Author of "Verses" and "Bits of Travel."

1873

Contents.

The Inhumanities of Parents--Corporal Punishment

The Inhumanities of Parents--Needless Denials

The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness

Breaking the Will

The Reign of Archelaus

The Awkward Age

A Day with a Courteous Mother

Children in Nova Scotia

The Republic of the Family

The Ready-to-Halts

The Descendants of Nabal

"Boys not allowed"

Half an Hour in a Railway Station

A Genius for Affection

Rainy Days

Friends of the Prisoners

A Companion for the Winter

Choice of Colors

The Apostle of Beauty

English Lodging-Houses

Wet the Clay

The King's Friend

Learning to speak

Private Tyrants

Margin

The Fine Art of Smiling

Death-bed Repentance

The Correlation of Moral Forces

A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner

Children's Parties

After-supper Talk

Hysteria in Literature

Jog Trot

The Joyless American

Spiritual Teething

Glass Houses

The Old-Clothes Monger in Journalism

The Country Landlord's Side

The Good Staff of Pleasure

Wanted--a Home

Bits of Talk.

The Inhumanities of Parents--Corporal Punishment.

Not long ago a Presbyterian minister in Western New York whipped his

three-year-old boy to death, for refusing to say his prayers. The little

fingers were broken; the tender flesh was bruised and actually mangled;

strong men wept when they looked on the body; and the reverend murderer,

after having been set free on bail, was glad to return and take refuge

within the walls of his prison, to escape summary punishment at the hands

of an outraged community. At the bare mention of such cruelty, every heart

grew sick and faint; men and women were dumb with horror: only tears and a

hot demand for instant retaliation availed.

The question whether, after all, that baby martyr were not fortunate among

his fellows, would, no doubt, be met by resentful astonishment. But it is

a question which may well be asked, may well be pondered. Heart-rending as

it is to think for an instant of the agonies which the poor child must

have borne for some hours after his infant brain was too bewildered by

terror and pain to understand what was required of him, it still cannot

fail to occur to deeper reflection that the torture was short and small in

comparison with what the next ten years might have held for him if he had

lived. To earn entrance on the spiritual life by the briefest possible

experience of the physical, is always "greater gain;" but how emphatically

is it so when the conditions of life upon earth are sure to be

unfavorable!

If it were possible in any way to get a statistical summing-up and a

tangible presentation of the amount of physical pain inflicted by parents

on children under twelve years of age, the most callous-hearted would be

surprised and shocked. If it were possible to add to this estimate an

accurate and scientific demonstration of the extent to which such pain, by

weakening the nervous system and exhausting its capacity to resist

disease, diminishes children's chances for life, the world would stand

aghast.

Too little has been said upon this point. The opponents of corporal

punishment usually approach the subject either from the sentimental or the

moral standpoint. The argument on either of these grounds can be made

strong enough, one would suppose, to paralyze every hand lifted to strike

a child. But the question of the direct and lasting physical effect of

blows--even of one blow on the delicate tissues of a child's body, on the

frail and trembling nerves, on the sensitive organization which is trying,

under a thousand unfavoring conditions, to adjust itself to the hard work

of both living and growing--has yet to be properly considered.

Every one knows the sudden sense of insupportable pain, sometimes

producing even dizziness and nausea, which follows the accidental hitting

of the ankle or elbow against a hard substance. It does not need that the

blow be very hard to bring involuntary tears to adult eyes. But what is

such a pain as this, in comparison with the pain of a dozen or more quick

tingling blows from a heavy hand on flesh which is, which must be as much

more sensitive than ours, as are the souls which dwell in it purer than

ours. Add to this physical pain the overwhelming terror which only utter

helplessness can feel, and which is the most recognizable quality in the

cry of a very young child under whipping; add the instinctive sense of

disgrace, of outrage, which often keeps the older child stubborn and still

through-out,--and you have an amount and an intensity of suffering from

which even tried nerves might shrink. Again, who does not know--at least,

what woman does not know--that violent weeping, for even a very short

time, is quite enough to cause a feeling of languor and depression, of

nervous exhaustion for a whole day? Yet it does not seem to occur to

mothers that little children must feel this, in proportion to the length

of time and violence of their crying, far more than grown people. Who has

not often seen a poor child receive, within an hour or two of the first

whipping, a second one, for some small ebullition of nervous

irritability, which was simply inevitable from its spent and worn

condition?

It is safe to say that in families where whipping is regularly recognized

as a punishment, few children under ten years of age, and of average

behavior, have less than one whipping a week. Sometimes they have more,

sometimes the whipping is very severe. Thus you have in one short year

sixty or seventy occasions on which for a greater or less time, say from

one to three hours, the child's nervous system is subjected to a

tremendous strain from the effect of terror and physical pain combined

with long crying. Will any physician tell us that this fact is not an

element in that child's physical condition at the end of that year? Will

any physician dare to say that there may not be, in that child's life,

crises when the issues of life and death will be so equally balanced that

the tenth part of the nervous force lost in such fits of crying, and in

the endurance of such pain, could turn the scale?

