THE NEW COMER.
We may be perverse in our notions, and mistaken in our ways; but there
are some great natural blessings which we cannot refuse. I reckon it a
great natural blessing that the main events of human life are common to
all, and that it is out of the power of man to spoil the privilege and
pleasure of them. Birth, love, and death, are beyond the reach of man's
perverseness. They come differently to the wise and the foolish, the
wicked and the pure: but they come alike to the rich and the poor. The
infant finds as warm a bosom in which to nestle in the cottage as in the
mansion. The bride and bridegroom know the bliss of being all the world
to each other as well in their Sunday walk in the fields as in the park
of a royal castle. And when the mourners stand within the enclosure
where "rich and poor lie down together," death is the same sad and sweet
mystery to all the children of mortality, whether they be elsewhere the
lowly or the proud.
It may be said that the coming of the infant is not the same event to
all, because some very poor people are heard to speak of it as a
misfortune, and if the child dies, to rejoice that the Lord has taken
it to himself. It is true that some parents are heard to speak in this
way; but I believe that the difference here is not between rich and
poor, but between the wise and the foolish,--the trusting and the
faithless. I have a right to believe this as long as I see that the
hardest-working mother can be as tender and as cheerful as any other,
and that the poorest man can be as conscientious a father as the
richest. If the parents have been guilty of no fault towards their
unborn child; if the child be the offspring of healthful and virtuous
parents; and if they are calmly resolved to do all in their power for
its good,--to earn its bread, to cherish its health, to open its mind,
to nourish its soul, they have as good a right to rejoice in the
prospect of its birth as anybody in the world. If they steadily purpose
to do their full duty by their child, they may rely upon it that all the
powers of nature will help them;--that in a world wrapped round with
sweet air, and blessed by sunshine, and abounding with knowledge, the
human being can hardly fail of the best ends of life, if set fairly
forth on his way by those who are all to him in his helpless years. A
doubt of this may be pardoned in parents too hard driven by adversity,
who have lost heart, and think that to be poor is to be miserable: but
the doubt is not reasonable or religious; and it is likely to be fatal
to the child. I need not consider it further: for I write for those who
have a high purpose and a high hope in rearing children. Those who
despond are unfit for the charge, and are not likely to enter into any
consultation about it.
To all who have this high purpose and hope, how interesting and how holy
is this expectation of the birth of a human being! The mother is happy,
and can wait. The father thinks the time long till he can take his
infant in his arms, and lavish his love upon it. If there are already
children, they are or should be made, happy by some promise of the new
blessing to come. A serious hope it should be made to them, however
joyful: a hope to be spoken of only in private seasons of confidence,
when parents and children speak to each other of what they feel most
deeply,--by the bedsides of the little ones at night, or in the quietest
time of the Sunday holiday. A serious hope it should be to all parties;
for they should bring into the consideration the duties of labour and
self-denial which lie before them, and the seasons of anxiety which they
must undergo. Before the parents lie sleepless nights, after days of
hard work,--hours and hours of that weary suffering which arises from
the wailing of a sick infant: and before the entire household the duty
of those self-restraints which are ever due from the stronger to the
weaker. Amidst the anticipated joys of an infant's presence, these
things are not to be forgotten.
When the child is born, what an event is it in the education of the
whole household! According to the use made of it is it a pure blessing,
or a cause of pain and sin to some concerned. If it be the first child,
there is danger lest it be too engrossing to the young mother. I believe
it happens oftener than anybody knows, that the first conjugal
discontents follow on the birth of the first child. The young mother
trusts too much to her husband's interest in her new treasure being
equal to her own;--a thing which the constitution of man's nature, and
the arrangements of his business, render impossible. He will love his
infant dearly, and sacrifice much for it if he remains, as he ought, his
wife's first object. But if she neglects his comfort to indulge in
fondling her infant, she is doing wrong to both. If her husband no
longer finds, on his return from his business, a clean and quiet
fireside, and a wife eager to welcome him, but a litter of baby-things,
and a wife too busy up-stairs to come down, or too much engaged with her
infant to talk with him and make him comfortable, there is a mischief
done which can never be repaired.
And if this infant be not the first, there is another person to be no
less carefully considered,--the next youngest. I was early struck by
hearing the mother of a large family say, that her pet was always the
youngest but one; it was so hard to cease to be the baby! Little
children are as jealous of affection as the most enraptured lover; and
they are too young to have learned to control their passions, and to be
reasonable. A more miserable being can hardly exist than a little
creature who, having been accustomed to the tenderness always lavished
on the baby,--having spent almost its whole life in its mother's arms,
and been the first to be greeted on its father's entrance, finds itself
bid to sit on its little stool, or turned over to the maid, or to rough
brothers and sisters to be taken care of, while everybody gathers round
the baby, to admire and love it. Angry and jealous feelings may grow
into dreadful passions in that little breast, if great care be not taken
to smooth over the rough passage from babyhood to childhood. If the
mother would have this child love and not hate the baby, if she would
have peace and not tempest reign in the little heart, she will be very
watchful. She will have her eye on the little creature, and call it to
help her to take care of the baby. She will keep it at her knee, and
show it, with many a tender kiss between, how to make baby smile, how to
warm baby's feet; will let it taste whether baby's food be nice, and
then peep into the cradle, to see whether baby be asleep. And when baby
is asleep, the mother will open her arms to the little helper, and
fondle it as of old, and let it be all in all to her, as it used to be.
