[Sidenote: “Making Faces” for Spite]
In a small village there existed bad feeling between the pastor of the
church and several of his leading members. Some parishioners took sides
with the pastor, and in the school the children of these two church
factions carried on the quarrel of their elders. The teacher kept peace
on the playground through active personal supervision, but in school he
encountered the face-making problem in a degree only less ridiculous
than it was annoying.
There existed an active emulation in the ugliness of the facial
contortions produced, and when a member of one faction had made a
particularly horrid grimace, he looked for and received the silent
applause of his sympathizers.
Charles Briggs was the teacher. He knew that the feeling of alliance in
the members of the factions was the cause of the face-making epidemic,
but he could not at first think of a logical way of meeting the
situation. He tried, first, the use of his absolute authority. He
forbade the making of faces, and punished the children when he caught
them at it. Whereupon face-making became a more exciting sport than
ever, since the zest of escaping notice was added to the pleasure of
presenting an ugly front to the enemy.
Mr. Briggs said, “How funny you would all look if your faces should stay
twisted into those grotesque shapes.” Nevertheless the children spent
their recesses, when kept in, in inventing new twists and contortions;
they stood in corners and drew the attention of the whole room to fresh
triumphs in grotesqueness. The evil grew, because the cause was not
touched. One boy even set a looking-glass up in front of his book, into
which he made faces for the benefit of the girl who sat behind him,
keeping his head lowered meanwhile as if using his handkerchief to wipe
his tearful eyes.
Then Mr. Briggs began to think of underlying causes and intrinsic
remedies. As a consequence, he made up a fairy story about a land where
people’s thoughts molded their features with instant magic into the
semblance of ugly animals or noble men and beautiful women. He
introduced a princess of evil disposition whose face was that of a
cross, snapping dog, but whom a magician changed into a being of
loveliness and grace by his persuasions to self-sacrifice and kindness.
He told this story as vividly as he could, with emphasis upon the
dislike people feel for an ugly face. Then he waited a day or two for
the story to take effect. He heard the children laughingly allude to it
once or twice, but the evil went on.
Then he talked to his school about face-making. He explained that such
contortions really do affect the faces and characters of those who make
them, not of those who see them. He led his boys and girls to see that
face-making made them contemptible, and that every time it was done it
published the inferiority of the doer. Then, having condemned the old
ideal, he tried to build up a new habit by showing that the strongest
man is the one who is most self-controlled, and ended by a little
skillful ridicule of the babyish method they had been taking to show a
silly spite.
“Suppose,” he proposed at last, “that we put the babies who make faces
over here with the primary pupils, where they’ll feel more at home?
Bright people don’t like to be associated with such children. But we’ll
not try it unless we have to. I shall watch you during the next few
days, and I’m going to see how many can show their friends and their
enemies, if they have any, that they are worth respecting, and that
their souls don’t look like twisted turnips.”
No magical change came over the school, but gradually the sentiment for,
and practice of, face-making died out. The children unconsciously copied
the teacher’s contempt for it. By stories and references he built up an
ideal of beauty and dignity in personal appearance and behavior.