Nature's retributions, like her rewards, are cumulative. Because her

sentences against evil works are not executed speedily, therefore the

hearts of the sons of men are fully set in them to do evil. But the

sentence always is executed, sooner or later, and that inexorably. Your

son, O unthinking mother! may fall by the way in the full prime of his

manhood, for lack of that strength which his infancy spent in enduring

your hasty and severe punishments.

It is easy to say,--and universally is said,--by people who cling to the

old and fight against the new, "All this outcry about corporal punishment

is sentimental nonsense. The world is full of men and women, who have

grown up strong and good, in spite of whippings; and as for me, I know I

never had any more whipping than I deserved, or than was good for me."

Are you then so strong and clear and pure in your physical and spiritual

nature and life, that you are sure no different training could have made

either your body or your soul better? Are these men and women, of whom the

world is full, so able-bodied, whole-souled, strong-minded, that you think

it needless to look about for any method of making the next generation

better? Above all, do you believe that it is a part of the legitimate

outworking of God's plan and intent in creating human beings to have more

than one-half of them die in childhood? If we are not to believe that this

fearful mortality is a part of God's plan, is it wise to refuse to

consider all possibilities, even those seemingly most remote, of

diminishing it?

No argument is so hard to meet (simply because it is not an argument) as

the assumption of the good and propriety of "the thing that hath been." It

is one of the devil's best sophistries, by which he keeps good people

undisturbed in doing the things he likes. It has been in all ages the

bulwark behind which evils have made stand, and have slain their

thousands. It is the last enemy which shall be destroyed. It is the only

real support of the cruel evil of corporal punishment.

Suppose that such punishment of children had been unheard of till now.

Suppose that the idea had yesterday been suggested for the first time that

by inflicting physical pain on a child's body you might make him recollect

certain truths; and suppose that instead of whipping, a very moderate and

harmless degree of pricking with pins or cutting with knives or burning

with fire had been suggested. Would not fathers and mothers have cried out

all over the land at the inhumanity of the idea?

Would they not still cry out at the inhumanity of one who, as things are

to-day, should propose the substitution of pricking or cutting or burning

for whipping? But I think it would not be easy to show in what wise small

pricks or cuts are more inhuman than blows; or why lying may not be as

legitimately cured by blisters made with a hot coal as by black and blue

spots made with a ruler. The principle is the same; and if the principle

be right, why not multiply methods?

It seems as if this one suggestion, candidly considered, might be enough

to open all parents' eyes to the enormity of whipping. How many a loving

mother will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict half-a-dozen quick

blows on the little hand of her child, when she could no more take a pin

and make the same number of thrusts into the tender flesh, than she could

bind the baby on a rack. Yet the pin-thrusts would hurt far less, and

would probably make a deeper impression on the child's mind.

Among the more ignorant classes, the frequency and severity of corporal

punishment of children, are appalling. The facts only need to be held up

closely and persistently before the community to be recognized as horrors

of cruelty far greater than some which have been made subjects of

legislation.

It was my misfortune once to be forced to spend several of the hottest

weeks of a hot summer in New York. In near neighborhood to my rooms were

blocks of buildings which had shops on the first floor and tenements

above. In these lived the families of small tradesmen, and mechanics of

the better sort. During those scorching nights every window was thrown

open, and all sounds were borne with distinctness through the hot still

air. Chief among them were the shrieks and cries of little children, and

blows and angry words from tired, overworked mothers. At times it became

almost unbearable: it was hard to refrain from an attempt at rescue. Ten,

twelve, twenty quick, hard blows, whose sound rang out plainly, I counted

again and again; mingling with them came the convulsive screams of the

poor children, and that most piteous thing of all, the reiteration of "Oh,

mamma! oh, mamma!" as if, through all, the helpless little creatures had

an instinct that this word ought to be in itself the strongest appeal.

These families were all of the better class of work people, comfortable

and respectable. What sounds were to be heard in the more wretched haunts

of the city, during those nights, the heart struggled away from fancying.

But the shrieks of those children will never wholly die out of the air. I

hear them to-day; and mingling with them, the question rings perpetually

in my ears, "Why does not the law protect children, before the point at

which life is endangered?"

A cartman may be arrested in the streets for the brutal beating of a horse

which is his own, and which he has the right to kill if he so choose.

Should not a man be equally withheld from the brutal beating of a child

who is not his own, but God's, and whom to kill is murder?

The Inhumanities of Parents--Needless Denials.

Webster's Dictionary, which cannot be accused of any leaning toward

sentimentalism, defines "inhumanity" as "cruelty in action;" and "cruelty"

as "an act of a human being which inflicts unnecessary pain." The word

inhumanity has an ugly sound, and many inhuman people are utterly and

honestly unconscious of their own inhumanities; it is necessary therefore

to entrench one's self behind some such bulwark as the above definitions

afford, before venturing the accusation that fathers and mothers are

habitually guilty of inhuman conduct in inflicting "unnecessary pain" on

their children, by needless denials of their innocent wishes and impulses.

