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HERE’S a clam!”
“Where? I don’t see it! Can’t I get it?”
Of course he could get it, for the water in the creek was shallow and
the father remembered his own boyhood too well to deny the little
chap’s request. So the boat was stopped while the boy, arm bared to the
shoulder, reached down to the sandy bottom of the stream and captured
his first clam.
You don’t see anything interesting in that? So much the worse for you.
It interested the boy, and the boy’s interest was quite enough to
enlist and hold the interest of the father. If you do not yet know
that whatever appeals to the mind of a child is important, however
insignificant that thing may be in itself, you have something to learn.
The two, father and boy, had left the log cabin among the pines soon
after breakfast in search of minnows for use in fishing. When they
started out the boy went along simply because the two were chums and
almost inseparable companions. The father had no thought of what that
stream might mean to the lad, and he learned a lesson that morning which
he will never forget. He had spent his boyhood in the country and had
never stopped to think that the sights and sounds along this stream
would all be unfamiliar to his city-bred son.
They had not gone far up the stream before another discovery was made,
and two baby snails joined the clam on the seat. Then a crawfish was
seen scuttling over the gravel and was added to the collection. By this
time the boy was bubbling over with interest and enthusiasm, but when,
rounding a bend in the stream, a turtle was discovered sunning himself
on a bit of drift-wood, it was evident that the wonders of this
wonderful stream had reached their climax. Cautiously the boat was moved
toward the turtle’s resting-place, but just before he was reached he
quietly slid off into the water. It would not do to leave the lad in
such an ocean of disappointment as swallowed him up when that turtle
disappeared, so, with landing net in hand, they watched for his
reappearance. It seemed hours to the boy before the beady eyes of the
turtle were seen looking up at them from the moss where he had found a
hiding-place. Then a careful manipulation of the net, a sudden scoop,
and the turtle was scrambling about in the bottom of the boat.
“See him snap! Will he bite me? Look at the markings of his shell! How
old do you suppose he is? What do turtles eat? I’m going to take him
home!”
Questions and exclamations crowded and jostled each other as the eager
lad studied his latest prize.
When the captives had been carried to the cabin and duly admired by
other members of the family, the question arose as to what should be
done with them. Throw them back? Eager protests from their owner. When
he was finally convinced that they were not altogether adapted to serve
as pocket pieces, he proposed an aquarium, and aquarium it was. An
ancient and discarded dish-pan was found, the holes filled with rags,
water and rocks supplied, and clams, crawfish, snails and turtles were
compelled to live in seeming amity, whatever their personal feelings may
have been. Later on other turtles were added to the collection, and
a yellow lizard with a blue tail gave the finishing touch to this
conglomerate of animal life.
How shall we educate the young? This question, holding first place in
the hearts of parents and lovers of children, elicits clamorous and
often contradictory answers. The advocate of “cultural” studies finds a
sturdy antagonist in the defender of “vocational” training, and school
boards make frantic efforts to please everybody, and succeed, as is
common in such cases, in pleasing nobody. Meanwhile, our children are
the helpless and unfortunate victims of a series of experiments, as the
school authorities try out different educational theories.
Far be it from the writer to propose a solution of the difficulty or
to proffer any panacea for our educational ills; but in all humility he
ventures to suggest the desirability of making it possible for the child
to know something about the world in which he lives. Book-learning,
essential as it is, is not enough if we would fit the child to live the
larger and more joyous life. When we have studied literature and art
and philosophy and science, when we have become familiar with the great
cities with their bewildering sights and distracting sounds, the finest
things remain to be discovered, and these discoveries must be made as we
stand open-eyed in the presence of God’s workmanship.
Hills and streams, woods and flowers, bees and birds and butterflies,
the flora and fauna of this earth where we have our home for a little
time, should, somehow, be brought into the life of the child. The boy
who grows up into manhood without being privileged to know the world
of nature by personal contact has been robbed. He may be intelligent
in many things and a useful member of society, but he has missed out of
life some of its deepest satisfactions and purest joys. Indeed, such
an one is not symmetrically educated, and is quite likely to be put to
shame as the years pass. A story is told of a young woman, able to order
her breakfast in six different languages, who, spending some days in the
home of a farmer, made most mortifying mistakes concerning the common
things of country life. When, coming down to breakfast one morning she
discovered a plate of honey on the table, she felt that the time had
come for a display of her knowledge and for the discomfiture of those
who had laughed at her mistakes, and exclaimed, “Ah! I see that you keep
a bee.”
