of exclusively by a very sweet mother, and this gave him the most
desirable social intercourse and play that took the place of our
discourses at the right moment, and called into action very sweet traits
of character. My weekly visit of a day or two was a great affair to the
children. I told them stories, innumerable variations of _The Story
without an End_, and of _Pilgrim's Progress_, modified to their infant
minds. I always repeated the stories in precisely the same words (which
is a great point in telling stories to children, and impresses them on
the memory), and they became very familiar with the ends of my
paragraphs, and would take them from my lips, and repeat them as a
chorus. Thus when I had got Pilgrim laid away in the upper chamber of
the House Beautiful, whose white draperies I minutely described, they
would all interrupt me, and sing out, "And the name of that chamber was
Peace." So of the last words of other paragraphs that I purposely made
epigrammatic.
The substantial character of the child's piety and sense of immortality,
which I have described as bubbling up at the name _Heavenly_ Father,
spoken at the right time, and in the right way, was exhibited
unmistakably in his after life, and began to express itself at once in
his association with his little cousins, which proved a very timely
thing for him, bringing out his moral character by means of what he
constantly did to make them happy, and keep them good, but he never said
anything to them about the Heavenly Father. That subject seemed reserved
for me.
It was amusing to see how fatherly he was to the little one, and he
continued this fatherly manner all his after life to all the children
with whom he came in contact, and even during his childhood it was
singularly unmixed with any tyranny or managing spirit. He would play as
they wanted to with them. He seemed to be drawn to children because he
could so easily understand their innocence, and make them happy by his
companionship, and because he enjoyed _them_.
All his subsequent life he exhibited an exquisite sensibility to beauty,
which he continued to accept as the Creator's _smile of consent_; the
_very good_ pronounced on everything which He had made. In the last part
of his mother's life, she became so frightfully emaciated, that it was
evidently painful for him to look at her; but he _said_ nothing about
it; and it was sweet to see the delicacy with which he tried to conceal
this pain from _her_, when he was admitted into the room to see her,
which, at length, came to be only in the middle of the day, when she was
seated in an easy-chair, with a broad white footstool at her feet. He
would come into the room, looking on the floor, and seat himself on the
footstool, with his back partly turned to her, and, drawing down her
hands, cover them with kisses: he refused, as it were, to recognize her,
under that ghastly mask, which, however, did not shut off from his
_remembrance_, her former loveliness; for, as soon as she was really
dead, and he began to think of her _in heaven_, she became his standard
of beauty. During the little more than a year that he continued under my
care, "_not_ so beautiful as my mother," or "_as_ beautiful as my
mother" were words very frequently in his mouth. As she approached her
death, she was so careful lest he should have any of the _shock_ which
her own mother's death gave to her, that she readily consented that he
should go for the last few days with the other children to stay with a
kind neighbor. He was therefore not present at her death; neither was I.
It was an event greatly longed for by herself, at last, and its
approach, which she knew before any one else discerned any special
change, seemed to gladden her. Her last breath was peaceful; her last
words, "Give my love to F."
I told him of the event the morning after the funeral, from which I
returned with his father, in the dusk of the evening, calling for the
child to go home and sleep with me, which he always was delighted to do.
He was put to bed in the room where his mother had died, and I went in
with him, to explain her absence, if he should notice it. But he was
tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did _not_,--not even when he
woke in the morning. At last, I said to him, "Do you see what room we
are in?" He rose up and looked around, and said, "Why, it is my mother's
chamber! Where is my mother?" I paused a moment to see if he would
divine the truth, and then said, "The dear Heavenly Father has taken her
at last!" He fell back on the pillow, with a single exclamation of _not
painful wonder_, and a countenance sublime with the mingled expression
of awe, love, and joyful satisfaction. The fact of her absent body
seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her deathless soul,
than even her form and word, which had represented it to his senses. He
was "silent, as we grow when feeling most," as if he realized that he
was in the presence of the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things unseen." You may be sure I respected this sacred silence,
which seemed to me to last several minutes, but possibly it was only
_one_. At last he said gently, "Was the window open?" I replied, "I
don't know; I only know our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you
know, took her to himself. He does not mind about windows, you know."
"_No, indeed!_ I know that very well," he said, with a little laugh (as
if he wondered at his momentary lapse of thought). Soon he asked, "Did
He give her a new body right away?" "I do not know anything more about
that than _you_ do," I replied; "I only know He will do better things
for her than we can think of." "Do you think," said he, "that she looks
beautiful as she used to?" but, before I could reply, he suddenly added,
"I want to _go_ to my mother. I want to see her _now_," and began to
cry.