Most men and a great many women would be astonished at being told that

simple humanity requires them to gratify every wish, even the smallest, of

their children, when the pain of having that wish denied is not made

necessary, either for the child's own welfare, physical or mental, or by

circumstances beyond the parent's control. The word "necessary" is a very

authoritative one; conscience, if left free, soon narrows down its

boundaries; inconvenience, hindrance, deprivation, self-denial, one or

all, or even a great deal of all, to ourselves, cannot give us a shadow of

right to say that the pain of the child's disappointment is "necessary."

Selfishness grasps at help from the hackneyed sayings, that it is "best

for children to bear the yoke in their youth;" "the sooner they learn that

they cannot have their own way the better;" "it is a good discipline for

them to practise self-denial," &c. But the yoke that they _must_ bear, in

spite of our lightening it all we can, is heavy enough; the instances in

which it is, for good and sufficient reasons, impossible for them to have

their own way are quite numerous enough to insure their learning the

lesson very early; and as for the discipline of self-denial,--God bless

their dear, patient souls!--if men and women brought to bear on the

thwartings and vexations of their daily lives, and their relations with

each other, one hundredth part of the sweet acquiescence and brave

endurance which average children show, under the average management of

average parents, this world would be a much pleasanter place to live in

than it is.

Let any conscientious and tender mother, who perhaps reads these words

with tears half of resentment, half of grief in her eyes, keep for three

days an exact record of the little requests which she refuses, from the

baby of five, who begged to stand on a chair and look out of the window,

and was hastily told, "No, it would, hurt the chair," when one minute

would have been enough time to lay a folded newspaper over the

upholstery, and another minute enough to explain to him, with a kiss and

a hug, "that that was to save his spoiling mamma's nice chair with his

boots;" and the two minutes together would probably have made sure that

another time the dear little fellow would look out for a paper himself,

when he wished to climb up to the window,--from this baby up to the pretty

girl of twelve, who, with as distinct a perception of the becoming as her

mother had before her, went to school unhappy because she was compelled to

wear the blue necktie instead of the scarlet one, and surely for no

especial reason! At the end of the three days, an honest examination of

the record would show that full half of these small denials, all of which

had involved pain, and some of which had brought contest and punishment,

had been needless, had been hastily made, and made usually on account of

the slight interruption or inconvenience which would result from yielding

to the request. I am very much mistaken if the honest keeping and honest

study of such a three days' record would not wholly change the atmosphere

in many a house to what it ought to be, and bring almost constant sunshine

and bliss where now, too often, are storm and misery.

With some parents, although they are neither harsh nor hard in manner, nor

yet unloving in nature, the habitual first impulse seems to be to refuse:

they appear to have a singular obtuseness to the fact that it is, or can

be, of any consequence to a child whether it does or does not do the thing

it desires. Often the refusal is withdrawn on the first symptom of grief

or disappointment on the child's part; a thing which is fatal to all real

control of a child, and almost as unkind as the first unnecessary

denial,--perhaps even more so, as it involves double and treble pains, in

future instances, where there cannot and must not be any giving way to

entreaties. It is doubtless this lack of perception,--akin, one would

think, to color-blindness,--which is at the bottom of this great and

common inhumanity among kind and intelligent fathers and mothers: an

inhumanity so common that it may almost be said to be universal; so common

that, while we are obliged to look on and see our dearest friends guilty

of it, we find it next to impossible to make them understand what we mean

when we make outcry over some of its glaring instances.

You, my dearest of friends,--or, rather, you who would be, but for this

one point of hopeless contention between us,--do you remember a certain

warm morning, last August, of which I told you then you had not heard the

last? Here it is again: perhaps in print I can make it look blacker to you

than I could then; part of it I saw, part of it you unwillingly confessed

to me, and part of it little Blue Eyes told me herself.

It was one of those ineffable mornings, when a thrill of delight and

expectancy fills the air; one felt that every appointment of the day must

be unlike those of other days,--must be festive, must help on the "white

day" for which all things looked ready. I remember how like the morning

itself you looked as you stood in the doorway, in a fresh white muslin

dress, with lavender ribbons. I said, "Oh, extravagance! For breakfast!"

"I know," you said; "but the day was so enchanting, I could not make up my

mind to wear any thing that had been worn before." Here an uproar from the

nursery broke out, and we both ran to the spot. There stood little Blue

Eyes, in a storm of temper, with one small foot on a crumpled mass of pink

cambric on the floor; and nurse, who was also very red and angry,

explained that Miss would not have on her pink frock because it was not

quite clean. "It is all dirty, mamma, and I don't want to put it on!

You've got on a nice white dress: why can't I?"

