It was early in the autumn. Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, with their two
hopefuls, had returned from a month of rest at the mountains, and
the question of school for Thaddeus junior came up.
"He is nearly six years old," said Bessie, "and I think he is quite
intelligent enough to go to school, don't you?"
"Well, if you want my honest opinion," Thaddeus answered, "I think
he's intelligent enough to go without school for another year at
least. I don't want a hot-house boy, and I have always been opposed
to forcing these little minds that we are called upon by
circumstances to direct. It seems to me that the thing for us to do
is to hold them back, if anything. If Teddy goes to school now,
he'll be ready for college when he is twelve. He'll be graduated at
sixteen, and at twenty he'll be practising law. At twenty-five
he'll be leader of the bar; and then--what will there be left for
him to achieve at fifty? Absolutely nothing."
Mrs. Perkins laughed. "You have great hopes for Teddy, haven't
you?"
"Certainly I have," Thaddeus replied; "and why shouldn't I? Doesn't
he combine all my good qualities plus yours? How can he be anything
else than great?"
"I am afraid there's a touch of vanity in you," said Mrs. Perkins,
with a smile. "That remark certainly indicates it."
"No--it's not vanity in me," said Thaddeus. "It's confidence in
you. You've assured me so often of my perfection that I am
beginning to believe in it; and as for your perfection, I've always
believed in it. Hence, when I see Teddy combining your perfect
qualities with my own, I regard him as a supernaturally promising
person--that is, I do until he begins to show the influence of
contact with the hired man, and uses language which he never got
from you or from me."
"Granting that he is great at twenty-five," said Mrs. Perkins, after
a few moments' reflection, "is that such a horrible thing?"
"It isn't for the parents of the successful youth, but for the
successful youth himself it's something awful," returned Thaddeus,
with a convincing shake of the head. "If no one ever lived beyond
the age of thirty-five it wouldn't be so bad, but think of living to
be even so young as sixty, with a big reputation to sustain through
more than half of that period! I wouldn't want to have to sustain a
big name for twenty-five years. Success entails conspicuousness,
and conspicuousness makes error almost a crime. Put your mind on it
for a moment. Think of Teddy here. How nervous it would make him
in everything he undertook to feel that the eyes of the world were
upon him. And take into consideration that other peculiarity of
human nature which leads us all, you and me as well as every one
else, to believe that the man who does not progress is going
backward, that there is no such thing as standing still; then think
of a man illustrious enough for seventy at twenty-five--at the limit
of success, with all those years before him, and no progress
possible! No, my dear. Don't let's talk of school for Teddy yet."
"I am sure I don't want to force him," said Mrs. Perkins, "but it
sometimes seems to me that he needs lessons in discipline. I can't
be following around after him all the time, and it seems to me some
days that I do nothing but find fault with him. I don't want him to
think I'm a stern mother; and when he tells me, as he did yesterday,
that he wishes I'd take a vacation for a month, I can't blame him."
"Did he tell you that?" asked Thaddeus, with a chuckle.
"Yes, he did," replied Mrs. Perkins. "I'd kept him in a chair for
an hour because he would tease Tommy, and when finally I let him go
I told him that he was wearing me out with his naughtiness. About
an hour later he came back and said, 'You have an awful hard time
bringin' me up, don't you?' I said yes, and added that he might
spare me the necessity of scolding him so often, to which he replied
that he'd try, but thought it would be better if I'd take a vacation
for a month. He hadn't much hope for his own improvement."
Thaddeus shook internally.
"He's perfectly wild, too, at times," Mrs. Perkins continued. "He
wants to do such fearful things. I caught him sliding down the
banisters yesterday head-foremost, and you know how he was at the
Mountain House all summer long. Perfectly irrepressible."
"That's very true," said Thaddeus. "I was speaking of it to the
doctor up there, and asked him what he thought I'd better do."
"And what did he say?" asked Mrs. Perkins.
"He stated his firm belief that there was nothing you or I could do
to get him down to a basis, but thought Hagenbeck might accomplish
something."
"No doubt he thought that," cried Bessie. "No doubt everybody
thought that, but it wasn't entirely Teddy's fault. If there is
anything in the world that is well calculated to demoralize an
active-minded, able-bodied child, it is hotel life. Teddy was egged
on to all sorts of indiscretions by everybody in the hotel, from the
bell-boys up. If he'd stand on his head on the cashier's desk, the
cashier would laugh first, and then, to get rid of him, would suggest
that he go into the dining-room and play with the headwaiter; and
when he upset the contents of his bait-box in Mrs. Harkaway's lap,
she interfered when I scolded him, and said she liked it. What can
you do when people talk that way?"
"Get him to upset his bait-box in her lap again," said Thaddeus. "I
think if he had been encouraged to do that as a regular thing, every
morning for a week, she'd have changed her tune."
"Well, it all goes to prove one thing," said Mrs. Perkins, "and that
is, Teddy needs more care than we can give him personally. We are
too lenient. Whenever you start in to punish him it ends up with a
game; when I do it, and he says something funny, as he always does,
I have to laugh."
"How about the ounce-of-prevention idea?" suggested Thaddeus.
"We've let him go without a nurse for a year now--why can't we
employ a maid to look after him--not to boss him, but to keep an eye
on him--to advise him, and, in case he declines to accept the
advice, to communicate with us at once? All he needs is directed
occupation. As he is at present, he directs his own occupation,
with the result that the things he does are of an impossible sort."
"That means another servant for me to manage," sighed Mrs. Perkins.
"True; but a servant is easier to manage than Teddy. You can
discharge a servant if she becomes impossible. We've got Teddy for
keeps," said Thaddeus.
"Very well--so be it," said Mrs. Perkins. "You are right, I guess,
about school. He ought not to be forced, and I'd be worried about
him all the time he was away, anyhow."
So it was decided that Teddy should have a nurse, and for a day or
two the subject was dropped. Later on Mrs. Perkins reopened it.
"I've been thinking all day about Teddy's nurse, Thaddeus," she
said, one evening after dinner. "I think it would be nice if we got
him a French nurse. Then he could learn French without any
forcing."
"Good scheme," said Thaddeus. "I approve of that. We might learn a
little French from her ourselves, too."
"That's what I thought," said Bessie and that point was decided.
The new nurse was to be French, and the happy parents drew beatific
visions of the ease with which they should some day cope with
Parisian hotel-keepers and others in that longed-for period when
they should find themselves able, financially, to visit the French
capital.