CHILDREN AS BURDEN-BEARERS.
Those of us who are mothers would do well to read carefully and ponder
deeply St. Paul's assertion that when he was a child he spoke as a
child, and felt as a child, and thought as a child; and that when he
was a man, and not until then, he put away childish things.
Can the same be said of the child of to-day?
In this "bit of talk," I want to enter my protest against thrusting
upon children the care-taking thought that should not be theirs for
years to come. When the responsibility that is inseparable from every
life bears heavily upon us, we sigh for the carefree days of
childhood, but we do not hesitate to inflict upon our babies the
complaints and moans which teach them, all too soon, that life is a
hard school for us. A child must either grieve with us or become so
inured to our plaints that he pays no attention to them. In the latter
case he may be hard-hearted but he is certainly happier than if he
were exquisitely sensitive.
"What a pretty suit of clothes you have!" said I to a four-year-old
boy.
The momentary expression of pride gave way to one of anxiety.
"Yes; but mamma says when these wear out she does not know how papa
will ever buy me any more clothes. I am a great expense! Oh!" with a
long-drawn sigh of wretchedness, "isn't it _awful_ to be poor?"
The poverty-stricken father was at this time managing to dress
himself, wife and baby on an income of four thousand dollars per
annum. In her desire to make her child take proper care of his
clothes, the mother had struck terror to the little fellow's heart.
Such childish terror is genuine, and yet hard to express. The
self-control of childhood is far greater than the average father or
mother appreciates. Some children seem to have an actual dread of
communicating their fears and fancies to other people.
A friend tells me that when she was but six years old she heard her
father say impatiently, as his wife handed him a bill:
"I can't pay this! At the rate at which bills come in nowadays, I soon
will not have a cent left in the world. It is enough to bankrupt a
man!"
At bedtime that night the little daughter asked her mother, with the
indifferent air children so soon learn to assume:
"Mamma, what becomes of people when all their money is gone, and they
can't pay their bills?"
"Sometimes, dear," answered the unsuspicious mother, "their houses and
belongings are sold to pay their bills."
"And when people have no house, and no money, and nothing left, where
do they go? Do they starve to death?"
"They generally go to the poorhouse, my daughter."
"Oh, mamma!" quavered the little voice, "don't you think that is
dreadful?"
"Very dreadful, darling! Now go to sleep."
To sleep! How could she, with the grim doors of the home for the
county paupers yawning blackly to receive her? All through the night
was the horror upon her, and to this day she remembers the sickening
thrill that swept over her while playing with a little friend, when
the thought occurred:
"If this girl's mother knew that we were going to the poorhouse, she
would not let her play with me."
Little by little the impression wore off, aided in the dissipation by
the sight of numerous rolls of bills which papa occasionally drew from
his pocket. But not once in all that time did the child relax the
strict guard set upon her lips, and sob out her fear to her mother.
She does not now know why she did not do it, except that she could
not.
An otherwise judicious father talks over all his business difficulties
with his seven-year-old son. The grown man does not know what a strain
the anxiety and uncertainty of his father's ventures are to the embryo
financier. Not long ago the father announced to him:
"Well, Harold, that man I was telling you of has failed--lost his
money--and one thousand dollars of mine have gone with it."
The boy's white, set face would have alarmed a more observant man.
"Oh, papa! what shall we do!"
"Get along somehow, my boy!" was the unsatisfactory answer.
Then, as the boy sadly and slowly left the room, the man to whom one
thousand dollars were no more than one dime to this anxious child,
explained, laughingly, to a friend, that "that little fellow was
really wonderful; he understood business, and was as much interested
in it as a man of forty could be."
We fathers and mothers have no right to make our children old before
their time. Each age has its own trials, which are as great as any one
person should bear. We know that the troubles that come to our babies
are only baby troubles, but they are as large to them as our griefs
are to us. A promised drive, which does not "materialize," proves as
great a disappointment to your tiny girl as the unfulfilled promise of
a week in the country would to you, her sensible mother. Of course our
children must learn to bear their trials. My plea is that they may not
be forced to bear our anxieties also. If a thing is an annoyance to
you, it will be an agony to your little child, who has not a tenth of
your experience, philosophy and knowledge of life.
There is something cowardly and weak in the man or woman who has so
little self-control that he or she must press a child's tender
shoulders into service in bearing burdens. Teach your children to be
careful, teach them prudence and economy, but let them be taught as
children.
The forcing of a child's sympathies sometimes produces a hardening
effect, as in the case of a small boy whose mother was one of the
sickly-sentimental sort. She had drawn too often upon her child's
sensibilities.
"Charlie," she said, plaintively, to her youngest boy, "what would you
do if poor mamma were to get very sick?"
"Send for the doctor."
"But, Charlie, suppose poor, dear mamma should die! Then, what would
you do?"
"I'd go to the funeral!" was the cheerful response.
To my mind this mother had the son ordained for her from the beginning
of the world.
Many boys are all love and sympathy for their mothers. Mamma appeals
to all that is tender and chivalrous in the nature of the man that is
to be. The maternal tenderness ought to be too strong to impose upon
this sacred feeling.
Perhaps one of the prettiest of Bunner's "Airs from Arcady" is that
entitled, "In School Hours," in which he thus describes the woe of the
thirteen-year-old girl when she receives the cruel letter from the boy
of her admiration. The poet tells us this sorrow "were tragic at
thirty," and asks, "Why is it trivial at thirteen!"
"Trivial! what shall eclipse
The pain of our childish woes?
The rose-bud pales its lips
When a very small zephyr blows.
You smile, O Dian bland,
If Endymion's glance is cold:
But Despair seems close at hand
To that hapless thirteen-year old!"