You are in the main a kind mother, and you do not like to give little Blue

Eyes pain; so you knelt down beside her, and told her that she must be a

good girl, and have on the gown Mary had said, but that she should have on

a pretty white apron, which would hide the spots. And Blue Eyes, being

only six years old, and of a loving, generous nature, dried her tears,

accepted the very questionable expedient, tried to forget the spots, and

in a few moments came out on the piazza, chirping like a little bird. By

this time the rare quality of the morning had stolen like wine into our

brains, and you exclaimed, "We will have breakfast out here, under the

vines! How George will like it!" And in another instant you were flitting

back and forth, helping the rather ungracious Bridget move out the

breakfast-table, with its tempting array.

"Oh, mamma, mamma," cried Blue Eyes, "can't I have my little tea-set on a

little table beside your big table? Oh, let me, let me!" and she fairly

quivered with excitement. You hesitated. How I watched you! But it was a

little late. Bridget was already rather cross; the tea-set was packed in a

box, and up on a high shelf.

"No, dear. There is not time, and we must not make Bridget any more

trouble; but"--seeing the tears coming again--"you shall have some real

tea in papa's big gilt cup, and another time you shall have your tea-set

when we have breakfast out here again." As I said before, you are a kind

mother, and you made the denial as easy to be borne as you could, and Blue

Eyes was again pacified, not satisfied, only bravely making the best of

it. And so we had our breakfast; a breakfast to be remembered, too. But as

for the "other time" which you had promised to Blue Eyes; how well I knew

that not many times a year did such mornings and breakfasts come, and that

it was well she would forget all about it! After breakfast,--you remember

how we lingered,--George suddenly started up, saying, "How hard it is to

go to town! I say, girls, walk down to the station with me, both of you."

"And me too, me too, papa!" said Blue Eyes. You did not hear her; but I

did, and she had flown for her hat. At the door we found her, saying

again, "Me too, mamma!" Then you remembered her boots: "Oh, my darling,"

you said, kissing her, for you are a kind mother, "you cannot go in those

nice boots: the dew will spoil them; and it is not worth while to change

them, we shall be back in a few minutes."

A storm of tears would have burst out in an instant at this the third

disappointment, if I had not sat down on the door-step, and, taking her in

my lap, whispered that auntie was going to stay too.

"Oh, put the child down, and come along," called the great, strong,

uncomprehending man--Blue Eyes' dear papa. "Pussy won't mind. Be a good

girl, pussy; I'll bring you a red balloon to-night."

You are both very kind, you and George, and you both love little Blue Eyes

dearly.

"No, I won't come. I believe my boots are too thin," said I; and for the

equivocation there was in my reply I am sure of being forgiven. You both

turned back twice to look at the child, and kissed your hands to her; and

I wondered if you did not see in her face, what I did, real grief and

patient endurance. Even "The King of the Golden River" did not rouse her:

she did not want a story; she did not want me; she did not want a red

balloon at night; she wanted to walk between you, to the station, with her

little hands in yours! God grant the day may not come when you will be

heart-broken because you can never lead her any more!

She asked me some questions, while you were gone, which you remember I

repeated to you. She asked me if I did not hate nice new shoes; and why

little girls could not put on the dresses they liked best; and if mamma

did not look beautiful in that pretty white dress; and said that, if she

could only have had her own tea-set, at breakfast, she would have let me

have my coffee in one of her cups. Gradually she grew happier, and began

to tell me about her great wax-doll, which had eyes that could shut; which

was kept in a trunk because she was too little, mamma said, to play very

much with it now; but she guessed mamma would let her have it to-day; did

I not think so? Alas! I did, and I said so; in fact, I felt sure that it

was the very thing you would be certain to do, to sweeten the day, which

had begun so sadly for poor little Blue Eyes.

It seemed very long to her before you came back, and she was on the point

of asking for her dolly as soon as you appeared; but I whispered to her to

wait till you were rested. After a few minutes I took her up to your

room,--that lovely room with the bay window to the east; there you sat, in

your white dress, surrounded with gay worsteds, all looking like a

carnival of humming-birds. "Oh, how beautiful!" I exclaimed, in

involuntary admiration; "what are you doing?" You said that you were going

to make an affghan, and that the morning was so enchanting you could not

bear the thought of touching your mending, but were going to luxuriate in

the worsteds. Some time passed in sorting the colors, and deciding on the

contrasts, and I forgot all about the doll. Not so little Blue Eyes. I

remembered afterward how patiently she stood still, waiting and waiting

for a gap between our words, that she need not break the law against

interrupting, with her eager--

"Please, mamma, let me have my wax dolly to play with this morning! I'll

sit right here on the floor, by you and auntie, and not hurt her one bit.

Oh, please do, mamma!"

You mean always to be a very kind mother, and you spoke as gently and

lovingly as it is possible to speak when you replied:--

"Oh, Pussy, mamma is too busy to get it; she can't get up now. You can

play with your blocks, and with your other dollies, just as well; that's a

good little girl."

Probably, if Blue Eyes had gone on imploring, you would have laid your

worsteds down, and given her the dolly; for you love her dearly, and never

mean to make her unhappy. But neither you nor I were prepared for what

followed.

