Where is it kept? We have often longed for a sight of that precious bit
of aërolite, that talismanic moon-stone and bewildering boulder, to
which the lips of all devoted to infantile education must be religiously
pressed.
In vain have we searched in the closet, where the headless dolls and
tailless horses, the collapsed drum and the torn primer, are put away.
We have privately climbed to the summit of the clothes-press, we have
surreptitiously invaded the nurse's own private work-basket, lured by
disappointing lumps of wax and fragments of rhubarb-root; but we did
not find it. We believe in its existence none the less. Real as the
coronation-stone of the Scottish kings now in Westminster Abbey, as the
Caaba at Mecca, as the loadstone mountain against which dear old Sinbad
was wrecked, as the meteor which fell into the State of Connecticut and
the volcanic island which rose out of the Straits of Messina, as the
rock of Plymouth, or the philosopher's stone,--yet we have sought in
vain for it, and only know of it as of the Great Carbuncle, by the light
it sheds.
"Pray, my good Sir," ask legions of fond parents, "what do you mean? Is
it Dalby's Carminative, Daffy's Elixir, Brown's Syrup of Squills, or
White's Magnetic Mixture? Is it of the soothing or the coercing system?
a substitute for lollipops or for birch? rock candy or rock the cradle?"
"Look" not "into your heart," responds our Muse, but into your nursery,
and write!
We invite a general review of all infantry divisions. We may be, for
aught you know, Mrs. Ellis _incog_., warning the mothers of America, as
of yore the Cornelias of England. What is the Nursery Blarney-Stone?
You have none in your own airy and southern-exposed first-pair-back,
(_Nov-Anglicè>_, "the keeping-room chamber,") where you daily water
and rake your young olive-sprouts? upon your word of honor, Madam, you
have not? You never tell nursery-tales of ghosts or fairies; you have
conscientiously stripped from the dark closet every vestige of a legend;
you have permitted juvenile inspection of the chimney, to prove that
Santa Claus could not descend its sooty flue without grievous nigritude
of the anticipated doll's frock, and have logically appealed to Miss
Bran Beeswax's satin silveriness in proof of the non-existence of
the saint beloved of Christmas-tide. Nay, more, you tell us you have
actually invited inspection of the overnight process of filling the
stockings, (you brute!) and you appropriately label each gift, "From
Papa," "From Uncle Edward," "From Sister Kate," "From dear Mamma," lest
a figment of the supernatural untruth should linger in the infantile
brain. The "Arabian Nights'" (and "Arabian Days'") "Entertainments" are
on your _Index Expurgatorius_. You have banned Bluebeard, and treated
Red Ridinghood as no better than the Bonnet Rouge of domestic
Jacobinism.
You are a model mother, with whom even the late Mr. Gradgrind might be
satisfied. "Truth, crushed to earth" by the whole race of nurses of the
good old time, rises again triumphant at your hearth-stone. Then answer
us,--Why did you tell your little ones to-night, as the sparrows were
making an unusually loquacious preparation for their dormitories,
that the little birds were singing their evening hymns, and exhort,
thereupon, your unwilling nestlings to a rival performance of the verses
of Dr. Watts? You ought to be prepared to explain, also, for the benefit
of any sucking Socrates, why it is that these feathered choristers
have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the
moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the
poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the motherly hens
and pert pullets, you should be prepared to state upon what theological
principles it is that psalmody is not the wont of the Gallinacae. Are
the Biddies given over to a reprobate mind, because you don't happen to
like their vocalization? Is it only the Piccolomini and Linds of the
feathered kingdom who have a right to practise sacred music?
And how about that other stupendous fiction of the harvest-moon? Tell
us, since you are voluntarily in the confessional, tell us why you
kept back that explanation of its dependence on the Precession of the
Equinoxes, which, at Professor Cram's finishing examination, in your
school-girl days, you so glibly recited before your admiring papa and
mamma? Do you really believe that the solar and stellar system was
arranged to accommodate "the reapers reaping early" of the little island
of Great Britain?