Take the witness box! Yes, I am speaking to you, middle-aged man,
city-dweller, slave to business, familiar with paved streets and great
buildings, the honk of automobile horns and the love songs of vagrant
cats.
“Were you born in the country?”
“Yes.”
“Have you forgotten your boyhood?”
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“Forgotten it! Sometimes I can think of nothing else, and always
something out of that boyhood is popping up even in the midst of my
business undertakings.”
“Do you regret that you were not born in the city?”
“Regret it? Say, you are fooling. I wouldn’t trade the recollections of
my boyhood on the farm for the best business block in this city.”
“But it can’t be worth anything to you in a business way. Life in the
country doesn’t train one to manufacture gas engines.”
“Well, I’ve never stopped to consider what I owe in the matter of
business success to my boyhood in the country, but now that you raise
the question, I’m inclined to believe that it gave me pretty good
training in some ways for the business in which I am engaged.
“When I came into this business at the age of twenty I was given a place
in the shipping department at a salary of seven dollars per week. Now I
am at the head of the firm, while many of the fellows who were with me
in those days are still working on salary. You see I had the advantage
of the city boys in being accustomed to work. On the farm I had my
regular tasks. Why, when I was a little chap I wiped the dishes for
mother, and when I grew older I had to keep the wood-box filled and
go after the cows and pick up potatoes and--but you know what a lot of
things there are to do on a farm where ‘a boy can help.
“Now that I think of it, I imagine that I was learning application,
industry and self-control--big assets in business. The city-bred boy
has never had that schooling. He has not been trained to hold himself to
hard and continued effort. It is not his fault, and I do not know that
his parents are to be blamed. I have two boys of my own born in the
city, and one of the questions which perplexes me most is how to provide
them with regular tasks that shall develop their sense of responsibility
and cultivate habits of industry and application. Although I could
afford to have a man to take care of the lawn and attend to the furnace,
I have the boys do this work for their own sakes. It is good as far as
it goes, but I am afraid it does not go far enough. They have too much
time to spend in doing nothing, and habits of idleness formed in boyhood
are likely to stick when one comes to manhood. I do not believe in
manufacturing tasks or setting them at work which is not real, for boys
are keen observers and you cannot fool them into believing that they are
doing something worth while when compelled to take wood from one corner
of the cellar and pile it in another corner, and then shift it back
again. The man who devises some way of supplying real tasks for the boys
of the well-to-do city families will be a public benefactor.
“Now, that you have started the discussion of this subject, how about
the physical health and strength that I brought from my country life to
the work which I am doing? Of course, we have our sleeping porches and
playgrounds and medical inspection in the public schools, and are doing
what we can to build sound bodies for our city children, but I suspect
that the out-door life of the country boy and his regular exercise and
plain food furnish a far and away better physical preparation for the
strenuous work of business life than anything we are able to devise for
our children in the city.
“You never saw my old home, did you? Well, the house stood at the foot
of a hill and close by a little stream. In the summer time the wild
strawberries in the meadow above the orchard were so thick that
I remember picking a bushel there one day. For raspberries and
blackberries we usually went some three or four miles to Babcock Hollow,
but once there you could fill a ten-quart pail in no time at all, and
they were the sweetest, most luscious berries you ever tasted. Then, in
the fall, came apple picking and potato digging and corn cutting and
nut gathering. There were dozens of butternut trees in the pasture-lot
through which the creek ran, and on Button Hill you could get all the
chestnuts you wished. Did you ever gather beechnuts? They are so little
that picking them up by hand is slow work. We used to take three or four
sheets, spread them under a beech tree, after the first frost had opened
the burrs, and then one of the boys would climb the tree and pound the
limbs, sending the nuts down upon the sheets in showers.
“But the winters! When there was a good crust on the snow you could
start on your sled at the patch of woods on the top of the hill, nearly
a mile away, and ride right into our barnyard. I’ve done it many a time.
Skating! We could go almost straight away for miles on the river. One
night when Jim Gilbert’s people were away from home I got permission to
stay all night with him.
I took my skates along and after supper we came down to the river and
skated. The moon was full and it was almost as light as day. I must have
been careless, for I skated too near an open place and broke through.