"You're a naughty, ugly, hateful mamma! You never let me do _any_ thing,

and I wish you were dead!" with such a burst of screaming and tears that

we were both frightened. You looked, as well you might, heart-broken at

such words from your only child. You took her away; and when you came

back, you cried, and said you had whipped her severely, and you did not

know what you should do with a child of such a frightful temper.

"Such an outburst as that, just because I told her, in the gentlest way

possible, that she could not have a plaything! It is terrible!"

Then I said some words to you, which you thought were unjust. I asked you

in what condition your own nerves would have been by ten o'clock that

morning if your husband (who had, in one view, a much better right to

thwart your harmless desires than you had to thwart your child's, since

you, in the full understanding of maturity, gave yourself into his hands)

had, instead of admiring your pretty white dress, told you to be more

prudent, and not put it on; had told you it would be nonsense to have

breakfast out on the piazza; and that he could not wait for you to walk to

the station with him. You said that the cases were not at all parallel;

and I replied hotly that that was very true, for those matters would have

been to you only the comparative trifles of one short day, and would have

made you only a little cross and uncomfortable; whereas to little Blue

Eyes they were the all-absorbing desires of the hour, which, to a child in

trouble, always looks as if it could never come to an end, and would never

be followed by any thing better.

Blue Eyes cried herself to sleep, and slept heavily till late in the

afternoon. When her father came home, you said that she must not have the

red balloon, because she had been such a naughty girl. I have wondered

many times since why she did not cry again, or look grieved when you said

that, and laid the balloon away. After eleven o'clock at night, I went to

look at her, and found her sobbing in her sleep, and tossing about. I

groaned as I thought, "This is only one day, and there are three hundred

and sixty-five in a year!" But I never recall the distorted face of that

poor child, as, in her fearful passion, she told you she wished you were

dead, without also remembering that even the gentle Christ said of him who

should offend one of these little ones, "It were better for him that a

mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths

of the sea!"

The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness.

/#

"_Inhumanity_--Cruelty. _Cruelty_--The disposition to give unnecessary

pain."--_Webster's Dict_.

#/

I had intended to put third on the list of inhumanities of parents

"needless requisitions;" but my last summer's observations changed my

estimate, and convinced me that children suffer more pain from the

rudeness with which they are treated than from being forced to do needless

things which they dislike. Indeed, a positively and graciously courteous

manner toward children is a thing so rarely seen in average daily life,

the rudenesses which they receive are so innumerable, that it is hard to

tell where to begin in setting forth the evil. Children themselves often

bring their sharp and unexpected logic to bear on some incident

illustrating the difference in this matter of behavior between what is

required from them and what is shown to them: as did a little boy I knew,

whose father said crossly to him one morning, as he came into the

breakfast-room, "Will you ever learn to shut that door after you?" and a

few seconds later, as the child was rather sulkily sitting down in his

chair, "And do you mean to bid anybody 'good-morning,' or not?" "I don't

think you gave _me_ a very nice 'good-morning,' anyhow," replied satirical

justice, aged seven. Then, of course, he was reproved for speaking

disrespectfully; and so in the space of three minutes the beautiful

opening of the new day, for both parents and children, was jarred and

robbed of its fresh harmony by the father's thoughtless rudeness.

Was the breakfast-room door much more likely to be shut the next morning?

No. The lesson was pushed aside by the pain, the motive to resolve was

dulled by the antagonism. If that father had called his son, and, putting

his arm round him, (oh! the blessed and magic virtue of putting your arm

round a child's neck!) had said, "Good-morning, my little man;" and then,

in a confidential whisper in his ear, "What shall we do to make this

forgetful little boy remember not to leave that door open, through which

the cold wind blows in on all of us?"--can any words measure the

difference between the first treatment and the second? between the success

of the one and the failure of the other?

Scores of times in a day, a child is told, in a short, authoritative way,

to do or not to do such little things as we ask at the hands of older

people, as favors, graciously, and with deference to their choice. "Would

you be so very kind as to close that window?" "May I trouble you for that

cricket?" "If you would be as comfortable in this chair as in that, I

would like to change places with you." "Oh, excuse me, but your head is

between me and the light: could you see as well if you moved a little?"

"Would it hinder you too long to stop at the store for me? I would be very

much obliged to you, if you would." "Pray, do not let me crowd you," &c.

In most people's speech to children, we find, as synonyms for these polite

phrases: "Shut that window down, this minute." "Bring me that cricket." "I

want that chair; get up. You can sit in this." "Don't you see that you are

right in my light? Move along." "I want you to leave off playing, and go

right down to the store for me." "Don't crowd so. Can't you see that there

is not room enough for two people here?" and so on. As I write, I feel an

instinctive consciousness that these sentences will come like home-thrusts

to some surprised people. I hope so. That is what I want. I am sure that

in more than half the cases where family life is marred in peace, and

almost stripped of beauty, by just these little rudenesses, the parents

are utterly unconscious of them. The truth is, it has become like an

established custom, this different and less courteous way of speaking to

children on small occasions and minor matters. People who are generally

civil and of fair kindliness do it habitually, not only to their own

children, but to all children. We see it in the cars, in the stages, in

stores, in Sunday schools, everywhere.