This is a great piece of education to them both, and a lesson in justice
to all who stand by.
The addition of a child to the family circle is an event too solemn to
be deformed by any falsehood. But few parents have the courage to be
truthful with their children as to how the infant comes; a question
which their natural curiosity always prompts. The deceptions usually
practised are altogether to be reprobated. It is an abominable practice
to tell children that the doctor brought the baby, and the like. It is
abominable as a lie: and it is worse than useless. Any intelligent child
will go on to ask,--or if not to ask, to ponder with excited
imagination,--where the doctor found it, and so on; and its attention
will be piqued, and its mind injuriously set to work, where a few
serious words of simple but carefully expressed truth, would have
satisfied it entirely. The child must, sooner or later, awaken to an
understanding of the subject; and it is no more difficult to impress him
with a sense of decency about this, than about other things, that a well
trained child never speaks of, but to its mother in private. The natural
question once truthfully answered, the little mind is at rest, and free
for the much stronger interests which are passing before its eyes.
The first month of an infant's life is usually a season of great moral
enjoyment to the household. Everybody is disposed to bear and to do
everything cheerfully for the sake of the new blessing. The father does
not mind the discomforts of the time of his wife's absence from the
table and the fireside, and makes himself by turns the nurse and the
playfellow, to carry the children well through it. If Granny be there,
and not able to do much in the house, she gathers the little ones about
her chair, and tells them longer stories than ever before, to keep them
quiet. The children try with all their might to be quiet; and even the
little two-year-old one struggles not to cry for company when baby
cries, and learns a lesson in self-restraint. They look with respect on
the maid or the nurse when they find that she has been up in the night,
tending mother and baby, and that she looks as cheerful in the morning
as if she had had good rest. And when they are permitted to study the
baby, and to see how it jerks its little limbs about, and does not see
anything they want it to see, and takes no notice of anything they say
to it; and when they hear that their great strong father, so wise and so
clever about his business, was once just such a helpless little creature
as this, they learn to reverence this feeble infant, and one another,
and themselves, and their hearts are very full of feelings which they
cannot speak. I well remember that the strongest feelings I ever
entertained towards any human being were towards a sister born when I
was nine years old. I doubt whether any event in my life ever exerted so
strong an educational influence over me as her birth. The emotions
excited in me were overwhelming for above two years; and I recal them as
vividly as ever now when I see her with a child of her own in her arms.
I threw myself on my knees many times in a day, to thank God that he
permitted me to see the growth of a human being from the beginning. I
leaped from my bed gaily every morning as this thought beamed upon me
with the morning light. I learnt all my lessons without missing a word
for many months, that I might be worthy to watch her in the nursery
during my play-hours. I used to sit on a stool opposite to her as she
was asleep, with a Bible on my knees, trying to make out how a creature
like this might rise "from strength to strength," till it became like
Christ. My great pain was, (and it was truly at times a despair,) to
think what a work lay before this thoughtless little being. I could not
see how she was to learn to walk with such soft and pretty limbs: but
the talking was the despair. I fancied that she would have to learn
every word separately, as I learned my French vocabulary; and I looked
at the big Johnson's Dictionary till I could not bear to think about it.
If I, at nine years old, found it so hard to learn through a small book
like that Vocabulary, what would it be to her to begin at two years old
such a big one as that! Many a time I feared that she never could
possibly learn to speak. And when I thought of all the trees and
plants, and all the stars, and all the human faces she must learn, to
say nothing of lessons,--I was dreadfully oppressed, and almost wished
she had never been born. Then followed the relief of finding that
walking came of itself--step by step; and then, that talking came of
itself--word by word at first, and then many new words in a day. Never
did I feel a relief like this, when the dread of this mighty task was
changed into amusement at her funny use of words, and droll mistakes
about them. This taught me the lesson, never since forgotten, that a way
always lies open before us, for all that it is necessary for us to do,
however impossible and terrible it may appear beforehand. I felt that if
an infant could learn to speak, nothing is to be despaired of from human
powers, exerted according to Nature's laws. Then followed the anguish of
her childish illnesses--the misery of her wailing after vaccination,
when I could neither bear to stay in the nursery nor to keep away from
her; and the terror of the back-stairs, and of her falls, when she found
her feet; and the joy of her glee when she first knew the sunshine, and
the flowers, and the opening spring; and the shame if she did anything
rude, and the glory when she did anything right and sweet. The early
life of that child was to me a long course of intense emotions which, I
am certain, have constituted the most important part of my education. I
speak openly of them here, because I am bound to tell the best I know
about Household Education; and on that, as on most subjects, the best we
have to tell is our own experience. And I tell it the more readily
because I am certain that my parents had scarcely any idea of the
passions and emotions that were working within me, through my own
unconsciousness of them at the time, and the natural modesty which makes
children conceal the strongest and deepest of their feelings: and it may
be well to give parents a hint that more is passing in the hearts of
their children, on occasion of the gift of a new soul to the family
circle, than the ingenuous mind can recognise for itself, or knows how
to confide.