreds of families make joyous expeditions, far

more educative than they dream, wherein scouting is the order of the

day. For example, one party of four or more lies in ambush,--the best

ambush to be had, which is pitched upon after much consideration. The

enemy scouts; first he finds the ambush, and then his skill is shown

in getting within touch of the alert foe without being discovered. But

every family should possess _Scouting_ in default of the chance

of going on the war-path with a Red Indian. The evil of the ready-made

life we lead is that we do not discern the signs of the times. An

alert intelligence towards what goes on in the open-air world is a

great possession, and, strongly as we sympathise with the effort made

to put down bird’s-nesting, we shall lose, if we are not careful, one

of the few bits of what we may call ‘Red Indian’ training still within

our reach.

=Bird-stalking.=--But bird ‘stalking,’ to adapt a name, is a great

deal more exciting and delightful than bird’s-nesting, and we get our

joy at no cost of pain to other living things. All the skill of a good

scout comes into play. Think, how exciting to creep noiselessly as

shadows behind river-side bushes on hands and knees without disturbing

a twig or a pebble till you get within a yard of a pair of sandpipers,

and then, lying low, to watch their dainty little runs, pretty tricks

of head and tail, and to hear the music of their call. And here comes

in the real joy of bird-stalking. If in the winter months the children

have become fairly familiar with the notes of our resident birds,

they will be able in the early summer to ‘stalk’ to some purpose. The

notes and songs in June are bewildering, but the plan is to single out

those you are quite sure of, and then follow up the others. The key

to a knowledge of birds is knowledge of their notes, and the only way

to get this is to follow any note of which you are not sure. The joy

of tracking a song or note to its source is the joy of a ‘find,’ a

possession for life.

But bird-stalking is only to be done upon certain conditions. You must

not only be ‘most mousy-quiet,’ but you must not even let a thought

whisper, for if you let yourself think about anything else, the

entirely delightful play of bird-life passes by you unobserved; nay,

the very bird notes are unheard.

Here are two bird walks communicated by a bird-lover:--

“We heard a note something like a chaffinch’s, only slower, and we

looked up in the boughs of the ash to try and track the bird by the

sudden quiver of one twig here, another, there. We found a steep,

rocky path which brought us almost level with the tree tops, and then

we had a good view of the shy little willow wren busily seeking food.

A note from the next tree like a bubbling of song drew us further on,

and then we found the wood wren and watched him as with upturned head

and bubbling throat he uttered his trill.

“A joyous burst of song came from a bush near by, and we crept on, to

find a blackcap warbler with upraised crest turning excitedly round

and round in the ecstasy of song. We waited, and traced him to his

next station by his light touch on the branches. A hoarse screech

from another tree announced a greenfinch, and we had a long chase to

get a glimpse of him; but he came to an outstanding twig, and then we

heard his pretty song, which I should never have guessed to be his

had we not seen him at it. A little squeaky note made us watch the

tree trunks, and, sure enough, there was a tree-creeper running up and

round and round an ash, uttering his note all the time.

“Another day we got behind a wall from which we could examine a field

that lay beside the lake. There was the green plover with his jaunty

crest, running and pecking, and, as he pecked, we caught sight of

the rosy flash under his tail. We waited, hoping for more, for the

plovers stand so still that they are lost in their surroundings. But

someone coughed, and up went the plovers, a dozen of them, with their

weary taunt, ‘Why don’t you let us alone?’ Their distress roused other

birds, and we saw a snipe rise from the water edge, a marshy place,

with hasty zigzag flight; it made a long round and settled not much

further than where it rose. The sandpipers rose, two flying close to

the water’s edge, whistling all the time. By the side of a little

gully we watched a wagtail, and presently a turn in the sunshine

showed us the yellow breast of the yellow wagtail. A loud ‘tis-sic’

near us drew our eyes to the wall, and there stood a pied wagtail

with full beak, waiting to get rid of us before visiting his nest in

the wall. We crept away and sheltered behind a tree, and after a few

minutes’ waiting we saw him go into his hole. An angry chatter near by

(like a broom on Venetian blinds!) directed our eyes to a little brown

wren on the wall with cocked-up tail, but in a minute he disappeared

like a mouse over the side.”

This is from another bird-lover:--

“Now, they (the children) are beginning to care more for the birds

than the eggs, and their first question, instead of being, ‘What is

the egg like?’ is usually ‘What is the bird like?’ We have great

searching through Morris’s _British Birds_[7] to identify birds

we have seen and to make quite sure of doubtful points.

“But now for the birds. _Stonechats_ abound on the heaths. I

pricked myself up to my knees standing in a gorse-patch watching and

listening to the first I saw, but I was quite rewarded, and saw at

least four pairs at one time. Do you know the birds? The cock birds

are such handsome little fellows, black head and mask, white collar,

rufous breast and dark grey or brown back. They have a pretty little

song, rather longer than a chaffinch’s, besides the chit-chat cry when

they are disturbed. They do not make a long flight, and will hover

in the air like a flycatcher. The sandmartins have numbers of holes

in the cliffs. We tried to see how deep they burrowed to build their

nests, but though I put my arm in up to the elbows in several deserted

holes, I could not reach the end. I think my favourites are the

reed-warblers. I know of at least four pairs, and when I could induce

the children to _both_ stop talking for a few minutes, we were

able to watch them boldly hopping up and down the reeds and singing in

full view of us.”