On the other hand, let a child ask for any thing without saying "please,"

receive any thing without saying "thank you," sit still in the most

comfortable seat without offering to give it up, or press its own

preference for a particular book, chair, or apple, to the inconveniencing

of an elder, and what an outcry we have: "Such rudeness!" "Such an

ill-mannered child!" "His parents must have neglected him strangely." Not

at all: they have been steadily telling him a great many times every day

not to do these precise things which you dislike. But they themselves have

been all the while doing those very things to him; and there is no proverb

which strikes a truer balance between two things than the old one which

weighs example over against precept.

However, that it is bad policy to be rude to children is the least of the

things to be said against it. Over this they will triumph, sooner or

later. The average healthy child has a native bias towards gracious good

behavior and kindly affections. He will win and be won in the long run,

and, the chances are, have better manners than his father. But the pain

that we give these blessed little ones when we wound their

tenderness,--for that there is no atoning. Over that they can never

triumph, either now or hereafter. Why do we dare to be so sure that they

are not grieved by ungracious words and tones? that they can get used to

being continually treated as if they were "in the way"? Who has not heard

this said? I have, until I have longed for an Elijah and for fire, that

the grown-up cumberers of the ground, who are the ones really in the way,

might be burned up, to make room for the children. I believe that, if it

were possible to count up in any one month, and show in the aggregate, all

of this class of miseries borne by children, the world would cry out

astonished. I know a little girl, ten years old, of nervous temperament,

whose whole physical condition is disordered, and seriously, by her

mother's habitual atmosphere of rude fault-finding. She is a sickly,

fretful, unhappy, almost unbearable child. If she lives to grow up, she

will be a sickly, fretful, unhappy, unlovely woman. But her mother is just

as much responsible for the whole as if she had deranged her system by

feeding her on poisonous drugs. Yet she is a most conscientious, devoted,

and anxious mother, and, in spite of this manner, a loving one. She does

not know that there is any better way than hers. She does not see that her

child is mortified and harmed when she says to her, in the presence of

strangers, "How do you suppose you _look_ with your mouth open like that?"

"Do you want me to show you how you are sitting?"--and then a grotesque

imitation of her stooping shoulders. "_Will_ you sit still for one

minute?" "_Do_ take your hands off my dress." "Was there ever such an

awkward child?" When the child replies fretfully and disagreeably, she

does not see that it is only an exact reflection of her own voice and

manners. She does not understand any of the things that would make for her

own peace, as well as for the child's. Matters grow worse, instead of

better, as the child grows older and has more will; and the chances are

that the poor little soul will be worried into her grave.

Probably most parents, even very kindly ones, would be a little startled

at the assertion that a child ought never to be reproved in the presence

of others. This is so constant an occurrence that nobody thinks of

noticing it; nobody thinks of considering whether it be right and best, or

not. But it is a great rudeness to a child. I am entirely sure that it

ought never to be done. Mortification is a condition as unwholesome as it

is uncomfortable. When the wound is inflicted by the hand of a parent, it

is all the more certain to rankle and do harm. Let a child see that his

mother is so anxious that he should have the approbation and good-will of

her friends that she will not call their attention to his faults; and

that, while she never, under any circumstances, allows herself to forget

to tell him afterward, alone, if he has behaved improperly, she will spare

him the additional pain and mortification of public reproof; and, while

that child will lay these secret reproofs to heart, he will still be

happy.

I know a mother who had the insight to see this, and the patience to make

it a rule; for it takes far more patience, far more time, than the common

method.

She said sometimes to her little boy, after visitors had left the parlor,

"Now, dear, I am going to be your little girl, and you are to be my papa.

And we will play that a gentleman has just come in to see you, and I will

show you exactly how you have been behaving while this lady has been

calling to see me. And you can see if you do not feel very sorry to have

your little girl behave so."

Here is a dramatic representation at once which that boy does not need to

see repeated many times before he is forever cured of interrupting, of

pulling his mother's gown, of drumming on the piano, &c.,--of the thousand

and one things which able-bodied children can do to make social visiting

where they are a martyrdom and a penance.

Once I saw this same little boy behave so boisterously and rudely at the

dinner-table, in the presence of guests, that I said to myself, "Surely,

this time she will have to break her rule, and reprove him publicly." I

saw several telegraphic signals of rebuke, entreaty, and warning flash

from her gentle eyes to his; but nothing did any good. Nature was too much

for him; he could not at that minute force himself to be quiet. Presently

she said, in a perfectly easy and natural tone, "Oh, Charley, come here a

minute; I want to tell you something." No one at the table supposed that

it had any thing to do with his bad behavior. She did not intend that they

should. As she whispered to him, I alone saw his cheek flush, and that he

looked quickly and imploringly into her face; I alone saw that tears were

almost in her eyes. But she shook her head, and he went back to his seat

with a manful but very red little face. In a few moments he laid down his

knife and fork, and said, "Mamma, will you please to excuse me?"