I kissed him, and began gently to recall the conversation that she had
had with him the day she told him she expected soon to leave him; and,
after a while, he said spontaneously, as he had done when he talked with
her he "would stay with his father to comfort him for the loss of her."
His father told me afterwards, that when he saw _him_, he went over the
same ground again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go to her;
but when his father represented to him how solitary he should be with no
wife or son to show their love to him, F. closed the conversation with
the words, "Well, I will stay with you till I grow up" (as if it was
quite within his option to do so or not).
Very soon after this I took him away with me to Salem, where he remained
in our family for a year or more, I think. My father's family were
living at the corner of an old burial ground, two sides of the house
being bordered by it. The day we arrived we went directly to my sister
Sophia's room, which looked out upon this burial ground. He was
immediately attracted to the window by the trees, and exclaimed
joyfully, "Oh, Aunt Lizzy, what a beautiful green garden this is! What
are those things?" (referring to the tomb stones.) I replied: "That
green garden is where people lay away, underground, the _poor old
worn-out dead bodies_ of their friends, who are with our Father in
Heaven, and those things are called tombstones; they are put there with
the names carved on them of the persons whose bodies are buried in those
spots." He at once seemed greatly interested and pleased, and became
still more so after he had seen some burials; his emotions of joy at the
thought of the enfranchised spirits entering on their heavenly life,
being tempered with tender sympathy for the bereaved friends in their
mourning-robes, whom he sometimes saw weeping at the earthly parting. He
was always very anxious to know how the buried ones had died, from what
particular sickness or danger they had escaped; and one day when my
sister Mary came back from a walk, he joyfully told her that he had
found out another way in which souls went to heaven. She, of course,
asked him, "What way?" and he said, "Why, sometimes ships that go to sea
are driven by the wind against some rocks and broken to pieces, and all
the men's bodies are drowned, and they go to heaven through the water."
Another time, he ran to her in great excitement, and said: "Oh, Aunt
Mary! I saw a little baby's body buried in the green garden; some
carriages came, and there was a hole dug already, and people got out of
the carriages, and one man had a little box in his arms in which the
baby's body was; and they put some ropes around it, and let it down; and
then they filled up the hole with the dirt, and I saw the little baby
fly up, fly up, fly up!" and he accompanied the words with a circular
gesture of his arm. Whether the subjective conception was so vivid, that
it reproduced itself to his imagination in an objective form, as the
Sistine Madonna is said to have done to Raphael; or it was what is
called "a spiritual manifestation"; it was evidently a reality to him,
and no comment was made, except that my sister said, "_I never saw a
soul fly up_."
I should say here that this child was not imaginative, and we never saw
in him the smallest untruthfulness in speech or act, nor tendency to
exaggeration. In this he resembled both his parents. Afterwards, he
became something of a scientist, and studied medicine for his
profession. He was a good classical scholar in college, and before his
early death, had completed in manuscript the history of one of the
mechanical arts. I think he was not of a visionary temperament. (See
Appendix E.)
His life with us in Salem was perfectly delightful. He had no faults,
though a certain pertinacity (which was an expression of inherited
firmness of character) sometimes required a little disciplinary
conversation, nothing more. I never knew of his being subjected to any
punishment, or requiring any, in all his childhood. He had not the usual
impetuosity of children; perhaps the effect of his early depression of
spirits.
My sister Mary had a day-school in the house, made up of children
between six and twelve years of age; he was allowed to have his
playthings in the school-room, and loved to listen to her oral
instruction of the children in natural history and science, especially
in the stories that she told or read to them about human beings, in whom
he was always more interested than in animals. I taught him how to read
by the word method in _The Story without an End_, a slower and more
laborious way both for him and me than the mixed method detailed in my
_Kindergarten Guide_, of which I have lately published a primer under
the title of _After Kindergarten, what?_
But had I then known of Froebel's method of employing childish play,
organized by the adult with single aim to intellectual development, I
should not have taught him to read so early, but something more
profitable; I then shared what Professor Agassiz called "_the American
insanity_ of teaching children to read before they have learned the
things signified by words," which he, like Froebel, believed would
produce habits of mind positively injurious, dropping a veil between the
observer and nature, preventing all freshness of thought, and destroying
the mind's elasticity and _originality_. But I had not (at that time)
presumed to question the time-honored tradition, that _the beginning of
education_ was _learning to read_.
