CHILDREN.
THE MINISTER’S WOOING.
[Sidenote: The odd one.]
One sometimes sees launched into a family circle a child of so
different a nature from all the rest, that it might seem as if, like
an aërolite, he had fallen out of another sphere.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
[Sidenote: Child’s intensity.]
In childhood the passions move with a simplicity of action unknown
to any other period of life, and a child’s hatred and a child’s
revenge have an intensity of bitterness entirely unalloyed by moral
considerations; and when a child is without an object of affection
and feels itself unloved, its whole vigor of being goes into the
channels of hate.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Child instinct.]
That instinctive sense by which children and dogs learn the
discerning of spirits.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Childish antipathies.]
Among the many unexplained and inexplicable woes of childhood
are its bitter antagonisms, so perfectly powerless, but often so
very decided, against certain of the grown people who control it.
Perhaps some of us may remember respectable, well-meaning people,
with whom in our mature years we live in perfect amity, but who in
our childhood appear to us bitter enemies. Children are remarkably
helpless in this respect, because they cannot choose their company
and surroundings as grown people can; and are sometimes entirely in
the power of those with whom their natures are so unsympathetic that
they may almost be said to have a constitutional aversion to them.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Getting used to the world.]
Nobody that has not suffered from such causes can tell the amount
of torture that a child of a certain nervous formation undergoes in
the mere process of getting accustomed to his body, to the physical
forces of life, and to the ways and doings of that world of grown-up
people who have taken possession of the earth before him, and are
using it, and determined to go on using it, for their own behoof and
convenience, in spite of his childish efforts to push in his little
individuality, and seize his little portion of existence. He is at
once laid hold upon by the older majority as an instrument to work
out their views of what is fit and proper for himself and themselves;
and if he proves a hard-working or creaking instrument, has the
further capability of being rebuked and chastened for it.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Quiet children.]
I was one of those children who are all ear,—dreamy listeners, who
brood over all that they hear, without daring to speak of it.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Individuality in children.]
He was one of those children who retreat into themselves and make a
shield of quietness and silence in the presence of many people, while
Tina, on the other hand, was electrically excited, waxed brilliant
in color, and rattled and chattered with as fearless confidence as a
cat-bird.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A child’s philosophy.]
“But, Tina, mother always told us it was wicked to hate anybody. We
must love our enemies.”
“You don’t love old Crab Smith, do you?”
“No, I don’t; but I try not to hate him,” said the boy. “I won’t
think anything about him.”
“I can’t help thinking,” said Tina; “and when I think, I am so angry!
I feel such a burning in here!” she said, striking her little breast;
“it’s just like fire.”
“Then don’t think about her at all,” said the boy; “it isn’t pleasant
to feel that way. Think about the whip-poor-wills singing in the
woods over there,—how plain they say it, don’t they?—And the frogs
all singing, with their little, round, yellow eyes looking up out of
the water; and the moon looking down on us so pleasantly! she seems
just like mother!”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A child’s questions.]
Is there ever a hard question in morals that children do not drive
straight at in their wide-eyed questioning?
PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND.
[Sidenote: Holiness of infancy.]
The wise men of the east at the feet of an infant, offering gifts,
gold, frankincense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in
every house where there is a young child. All the hard and the harsh,
the common and the disagreeable, is for the parents,—all the bright
and beautiful for their child.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Pure joy.]
Childhood’s joys are all pure gold.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mischief.]
“Of all the children that ever she see, he beat all for finding out
new mischief,—the moment you make him understand he mustn’t do one
thing, he’s right at another.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Different temperaments.]
“Mis’ Pennel ought to be trainin’ of her up to work,” said Mrs.
Kittridge. “Sally could oversew and hem when she wa’n’t more’n
three years old; nothin’ straightens out children like work. Mis’
Pennel she jest keeps that ar’ child to look at.”
“All children a’n’t alike, Mis’ Kittridge,” said Miss Roxy,
sententiously. “This ’un a’n’t like your Sally. ‘A hen and a
bumble-bee can’t be fetched up alike,’ fix it how you will!”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Child’s buoyancy.]
All the efforts of Nature, during the early years of a healthy
childhood, are bent on effacing and obliterating painful impressions,
wiping out from each day the sorrows of the last, as the daily tide
effaces the furrows on the seashore.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Unseen dangers.]
Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous trance of
forbidden pleasure, which shadowed with so many fears the wiser and
more far-seeing heads and hearts of the grown people; nor was there
enough language yet in common between the two classes to make the
little ones comprehend the risk they had run.
Perhaps our older brothers, in our Father’s house, look anxiously out
when we are sailing gayly over life’s sea, over unknown depths, amid
threatening monsters, but want words to tell us why what seems so
bright is so dangerous.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Love of solitude.]
The island was wholly solitary, and there is something to children
quite delightful in feeling that they have a little, lonely world
all to themselves. Childhood is itself such an enchanted island,
separated by mysterious depths from the main land of nature, life,
and reality.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Fate.]
But babies will live, all the more when everybody says it is a pity
they should. Life goes on as inexorably in this world as death.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Sensitive natures.]
There are natures sent down into this harsh world so timorous,
sensitive, and helpless in themselves, that the utmost stretch of
indulgence and kindness is needed for their development,—like plants
which the warmest shelf of the green-house and the most watchful care
of the gardener alone can bring into flower.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Child’s reasoning.]
“It’s curious what notions chil’en will get in their heads,” said
Captain Kittridge. “They put this an’ that together and think it
over, an’ come out with such queer things.”
THE CHIMNEY CORNER.
[Sidenote: A child’s love.]
The hearts of little children are easily gained, and their love is
real and warm, and no true woman can become the object of it without
feeling her own life made brighter.
THE MAYFLOWER.
[Sidenote: A child’s longing for sympathy.]
But the feelings of grown-up children exist in the minds of little
ones oftener than is supposed; and I had, even at this early day,
the same keen sense of all that touched the heart wrong; the
same longing for something which should touch it aright; the same
discontent with latent, matter-of-course affection, and the same
craving for sympathy, which has been the unprofitable fashion of this
world in all ages. And no human being possessing such constitutionals
has a better chance of being made unhappy by them than the backward,
uninteresting, wrong-doing child. We can all sympathize, to some
extent, with _men_ and _women_; but how few can go back to the
sympathies of childhood; can understand the desolate insignificance
of not being one of the _grown-up_ people; of being sent to bed, to
be _out of the way_ in the evening, and to school, to be out of the
way in the morning; of manifold similar grievances and distresses,
which the child has no elocution to set forth, and the grown person
no imagination to conceive.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A child’s power.]
Ah, these children, little witches, pretty even in all their faults
and absurdities. See, for example, yonder little fellow in a naughty
fit. He has shaken his long curls over his deep-blue eyes, the fair
brow is bent in a frown, the rose-leaf lip is pursed up in infinite
defiance, and the white shoulder thrust angrily forward. Can any but
a child look so pretty, even in its naughtiness?
Then comes the instant change; flashing smiles and tears, as
the good comes back all in a rush, and you are overwhelmed with
protestations, promises, and kisses! They are irresistible, too,
these little ones. They pull away the scholar’s pen, tumble about his
paper, make somersets over his books; and what can he do? They tear
up newspapers, litter the carpets, break, pull, and upset, and then
jabber unheard-of English in self-defense; and what can you do for
yourself?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The child as teacher.]
Wouldst thou know, O parent, what is that _faith_ which unlocks
heaven? Go not to wrangling polemics, or creeds and forms of
theology, but draw to thy bosom thy little one, and read in that
clear, trusting eye the lesson of eternal life. Be only to thy God as
thy child is to thee, and all is done. Blessed shalt thou be, indeed,
when “a little child shall lead thee.”
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
[Sidenote: Baby’s dreams.]
“An’ it’s a blessin’ they brings wid ’em to a house, sir; the angels
come down wid ’em. We can’t see ’em, sir; but, bless the darlin’, she
can. An’ she smiles in her sleep when she sees ’em.”
BETTY’S BRIGHT IDEA.
[Sidenote: Mother pride.]
A heavenly amusement, such as that with which mothers listen to the
foolish-wise prattle of children just learning to talk.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
[Sidenote: A child’s defense.]
“The fact is, when I begin to talk, she gets her arms around my old
neck, and falls to weeping and kissing me at such a rate as makes
a fool of me. If the child would only be rebellious, one could do
something; but this love takes all the stiffness out of one’s joints.”
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
[Sidenote: Child’s mission.]
