THE CHILD AS TEACHER AND WISEACRE.
The child is father of the man,--_Wordsworth_.
And wiser than the gray recluse
This child of thine.--_Whittier_.
And still to Childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns.--_Whittier_.
_Wisdom of Childhood_.
In his beautiful verses--forming part of one of the best child-poems in
our language--
"And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns,"--
Whittier has expressed that instinctive faith in the wisdom of childhood
that seems perennial and pan-ethnic. Browning, in _Pippa's Song_,
has sounded even a deeper note:--
"Overhead the tree-tops meet,
Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet;
There was nought above me, nought below,
My childhood had not learned to know:
For, what are the voices of birds
--Aye, and of beasts,--but words, our words,
Only so much more sweet?
The knowledge of that with my life begun.
But I had so near made out the sun,
And counted your stars, the seven and one,
Like the fingers of my hand:
Nay, I could all but understand
Wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges;
And just when out of her soft fifty changes
No unfamiliar face might overlook me--
Suddenly God took me."
The power and wisdom of the child are quaintly and naively brought out
in the legends and folk-lore of the various races of men, not alone of
the present day, but of all eras of the world's history. As an
illustration of the truth contained in the words of a great child-lover,
"A little child shall lead them," and their echo in those of the Quaker
poet,--
"God hath his small interpreters;
The child must teach the man,"
nothing could be more artless and natural than the following legend of
the Penobscot Indians of Maine, recorded by Mr. Leland, which tells of
the origin of the "crowing of babies" (488. 121):--
When Glooskap, the culture-hero of these Indians, had conquered all his
enemies, giants, sorcerers, magicians, evil spirits and ghosts, witches,
devils, goblins, cannibals, _et id genus omne_, pride rose within
him, and he said to a certain woman, that now his work was done, for he
had conquered all. But she told him that he was mistaken; there yet
remained "one whom no one has ever yet conquered or got the better of in
any way, and who will remain unconquered to the end of time." This was
_Wasis_, "the baby," who was sitting contentedly on the floor of
the wigwam chewing a piece of maple-sugar. The great Glooskap, so the
story runs, "had never married or had a child; he knew nought of the way
of managing children"--yet he thought he knew all about it. So he smiled
graciously at baby, and, "in a voice like that of a summer bird," bade
him come to him. But baby sat still and went on sucking his sugar. Then
Glooskap got angry, and in a terrible voice, ordered baby to crawl to
him at once. But baby merely cried out and yelled, stirring not. Then
Glooskap tried his last resort, magic, "using his most awful spells, and
singing the songs which raise the dead and scare the devils." Still baby
only smiled, and never budged an inch. At last the great Glooskap could
do no more; he gave up the attempt in despair, whereupon "baby, sitting
on the floor in the sunshine, went _'goo! goo!'_ and crowed
lustily." And to this day, the Indians, when they hear "a babe
well-contented going _'goo! goo!'_ and crowing, and no one can tell
why," know that it is because he "remembers the time when he overcame
the great Master, who had conquered all things. For of all beings that
have been since the beginning, baby is alone the invincible one."
Manabozho, the culture-hero of the Chippeways and other Algonkian tribes
of the Great Lakes, and probably identical with his eastern analogue,
Gluskap, was, like the latter, discomfited by a child. This is the
legend:--
"One day Manabozho appeared upon the earth in an ill-humour. Walking
along, he espied a little child sitting in the sun, curled up with his
toe in his mouth. Somewhat surprised at this, and being of a dauntless
and boastful nature, he set himself down beside the child; and, picking
up his own toe, he essayed to place it in his mouth after the manner of
the child. He could not do it. In spite of all twisting and turning, his
toe could not be brought to reach his mouth. As he was getting up in
great discomfiture to get away, he heard a laugh behind him, and did no
more boasting that day, for he had been outwitted by a little child."
This characteristic attitude of the child has also been noted by the
folk-historians of India; for when, after the death of Brahma, the
waters have covered all the worlds, "Vishnu [the 'Preserver,' in the
Hindoo Trinity] sits, in the shape of a tiny infant, on a leaf of the
pipala (fig-tree), and floats on the sea of milk, sucking the toe of his
right foot" (440. 366), and, as Mrs. Emerson points out, "the feat that
Manabozho sought in vain to perform is accomplished by the more flexible
and lithe Hindoo god, Narayana" (440. 367).
In another Micmac legend, given by Leland, Gluskap appears somewhat more
to advantage. Of the Turtle [Mikchich], the "Uncle" of Gluskap, for whom
the latter had obtained a wife, we read (488. 57):--
"And Turtle lived happily with his wife, and she had a babe. Now it
happened in after-days that Glooskap came to see his uncle, and the
child cried. 'Dost thou know what he says?' exclaimed the Master.
'Truly, not I,' answered Mikchich, 'unless it be the language of the
Mu-se-gisk (spirits of the air), which no man knoweth.' 'Wel,' replied
Glooskap, 'he is talking of eggs, for he says, '_Hoowah! hoowah!_'
which, methinks, is much the same as '_waw-wun, waw-wun_.' And this
in Passamaquoddy means 'egg.' 'But where are there any?' asked Mikchich.
Then Glooskap bade him seek in the sand, and he found many, and admired
and marvelled over them greatly; and in memory of this, and to glorify
the jest of Glooskap, the turtle layeth eggs even to this day."
In Mr. Leland's collection, as in the later volume of Dr. Band, there
are many other delicate touches of childhood that show that these
aborigines have a large measure of that love for children which is
present with all races of mankind.
In the legends of the saints and heroes of the Christian Church we meet
with numberless instances of the wisdom and instruction that came to
them from the mouths of little children.
Among the stories in the life of St. Augustine is the following: "While
St. Augustine was composing his book _On the Trinity_, and was at
Cività Vecchia, he saw a little child making a hole in the seashore, and
asked him what he was doing. The child replied: 'I am making a hole to
contain the water of the sea.' The doctor smiled, telling the child it
would not be possible to do so; but the child made answer: 'Not so,
Augustine. It would be far easier to drain off the waters of the great
deep than for the finite to grasp the Infinite'; and so he vanished.
Augustine then knew that the child was an angel of God, sent to warn
him, and he diligently set to work to revise what he had written" (191.
355).
The best of mankind can still sit at the feet of childhood and learn of
its wisdom. But of many a one must it be said:--
"He hath grown so foolish-wise
He cannot see with childhood's eyes;
He hath forgot that purity
And lowliness which are the key
Of Nature's mysteries."