When, later, my studies with a great philologist gave me a little light
upon the subject, and showed me that English had the misfortune to be
written by an inadequate alphabet, whose result was to confuse the
phonography entirely, by obscuring the original principle of having but
one letter for one sound, and a letter for every different sound, I
realized the positive disadvantage of children's being forced through a
process which baffles all their natural instincts of classification; and
it was then I invented a method of separating English words into
classes, the phonographic ones to be first made familiar, and the
exceptions classified. Yet I could not be insensible to the
unnaturalness of beginning with spending so much of the time of very
young children upon this work of the _imperfect mind of man_, as
languages are, rather than on the works of Infinite Wisdom. I was
therefore well prepared to accept Froebel's method of first sharpening
the senses by examination of things that charm children, and of
developing the understanding by first making things according to the
laws which constitute the mind, and then naming them in all perceptible
relations. First let us form a mind which can apprehend nature as the
standard of truth, before we undertake to _in_form it with what embodies
the confusions and errors of men; as, for instance, in a considerable
degree the written English language does. For language stands in the
same relation to man as nature does in relation to God. The eternal word
of Truth makes _things_ before it is made flesh. The confusion of
tongues was the inevitable consequence of the fall of man out of that
communion with God in which children are born, and our written language
is an image of this confusion, especially the English, whose so-called
orthography is the most anomalous of all languages; and the acquisition,
therefore, ought to be postponed, at least until the understanding is
fairly developed by some recognition of so much of the Word of God as is
alive in the things we see and can handle. The time comes when the
children can understand that exceptions prove the rule, and then those
irregularities and anomalies of English writing may be made even
entertaining lessons to children; because if its laws and rules are
apprehended first, there is something amusing to them in contradictions
of law that so many words seem to be. It is the pleasure in the
grotesque; children enjoy the _funny_, as they call it, but it is a
different enjoyment from that of the beautiful, and the latter is the
highest element for human activity. A predominance of the _funny_ even
demoralizes intellectually as well as morally, but it has its own
subordinate place in healthy child life.
My little friend had a slate and pencil, and immediately inclined to
draw from real objects, but we did not know how to give him any other
help than to guess at what were the things he was trying to represent.
If we could not guess, I remember he would blush, and go away, saying he
would "_fix it a little_." I had the instinct that he could only be
effectually encouraged by success, and I would endeavor to divine what
he meant, by looking to see what were the surrounding objects when I saw
him drawing, and would point out to him with congratulation any part in
which he had at all succeeded, letting the rest go. But without adequate
and legitimate guidance he necessarily became discouraged with his
failures. What children do not succeed in, becomes distasteful to them,
and they turn their attention from what has disappointed them, and thus
their natural tastes die, or are starved out. As they have no knowledge
of materials, nor judgment in using them, they undertake _the
impossible_, and being baffled, lose courage to undertake the possible.
So young artists accumulate difficulties by their unwise choice of
subjects, not realizing the limitations of their own powers. It is the
part of the educated kindergartner to supply this want of judgment and
analysis until the pupil catches the secret of gradualism and the law of
opposites. Froebel's plan of giving the squared slate and paper to
ensure straightness of line in children's drawing is like the leading
strings by which the mother helps the child to develop his limbs for
walking, which cannot be done without his own personal effort. So
Froebel's plan of having the kindergartner suggest a symmetrical drawing
of lines in opposites, vivifies the sense of symmetry into a thought,
whence springs a plan of making still another symmetry. For by
suggesting opposites, and then the connecting of them, the child
delightedly sees orderly forms that grow under his hands, and feels that
he is acting from his own individual personality (which _he is_, though
the thought was suggested by the words of another). What he _does_ gives
him confidence in his own mind, whose fanciful movement suggests other
symmetries; for though fancy is a spontaneous play of the free will
among impressions passively received, it is amenable to the laws whose
exponents are presented to it by nature's works and human suggestion.
F. liked to watch my sister Sophia at her drawing and painting, but its
very perfection discouraged efforts on his own part. It is bad not to
_do_ really at once what we conceive of ideally. It was only in the
moral and religious sphere that we really lived with him, and he was
properly educated by us. We always answered all his questions about what
we were doing, and how, and why (I wish now I had asked him more
questions).