We think you said angels! When little Isabel Montgomery, with her long,
sunny curls, and sweet, blue eyes, was taken away, you made a very
touching application of her decease, to illustrate what all good people
were to become in the unknown world. How did you get out of the scrape
which followed the remark of your downright eldest, remembering also the
departure of a good-natured, obese, elderly neighbor,--"Then I thpothe
Mithter Thimmonth ith a big angel"? So he probably is; but Simmons's two
hundred pounds of earthliness did not suit your sentimentality quite as
readily as the little fairy who always wore such clean pantalets and
never tore her pretty white frocks in a game of romps. Is beatification
dependent upon the platform-balance? and what amount of flesh will turn
the scale in favor of the _Avvocato del Diavolo?_
Once upon a time, a little boy was allowed to ramble in the woods. Being
an adventurous little boy, he saw and coveted, and also conquered, (in
the good old English sense of the word,) a pretty bird's-nest and its
contents, to wit, several shiny, speckled eggs. He brought them home for
triumphant display. He set them out upon the drawing-room table, and
called a family conclave to admire and exult. What was the surprise
and grief of the infant Catiline, to find himself received, not with
applause, but horror! He was accused of robbery, was threatened with
Solomonic penalties, was finally condemned to penance at a side-table
upon dry bread and water, while his innocent brothers and sisters were
regaling upon chickens and custards. He was edified over his scanty meal
by melting descriptions of the mother-bird returning to the desolated
home, of her positive sorrow and her probable pining to death. And
the same little boy, looking out through the prison-bars of the
nursery-window, saw his mother take by the hand his weeping sister (much
cast down by the fraternal wickedness) and lead her to the nest of
another mother-bird, and then and there encourage her to perform the
same act of spoliation. True, the eggs were not speckled and small, but
of a very pretty white, and quite a handful for the juvenile fingers.
But the bereaved "parient" was not slender and active,--in fact, was
rather a tame, confiding, dumpy and dull, pepper-and-salt-colored dame.
Her complaints were not touching, but rather ludicrous,--so much so,
indeed, as to suggest to the human hen-bird that "Biddy was laughing to
think what a nice breakfast little Carrie would have off her nice eggs!"
The young Trenck, from aloft beholding, could not but stumble upon
certain "glittering generalities," as, that "eggs was eggs," and that
the return of them on the fowl's part, in consideration of an advance of
corn, was not altogether a voluntary barter,--quite, in short, after the
pattern of Coolie apprenticeship. And thus the high moral lesson of the
morning was sadly shaken. Of course this boy did not belong to any of
the model mammas, for whom we are writing.
A large fragment of the Nursery Blarney-Stone has been made over, to
have and to hold, to the writers of the Children's Astor-Place
Library. We yawn over poetical justice in novels, and only tolerate it
as an amusing absurdity in genteel comedy, for the sake of getting
the curtain rapidly down over the benedictory guardian and the
virtue-rewarded fair, who are impatient themselves to be off to a very
different distribution of cakes and ale. We know that the hero and the
heroine walk complacently away in the company of the dejected villain
to wash off their rouge and burnt cork, and experience the practical
domestic felicity which is ordered for them on the same principles as
for us who sit in the pit and applaud. If it were not so, and if we did
not know it to be so, and if we did not know that they know that we know
it, we should perhaps feel very differently.
Why must we, then, be conscientiously constrained to mark out such a
very different plan for our children at home? Why is the life of little
boys and girls in books always pictured on the foot-lights pattern? We
remember that we were of those good little boys and girls,--quite as
good as that one who saved his pennies for the missionary-box, or that
other who hemmed a tiny pocket-handkerchief against the nasal needs of a
forlorn infant in Burmah; but we don't remember ever (then or since) to
have encountered any of those delightful (and strong-minded) mothers or
those sensible and always well-informed fathers of whom we read. Neither
in our own particularly pleasant home, nor in any where we went, (at
three, P.M., to take an early tea with preparatory barmecidal rehearsals
on doll's china,) did we ever meet them. Perhaps they were the
progenitors of the authors of the books. Mr. Thackeray has introduced us
to sundry gentlemen and ladies bearing a faint likeness to them; but
he also permitted us to behold Lady Beckie Crawley _née_ Sharpe boxing
little Rawdon's ears, and to meet Mrs. Hobson Newcome at one of her
delightful "at homes," where Runmun Loll, of East Indian origin, was the
lion of the evening.