"Certainly, my dear," said she. Nobody but I understood it, or observed

that the little fellow had to run very fast to get out of the room without

crying. Afterward she told me that she never sent a child away from the

table in any other way. "But what would you do," said I, "if he were to

refuse to ask to be excused?" Then the tears stood full in her eyes. "Do

you think he could," she replied, "when he sees that I am only trying to

save him from pain?" In the evening, Charley sat in my lap, and was very

sober. At last he whispered to me, "I'll tell you an awful secret, if you

won't tell. Did you think I had done my dinner this afternoon when I got

excused? Well, I hadn't. Mamma made me, because I acted so. That's the way

she always does. But I haven't had to have it done to me before for ever

so long,--not since I was a little fellow" (he was eight now); "and I

don't believe I ever shall again till I'm a man." Then he added,

reflectively, "Mary brought me all the rest of my dinner upstairs; but I

wouldn't touch it, only a little bit of the ice-cream. I don't think I

deserved any at all; do you?"

I shall never, so long as I live, forget a lesson of this sort which my

own mother once gave me. I was not more than seven years old; but I had a

great susceptibility to color and shape in clothes, and an insatiable

admiration for all people who came finely dressed. One day, my mother said

to me, "Now I will play 'house' with you." Who does not remember when to

"play house" was their chief of plays? And to whose later thought has it

not occurred that in this mimic little show lay bound up the whole of

life? My mother was the liveliest of playmates, she took the worst doll,

the broken tea-set, the shabby furniture, and the least convenient corner

of the room for her establishment. Social life became a round of

festivities when she kept house as my opposite neighbor. At last, after

the washing-day, and the baking-day, and the day when she took dinner with

me, and the day when we took our children and walked out together, came

the day for me to take my oldest child and go across to make a call at her

house. Chill discomfort struck me on the very threshold of my visit. Where

was the genial, laughing, talking lady who had been my friend up to that

moment? There she sat, stock-still, dumb, staring first at my bonnet, then

at my shawl, then at my gown, then at my feet; up and down, down and up,

she scanned me, barely replying in monosyllables to my attempts at

conversation; finally getting up, and coming nearer, and examining my

clothes, and my child's still more closely. A very few minutes of this

were more than I could bear; and, almost crying, I said, "Why, mamma, what

makes you do so?" Then the play was over; and she was once more the wise

and tender mother, telling me playfully that it was precisely in such a

way I had stared, the day before, at the clothes of two ladies who had

come in to visit her. I never needed that lesson again. To this day, if I

find myself departing from it for an instant, the old tingling shame burns

in my cheeks.

To this day, also, the old tingling pain burns my cheeks as I recall

certain rude and contemptuous words which were said to me when I was very

young, and stamped on my memory forever. I was once called a "stupid

child" in the presence of strangers. I had brought the wrong book from my

father's study. Nothing could be said to me to-day which would give me a

tenth part of the hopeless sense of degradation which came from those

words. Another time, on the arrival of an unexpected guest to dinner, I

was sent, in a great hurry, away from the table, to make room, with the

remark that "it was not of the least consequence about the child; she

could just as well have her dinner afterward." "The child" would have been

only too happy to help on the hospitality of the sudden emergency, if the

thing had been differently put; but the sting of having it put in that way

I never forgot. Yet in both these instances the rudeness was so small, in

comparison with what we habitually see, that it would be too trivial to

mention, except for the bearing of the fact that the pain it gave has

lasted till now.

When we consider seriously what ought to be the nature of a reproof from a

parent to a child, and what is its end, the answer is simple enough. It

should be nothing but the superior wisdom and strength, explaining to

inexperience and feebleness wherein they have made a mistake, to the end

that they may avoid such mistakes in future. If personal annoyance,

impatience, antagonism enter in, the relation is marred and the end

endangered. Most sacred and inalienable of all rights is the right of

helplessness to protection from the strong, of ignorance to counsel from

the wise. If we give our protection and counsel grudgingly, or in a

churlish, unkind manner, even to the stranger that is in our gates, we are

no Christians, and deserve to be stripped of what little wisdom and

strength we have hoarded. But there are no words to say what we are or

what we deserve if we do thus to the little children whom we have dared,

for our own pleasure, to bring into the perils of this life, and whose

whole future may be blighted by the mistakes of our careless hands.

Breaking the Will.

This phrase is going out of use. It is high time it did. If the thing it

represents would also cease, there would be stronger and freer men and

women. But the phrase is still sometimes heard; and there are still

conscientious fathers and mothers who believe they do God service in

setting about the thing.

I have more than once said to a parent who used these words, "Will you

tell me just what you mean by that? Of course you do not mean exactly what

you say."