This is the sort of thing bird-stalkers come upon--and what a loss

have those children who are not brought up to the gentle art wherein

the eye is satisfied with seeing, and there is no greed of collecting,

no play of the hunter’s instinct to kill, and yet a lifelong joy of

possession.

XIV.--THE CHILDREN REQUIRE COUNTRY AIR

=The Essential Proportion of Oxygen.=--Every one knows that the

breathing of air which has lost little of its due proportion of oxygen

is _the_ essential condition of vigorous life and of a fine

physique; also, that whatever produces heat, whether it be animal

heat, or the heat of fire, candle, gas-lamp, produces that heat at the

expense of the oxygen contained in the atmosphere--a bank which is

drawn upon by every breathing and burning object; that in situations

where much breathing and burning are going on, there is a terrible

drain upon this vital gas; that the drain may be so excessive that

there is no longer sufficient oxygen in the air to support animal

life, and death results; that where the drain is less excessive but

still great, animal life may be supported, and people live a flaccid,

feeble life in a state of low vitality.

=Excess of Carbonic Acid Gas.=--Also we know that every breathing

and every burning object expels a hurtful gas--carbonic acid. A very

small proportion of this gas is present in the purest atmospheric

air, and in that small proportion is healthful; but increase that

quantity by the action of furnaces, fires, living beings, gas-lamps,

and the air is rendered unwholesome, just in proportion to the

quantity of superfluous carbonic-acid gas it contains. If the quantity

be excessive--as when many people are huddled together in a small

unventilated room--speedy death by suffocation is the result.

=Unvitiated, Unimpoverished Air.=--For these reasons, it is not

possible to enjoy fulness of life in a town. For grown-up people,

the stimulus of town life does something to make up for the impurity

of town air; as, on the other hand, country people too often forfeit

their advantages through the habit of mental sluggishness they let

themselves fall into: but, for the children--who not only breathe, but

grow; who require, proportionably, more oxygen than adults need for

their vital processes--it is absolutely cruel not to give them very

frequent, if not daily, copious draughts of unvitiated, unimpoverished

air, the sort of air that can be had only remote from towns.

=Solar Light.=--But this is only one of the reasons why, for health’s

sake alone, it is of the first importance to give children long days

in the open country. They want light, solar light, as well as air.

Country people are ruddier than town folk; miners are sallow, so

are the dwellers in cellars and in sunless valleys. The reason is,

that, to secure the ruddy glow of perfect health, certain changes

must take place in the blood--the nature of which it would take too

long to explain here--and that these changes in the blood, marked

by the free production of red corpuscles, appear to take place most

favourably under the influence of abundant solar light. What is more,

men of science are beginning to suspect that not only the coloured

_light_ rays of the solar spectrum, but the dark _heat_ rays, and the

chemical rays, minister to vitality in ways not yet fully understood.

=A Physical Ideal for a Child.=--There was a charming picture

in _Punch_ some time ago, of two little boys airing their

English-French on their mother’s new maid; two noble little fellows,

each straight as a dart, with no superfluous flesh, eyes well opened,

head erect, chest expanded, the whole body full of spring even in

repose. It was worth looking at, if only as suggesting the sort of

physique we delight to see in a child. No doubt the child inherits

the most that he is in this respect as in all others; but _this_

is what bringing-up may, with some limitations, effect:--The child

is born with certain natural tendencies, and, according to his

bringing-up, each such tendency may run into a blemish of person or

character, or into a cognate grace. Therefore, it is worth while to

have even a _physical_ ideal for one’s child; not, for instance,

to be run away with by the notion that a fat child is necessarily a

fine child. The fat child can easily be produced: but the bright eye,

the open regard, the springing step; the tones, clear as a bell; the

agile, graceful movements that characterise the well-brought-up child,

are the result, not of bodily well-being only, but of ‘mind and soul

according well,’ of a quick, trained intelligence, and of a moral

nature habituated to ‘the joy of self-control.’

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See Appendix A.

[4] Nature note-books may be had at the P.N.E.U. Office, 26 Victoria

Street. See Appendix A.

[5] Kingsley’s _Water Babies_ and _Madam How and Lady Why_.

All Mrs Brightwen’s books. Miss Buckley’s (Mrs Fisher) ‘Eyes and no

Eyes’ Series. _Life and her Children_, etc. All Seton-Thompson’s

books. Long’s _The School of the Woods_, _The Little Brother of

the Bear_. Kearton’s _Wild Nature’s Ways_. _Living Animals

of the World._

[6] Wordsworth.

[7] John’s _British Birds_, which costs as many shillings as

Morris’s does guineas, is better for beginners.