We couldn't get through five pages of Hannah More, on a wet day, at the
dreariest railway-station, when the expected train was telegraphed as
"not due under two hours." What have the innocent heirs of our name
done, that Hannah should continue under numberless _noms-de-plume_ to
cater for them?
We know there must have been a large lump of the Blarney-Stone,
conglomerate probably, kept in the desk of our reverend instructor in
the ways of syntax and the dismal paths of numbers. We have a lively
recollection of the countless tables of foreign coins which we committed
to memory, and of the provoking additions and subtractions we underwent
to reduce to dollars and cents of the Federal denomination the
fortunes of a score of Rothschilds. But when, under the shadow of the
Drachenfels, we attempted to reimburse the Teutonic waiter for a cup of
_café noir_, we were ignominiously constrained to hold forth a handful
of coin and to await the white-jacketed and bearded one's pleasure, as
he helped himself.
We have a strong impression that we should never have attained to our
present proud position of being allowed to write for (and be printed
in) the "Atlantic Monthly," without much previous polish, through the
companionship of the fairer sex. Why was it made a crime worthy of
Draconian sternness to address our she-comrades in the pleasant paths of
learning? Why did we behold the severe Magister Morum himself, in utter
forgetfulness of his own rule, mingle in the mazy dance on an evening
occasion, at which we were allowed to sit up? Did the girls of a larger
growth lose their dangerous qualities on arriving at belle-hood? Why were
our primary _billets-doux_ confiscated, and our offending palms, like
Cranmer's, visited with the first penalty, though we had been obliged to
walk blushingly the gauntlet of fifty pairs of maiden eyes and deliver
to the "female principal" of the girls' school across the entry notes
which we have since but too much reason to conclude bore no reference
to the affairs of the school-realm? There is a bit of the Blarney-Stone
(always of the nursery formation) which we are sure is discoverable to
the true geologic eye in the underpinning of the Fifth Congregational
Society's house of worship,--then called a meeting-house, now, we
believe, styled a church. For all sermons therein delivered were
supposed to be for our personal edification; albeit we were not, by
reason of our tender years, specifically exposed to the heresies of
Origen or Pelagius. It must have been on some afternoon when we were
absent, then, that Dr. Baxter delivered the discourse of which we
found a commentary written on the fly-leaf of the hymn-book in our
pew,--"Terribly tedious this P.M., isn't he?" We have always felt that
a great opportunity was lost to us. We should doubtless have been
permitted to indulge unchecked in the solution of that lost mystery of
our boyhood, as to the exact number of little brass rods in the front of
the gallery, to scratch our initials with a pin upon the pew-side, or,
propped by the paternal arm, to sweetly slumber till nineteenthly's
close. No such sermon was ever pronounced in our hearing. Oh, golden
time of youth! precious season thus lost! We intend yet revisiting that
ancient and time-worn edifice, and, borrowing the keys of the sexton,
we mean to revel in all and sundry those delights of "boyhood's breezy
hour" from which we were debarred by that untimely absence. Like the
old gentleman who visited nightly Van Amburg's exhibition of the
head-in-the-lion's-mouth feat, in the moral certainty that a single
absence would fall inevitably upon the one night when Leo would vary the
programme by decapitation,--so we lost the one afternoon when that
dull discourse diversified the pious eloquence of Jotham Baxter, D.D.,
disciple of Dr. Hopkins and believer in Cotton Mather. Many a refreshing
slumber has sealed our eyes under subsequent outpourings of divinity,
but never with that entire sense of permissible indulgence which
then would certainly have been ours. Why was it--except for the
Blarney-Stone--that we were always checked in any Sabba'day notes and
queries of what we had noticed in the sanctuary? Why was it wicked and
deserving of a double infliction of catechism (Assembly's) for us to
have seen that Bob Jones had a new jacket, and that he took five marbles
and a jack-knife (in aggravating display) out of its pockets, while our
mother and sisters were enabled, without let or hindrance to the most
absorbing devotion, to chronicle every bonnet and ribbon within the
walls of the temple?