Jim was just behind me, and, before he could stop or change his course,
he had stubbed his toe on me and in he went, head first. The water was
shallow, so there was no danger, but we had a mile to walk in our wet
clothes, and all the way up hill. I remember that our clothes were
frozen stiff when we reached Jim’s house. We built a roaring fire,
stripped off our wet clothes and put on some that were dry, and then sat
up until one o’clock eating chestnuts and popcorn and talking about what
we would do when we were men. Jim had an idea that he would be a lawyer,
but the last time I saw him he was selling tooth paste at the county
fair.
“In some ways spring in the country is not remarkably attractive. The
fields are brown and bare and soggy, and the winds cannot fairly be
called zephyrs. As the frost leaves the ground the roads become rivers
of mud, and some of the “sinkholes” seem bottomless. Early spring is
easily the most unlovely time of the year in the country, but even then
life has its brighter side. With the first breath of the south wind the
sap begins to leave the roots of the hard maples and the sugar season
begins.
“Did you ever work in a sugar-bush? No? Poor fellow! You’ve missed
something worth while out of your life. I understand that nowadays they
evaporate the sap in shallow pans; we used to boil it in a big iron
kettle. We did not have many maples on our place, so I sometimes worked
for Deacon Bouton, who had the next farm west of ours. He had a big
sugar-bush, and we carried the pails of sap on neck-yokes. When we had a
big run of sap we had to boil all night as well as during the day. I’ll
never forget one night when we had a feast. There were two boys besides
myself: Ed Bouton, the deacon’s son, and John Hammond. Ed had brought
forty-five hen’s eggs and John added five goose eggs. We boiled the
eggs in the sap, and the three of us ate those forty-five hen’s eggs
and started on the goose eggs. For some reason we did not relish them.
Possibly the hen’s eggs had taken the keen edge from our appetites.
“But how I’m running on! Regret being born in the country? Do you know
that I can shut my eyes and see the hills and meadows and orchard,
fairer than any ever put in colours on the canvas? I can see the
oriole’s nest swinging from a branch of the big elm in the corner of our
yard and the nest of the pewee under the bridge. Just across the road
in the meadow are glorious masses of violets, and mother’s peonies and
sweet pinks beat anything I’ve ever seen since. When I’m dog-tired
from the day’s work it rests me just to think of the quiet and calm and
beauty of the old home among the hills.
“And there’s another thing that I want to tell you: when I go into the
country I can enjoy it. One of my best friends, born in the city, is
bored almost to death every time he tries to take a vacation in the
country. He doesn’t know the difference between a hard maple and a
tamarack, and asked me once if a woodchuck was likely to attack a human
being if not angered. He’s afraid of bees and garter snakes, and even a
friendly old “daddy-long-legs” gives him a nervous shock. He can’t enjoy
the fields and flowers, for he was brought up on people and bricks. I’d
like to be back there at the old place this minute. I’ll bet I could
find some raspberries on the bushes that grow in the fence corners along
the west road. We used to string them on timothy stalks as we came home
from school, and I’ve never tasted any such berries since.”
The witness is through with his testimony and we’ll submit the case to
the jury without argument. What do you say, fathers and mothers of the
city? Shall your children have a chance to learn nature’s secrets at
first hand? Will you give them some time in the open every year, where
the work of man has not elbowed the work of God into a corner and out
of sight? More, will you help to send the children of the poor, children
whose playground is the city street, and to whom the stories of green
fields and limpid streams and flowers that belong to any who will gather
them, sound like fairy tales--will you give to these children of the
tenement and the slums days where the sunshine is not filtered through
a bank of smoke and all the ministry of God’s unspoiled work strengthens
them for the coming days of toil?
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```_But should you hire from his
````dark haunt, beneath the
`````tangled roots
```Of pendent trees, the monarch of
`````the brook,
```Behooves you then to ply your
`````finest art.
```At last, while haply o’er the shaded sun
```Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
```With sullen plunge. At once he darts
`````along,
```Deep-struck, and runs out all the length-
`````ened line;
```And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
```Indignant of the guile. With yielding
`````hand,
```That feels him still, yet to his furious
`````course
```Gives way, you, now retiring, following
`````now
```Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage;
```Till, floating broad upon his breathless side,
```And to his fate abandoned, to the shore
```You gayly drag your unresisting prize._
`````--James Thomson,
`````_The Seasons._
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