My sister Sophia had a rare talent for talking with children, whose
purity and innocence she comprehended by a sympathetic intuition, and to
whose imagination her Christian faith gave ample scope, for it was
hampered by no human creeds. We had a circle of acquaintances who were
only too much inclined to pet him, and who, knowing something of the
history of his mind, liked to talk with him. His mother had been very
much beloved by this circle, and I used to tell him that _for her_ sake,
they cared for and attended to _him_, which interested him immensely,
and perhaps prevented his considering himself as a person of too much
importance comparatively. He would talk of going to see his "MOTHER'S
FRIENDS." If new persons spoke to him kindly, he would ask me
immediately if they knew and loved his mother; at all events, the
element of personal EGOTISM did not appear, and the affection he at
first poured out on me, now freely flowed out in every direction. I
remember his saying to me, one day, with an accent of great
self-gratulation, "I think I have a great many friends," and in a moment
after added, "my mother was so beautiful!" (as if that were the reason
of it). A young husband and wife became inmates of our house, and
brought a beautiful infant. This was a perennial fountain of delight to
F. The singular beauty of the little one was a constant subject of
observation. One day he was looking at her, as she lay on her mother's
lap, and presently he burst out, "Oh, Ellen, your little bright eyes are
shining themselves into a _sun_!" He was equally delighted with the
musical sound of her crowing. His ear for sounds was fastidiously
delicate. One day my mother was in the garden, looking at some wild
flowers which had been brought to her for transplanting. As she looked
at them she said to F., "Run into the house, and get my--" He
interrupted her eagerly with, "Don't say that ugly _word_! I know what
you mean," and he ran into the house, and brought back Bigelow's _Plants
around Boston_ (_Bigelow_ was the ugly word). But let me hasten from
these details, to redeem my promise of telling you how _prayer_ became a
thought of his mind, and his spontaneous practice.
It was very early a question of great interest to his mother, and also
to me, whether prayer _would_ become spontaneous with him; that is,
whether he would think of speaking to God _in human words_. His intense
realization of God's _presence_ seemed to be a cause of his _not_ doing
so, and I feared to put GOD _at a distance_ by suggesting what, in
ordinary cases, is a means of bringing Him near. If prayer be defined as
a communion of the finite and Infinite, as personal as that of
_children_ with earthly parents, _his_ whole conscious life was a
prayer; for truly God was in all his thoughts from the day he first
accepted Him so joyfully as the Substance and Giver of _goodness and
love_, which involved to the natural logic of his innocent mind the
corollary that He was the Giver of everything outward, as well as
inward, which gave him any happiness. I did not dare to meddle with the
natural evolution of thought in so happy an instance, but watched to
learn the true method of life of the little child, as Christ suggested
to his disciples to do. One day when his grandmother, who was at the
house on a visit, dropped her needle, she called to F., "Come, and look
with _your little sharp eyes_ for my needle." He did so, with his usual
alacrity in service, and soon found it. Then he ran to me, and said,
"When I go into the sky, I shall thank my good Friend for giving me such
sharp eyes." I said, "What do you wait so long for?" He gave me a glance
of recognition, as it were, and laughed (as if he had been convicted of
saying something silly); but he said no more _then_. From that moment,
however, he often came to me to say, "When I go into the sky, I shall
thank my Heavenly Father for giving me" this or that; and I would always
answer him as before, "Why do you _wait_?" which would always bring out
the same complete expression of satisfaction on his face, showing that
he loved to renew the occasion for my uniform reply, "Why do you wait
_till then_?"
On one of these occasions he turned from me, and said very tenderly, "_I
thank you, God_." One day, after he went to Salem, he had been suffering
from a bad earache, and my sister had relieved it by putting a little
tuft of cotton dipped in arnica into his ear. Then she asked him to go
to the window and look out into "the green garden," and she took up a
pencil to draw. Very soon he began, "GOD, I thank you for making this
green garden to put away the dead bodies _in_. GOD, I thank you for
making these beautiful trees grow out of the ground. GOD, I thank you
for making all the pretty wild flowers grow." He paused between each
complete sentence, and my sister, having a pencil in her hand, wrote
down his words till she had covered a sheet of letter paper with his
thanksgivings; for he went on naming everything he could think of; and
it was quite wonderful to hear the minuteness of his grateful
appreciation of life.
One sentence was: "I thank you, GOD, for making medicine to put into my
ear when it aches." He also thanked GOD for his father, and his father's
letters to him, for his mother in heaven, for many friends whom he
loved, naming them. I hope that sometime I shall find my sister's paper,
which I have mislaid with the other memoranda of this interesting
psychological observation. The pauses between the thanksgivings became
longer and longer, and at last, after one for which he seemed to have
searched his inmost mind, in despair of finding anything else, he closed
with, "My dear GOD, I love you very much."
You will observe that in all this spontaneous act of devotion, there was
no _petition_. In the fulness of his happy life, and, as I think, in the
faith that God was giving him everything needful, and more, he never
thought of _asking_ for anything.
Temptation to wrong-doing had not yet revealed the need that the
progressing spirit always feels of _more_ goodness and love, which I had
taken care to represent that God gave whenever the soul acknowledged to
itself its need and aspired for more of this, its vital substance. For
it is my opinion that prayer should always be for spiritual good only,
in order that our religion should be pure from self-seeking, and
generously self-forgetting in its aspirations for perfection.