Certainly, the family-physician carried--as well he might--a bit of the
precious rock in his waistcoat-pocket; for all our subsequent experience
of _materia medica_ has never revealed to us the then patent fact, that
all our bodily ailments were the consequence of those particular sports
which damaged clothes and disturbed the quiet of the household. Surely,
the connection between the measles and sailing on the millpond was about
as obvious as that between Macedon and Monmouth; and whooping-cough must
have had a very long road to travel, if it originated in our nutting
frolic, when we returned home with a ghastly gash in our trousers-knee.
The Blarney-Stone got into our "Manual of History"; for either it or
the "Boston Centinel" must have made some egregious mistakes as to the
character of some famous men who nursed our country's fortunes. So, too,
did the author of "Familiar Letters on Public Characters"; for he was
anything but an indorser of the History-Book, with its wood-cuts (after
Trumbull and West) of the death of General Wolfe, exclaiming, "They
run who run the French then I die happy," and of General Warren at the
Battle of Bunker's Hill, with its amazing portraits of the first six
Presidents, and the death of Tecumseh. Nay, we have found hard work to
reconcile our faith, as per History-Book, in the loveliness of those
gentlemen whom stress of weather and a treacherous pilot put ashore upon
Plymouth beach, (where they luckily found a rock to step upon,) with a
certain sweet pastoral called "Evangeline." We found ourselves, just
after reading the proceedings of the Plymouth Monument Association, the
other day, pondering over the possible fate of the Dutch colony of the
Mannahattoes, supposing that the Mayflower had made (as was purposed)
the Highlands of Neversink instead of Shankpainter Hill at the end of
Cape Cod. It was a perilous meditation, for we found our belief in
Plutarch's Lives, the Charter Oak, and the existence of the Maelström
all sliding away from under us. "Think," we said, "if New York had been
Boston, how it would have fared with the good Knickerbockers!"
Who was our geographer? Why did he insist upon our believing that all
French men and women passed their time in mutual bows and "curchies,"
and that all Italians were on their knees to fat priests, clean and
rosy-looking? Why did he palm upon us that outrageous fiction of three
kings (like those of Cologne) sitting in full ermine robes, with gold
crowns on their heads, all alone in a sort of summer-parlor, where the
heat, must have been at 80° in the shade, engaged in disparting Poland?
We have seen, say, a million of Frenchmen, and nearly the same of
Italians, since then, with a dozen or so of kings and emperors,--but
never the faintest likeness to those deluding pictures. We learned
at the same time, by painful rote, the population of various capital
cities; but we cannot find in any statistic-book gazetteer, neither in
McCulloch nor in Worcester, any of the old, familiar numbers. Also in
that same Wonder-Book of Malte-Brun, edited by Pietro il Parlatore, we
recall a sketch of a boy running for life down a slope of at least 45°,
just before a snowball some five hundred times as big as the one our
school-boys unitedly rolled up in the back-yard. It was a snowball,
round, symmetrical, just such a magnified copy of the backyard one as
might be expected to follow a boy in dreams after too much Johnny-cake
for supper. And that was an avalanche. We have stood since then under
the shadow of the Jungfrau, on the Wengern Alp, at the selfsame spot
where Byron beheld the fall of so many. We had the noble lord's luck,
(as most people have.) and saw dozens, but not one big snowball.
We believe there has been reform since that day. Thanks to the London
"Illustrated News" and the "Penny Magazine," juster ideas visit the
ingenious youth of the present age. But we solemnly declare that we
grew up in the belief that the President of the United States was
daily ushered to his carriage by a long array of bareheaded and bowing
menials, and that his official dress was a cocked hat and knee-breeches.