“What would the poor and lowly do without children?” said St. Clare,
leaning on the railing, and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading
Tom with her. “Your little child is your only true Democrat. Tom,
now, is a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes, his songs
and Methodist hymns are better than an opera, and the traps and
little bits of trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the most
wonderful Tom that ever wore a black skin. This is one of the roses
of Eden, that the Lord has dropped down expressly for the poor and
lowly, who get few enough of any other kind.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Animation.]
She was one of those busy, tripping creatures, that can no more be
contained in one place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze.
SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
[Sidenote: Unperverted taste.]
Children are unsophisticated, and like sugar better than silver any
day.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
[Sidenote: Child-faith.]
Dolly was at the happy age when anything bright and heavenly seemed
credible, and had the child-faith to which all things are possible.
She had even seriously pondered, at times, the feasibility of walking
some day to the end of the rainbow, to look for the pot of gold
which Nabby had credibly assured her was to be found there; and if
at any time in her ramblings through the woods a wolf had met her,
and opened a conversation, as in the case of Little Red Riding Hood,
she would have been no way surprised, but kept up her part of the
interview with becoming spirit.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
[Sidenote: Simplicity.]
“Mother,” she said, soberly, when she lay down in her little bed that
night, “I’m going to ask God to keep me humble.”
“Why, my dear?”
“Because I feel tempted to be proud,—I can make such good bread!”
A DOG’S MISSION.
[Sidenote: Hobbies.]
He bores everybody to death with his locomotive as artlessly as grown
people do with their hobbies.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Our Charley.]
When the blaze of the wood-fire flickers up and down in our snug
evening parlor, there dances upon the wall a little shadow, with a
pug nose, a domestic household shadow—a busy shadow—a little restless
specimen of perpetual motion, and the owner thereof is “our Charley.”
Now we should not write about him and his ways, if he were strictly a
peculiar and individual existence of our own home-circle; but it is
not so. “Our Charley” exists in a thousand, nay, a million families;
he has existed in millions in all time back; his name is variously
rendered in all the tongues of the earth; in short, we take “our
Charley” in a generic sense, and we mean to treat of him as a little
copy of the grown man—enacting in a shadowy ballet by the fireside
all that men act in earnest in after life. He is a looking-glass for
grown people, in which they may see how certain things become them—in
which they may sometimes even see streaks and gleamings of something
wiser than all the harsh conflict of life teaches them.
MY WIFE AND I.
[Sidenote: Heavenly children.]
It seems to me that lovely and loving childhood, with its
truthfulness, its frank sincerity, its pure, simple love, is so sweet
and holy an estate that it would be a beautiful thing in heaven
to have a band of heavenly children, guileless, gay, and forever
joyous—tender spring blossoms of the Kingdom of Light. Was it of such
whom He had left in his heavenly home our Savior was thinking, when
He took little children up in his arms, and blessed them, and said,
“of such is the Kingdom of Heaven?”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Poetry and prose.]
The first child in a family is its poem,—it is a sort of nativity
play, and we bend before the young stranger with gifts, “gold,
frankincense, and myrrh.” But the tenth child in a poor family
is _prose_, and gets simply what is due to comfort. There are no
superfluities, no fripperies, no idealities, about the tenth cradle.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A child’s crosses.]
My individual pursuits, my own little stock of interests, were of
course of no account. I was required to be in a perfectly free,
disengaged state of mind, and ready to drop everything at a moment’s
warning from any of my half-dozen seniors. “Here, Hal, run down
cellar and get me a dozen apples,” my brother would say, just as I
had half-built a block-house. “Harry, run upstairs and get the book
I left on the bed”—“Harry, run out to the barn and get the rake I
left there”—“Here, Harry, carry this up garret”—“Harry, run out to
the tool-shop and get that”—were sounds constantly occurring—breaking
up my private, cherished little enterprise of building cob-houses,
making mill-dams and bridges, or loading carriages, or driving
horses. Where is the mature Christian who could bear with patience
the interruptions and crosses in his daily schemes that beset a boy?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Repression.]
When children grow up among older people, and are pushed and jostled
and set aside in the more engrossing interests of their elders, there
is an almost incredible amount of timidity and dumbness of nature,
with regard to the expression of inward feeling,—and yet, often at
this time, the instinctive sense of pleasure and pain is fearfully
acute. But the child has imperfectly learned language; his stock of
words, as yet, consists only in names and attributes of outward and
physical objects, and he has no phraseology with which to embody a
mere emotional experience.