We furthermore make affidavit that we supposed all the nobility of
Europe to be in the habit of driving four-in-hand over wooden-legged
beggars. And we also depose and say, that we had no other idea of
royalty than as continually clad in coronation-robes, with six peers in
the same, with huge wigs, as attendants. All this upon the faith of
that same Malte-Brun, _à la_ P.P. Wasn't this a pretty dish to set
before--not a king-but a young republican, who fancied himself the
equal of kings? And lastly, upon the same authority, we held that "the
horrible custom of eating human flesh does not belong exclusively to any
nation." We have seen, we repeat, men and cities. We have dined at
the Rocher de Cancale, the Maison Dorée, at Delmonico's, at German
Gasthauses, at Italian Trattorias, at "Joe's" in London, the Trosachs
Inn in the Highlands, and upon all peculiar and national dishes, from
the _sardines au gratin_ of Naples to the _sauer kraut_ of Berlin, from
the "one fish-ball" of Boston to the hog and hominy of Virginia,--but
never yet upon any _carte_ did we encounter "Cold Missionary" or
"_Enfans en potage Fijien_."
Where, we repeat, is the Nursery Blarney-Stone? or rather, where is it
not?
The gentle reader (prepared to corroborate with many a juvenile
reminiscence) must by this time be prepared for our moral; and it is
very briefly this:--Is it not time to consider the budding brain as
entitled to fair play? We, the dear middle-aged people, must surely
remember that it has taken us much toil and trouble to unlearn many
things. We know, that, when we pen anything for our coevals, it is with
due attention to such facts as we can command,--that we have a wholesome
fear of criticism,--that, if we make blunders in our seamanship, even
though professedly land-lubbers, some awful Knickerbocker stands by with
the Marine Dictionary in hand to pounce upon us. But for the poor little
innocents at home any cast-off rags of knowledge are good enough. We
hand down to them the worn-out platitudes of history which we have
carefully eschewed. We humbug their inexperience with the same nursery
fables beneath whose leonine hide our matured vision detects the ass's
ears.
We have been writing lightly enough, but with a purpose. For, absurd as
may seem the fictions we have sported with, are they not types of many
other far more serious ones which we cram down the throats of our rising
generation, long after we ourselves have begun to disbelieve them? There
is a conventional teaching which we decorously administer, and leave
our pupils to disavow it when they can. History is still taught in our
public and private schools, seasoned with all the exploded blunders of
the past. Men grow up to full manhood with ideas of foreign lands as
ridiculous and unfounded as the pictures over which we have been amusing
ourselves just now in our old Geography. Young America is ignorant
enough, Heaven knows, of a great deal he ought to learn; but what shall
we say of our persistently cramming him with what he ought not to learn?
No exploding process is strong enough, it would seem, to blow away the
countless pretty stories with which juvenile histories are embroidered.
Niebuhr and Arnold have forever finished Romulus and Remus and the
Livian legends, for maturer beliefs; but childhood goes on in the same
track. Lord Macaulay's Romance of English History has been riddled by
the acute reviewers; but he will be abridged for the use of schools, and
not a fiction about William Penn, or John of Marlborough, or Grahame of
Claverhouse, be left out.
Can you plant a garden with weeds and then pull them up again in secure
trust that no lurking burdocks and Canada thistle shall remain? Dear
model mothers and prudent papas, be not afraid of wholesome fiction,
as such, duly labelled and left uncorked. It will be far better to
administer plenty of "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad" and "Arabian
Nights," good ringing old ballads with a healthy sentiment at bottom of
manly honor and womanly affection, fairy stories and ancient legends,
than all the mince-meat histories and biographies that nurse-wise have
been chewed soft for the use of tender gums. Let us all, for the benefit
of ourselves, keep clear of cant; but if cant we must, why let it be for
those who will cant back again, laughing in their sleeves the while, and
not for the dear little faces so solemnly upturned to ours, whose
honest blue eyes (black or green, if you please, as you take your tea)
confidingly meet ours.
American education, especially home education, is wanting not in
quantity so much as quality; in that it _is_ fearfully lacking, and we,
the educators, are the ones to blame for it.