"Yes, I do. I mean that the child's will is to be once for all

broken!--that he is to learn that my will is to be his law. The sooner he

learns this the better."

"But is it to your will simply _as_ will that he is to yield? Simply as

the weaker yields to the stronger,--almost as matter yields to force? For

what reason is he to do this?"

"Why, because I know what is best for him, and what is right; and he does

not."

"Ah! that is a very different thing. He is, then, to do the thing that you

tell him to do, because that thing is right and is needful for him; you

are his guide on a road over which you have gone, and he has not; you are

an interpreter, a helper; you know better than he does about all things,

and your knowledge is to teach his ignorance."

"Certainly, that is what I mean. A pretty state of things it would be if

children were to be allowed to think they know as much as their parents.

There is no way except to break their wills in the beginning."

"But you have just said that it is not to your will as will that he is to

yield, but to your superior knowledge and experience. That surely is not

'breaking his will.' It is of all things furthest removed from it. It is

educating his will. It is teaching him how to will."

This sounds dangerous; but the logic is not easily turned aside, and there

is little left for the advocate of will-breaking but to fall back on some

texts in the Bible, which have been so often misquoted in this connection

that one can hardly hear them with patience. To "Children, obey your

parents," was added "in the Lord," and "because it is right," not "because

they are your parents." "Spare the rod" has been quite gratuitously

assumed to mean "spare blows." "Rod" means here, as elsewhere, simply

punishment. We are not told to "train up a child" to have no will but our

own, but "in the way in which he should go," and to the end that "when he

is old" he should not "depart from it,"--i.e., that his will should be so

educated that he will choose to walk in the right way still. Suppose a

child's will to be actually "broken;" suppose him to be so trained that he

has no will but to obey his parents. What is to become of this helpless

machine, which has no central spring of independent action? Can we stand

by, each minute of each hour of each day, and say to the automata, Go

here, or Go there? Can we be sure of living as long as they live? Can we

wind them up like seventy-year clocks, and leave them?

But this is idle. It is not, thank God, in the power of any man or any

woman to "break" a child's "will." They may kill the child's body, in

trying, like that still unhung clergyman in Western New York, who whipped

his three-year-old son to death for refusing to repeat a prayer to his

step-mother.

Bodies are frail things; there are more child-martyrs than will be known

until the bodies terrestrial are done with.

But, by one escape or another, the will, the soul, goes free. Sooner or

later, every human being comes to know and prove in his own estate that

freedom of will is the only freedom for which there are no chains

possible, and that in Nature's whole reign of law nothing is so largely

provided for as liberty. Sooner or later, all this must come. But, if it

comes later, it comes through clouds of antagonism, and after days of

fight, and is hard-bought.

It should come sooner, like the kingdom of God, which it is,--"without

observation," gracious as sunshine, sweet as dew; it should begin with the

infant's first dawning of comprehension that there are two courses of

action, two qualities of conduct: one wise, the other foolish; one right,

the other wrong.

I am sure; for I have seen, that a child's moral perceptions can be so

made clear, and his will so made strong and upright, that before he is ten

years old he will see and take his way through all common days rightly and

bravely.

Will he always act up to his highest moral perceptions? No. Do we? But one

right decision that he makes voluntarily, unbiassed by the assertion of

authority or the threat of punishment, is worth more to him in development

of moral character than a thousand in which he simply does what he is

compelled to do by some sort of outside pressure.

I read once, in a book intended for the guidance of mothers, a story of a

little child who, in repeating his letters one day, suddenly refused to

say A. All the other letters he repeated again and again, unhesitatingly;

but A he would not, and persisted in declaring that he could not say. He

was severely whipped, but still persisted. It now became a contest of

wills. He was whipped again and again and again. In the intervals between

the whippings the primer was presented to him, and he was told that he

would be whipped again if he did not mind his mother and say A. I forget

how many times he was whipped; but it was almost too many times to be

believed. The fight was a terrible one. At last, in a paroxysm of his

crying under the blows, the mother thought she heard him sob out "A," and

the victory was considered to be won.

A little boy whom I know once had a similar contest over a letter of the

alphabet; but the contest was with himself, and his mother was the

faithful Great Heart who helped him through. The story is so remarkable

that I have long wanted all mothers to know it. It is as perfect an

illustration of what I mean by "educating" the will as the other one is of

what is called "breaking" it.

Willy was about four years old. He had a large, active brain, sensitive

temperament, and indomitable spirit. He was and is an uncommon child.

Common methods of what is commonly supposed to be "discipline" would, if

he had survived them, have made a very bad boy of him. He had great

difficulty in pronouncing the letter G,--so much that he had formed almost

a habit of omitting it. One day his mother said, not dreaming of any

special contest, "This time you must say G." "It is an ugly old letter,

and I ain't ever going to try to say it again," said Willy, repeating the

alphabet very rapidly from beginning to end, without the G. Like a wise

mother, she did not open at once on a struggle; but said, pleasantly, "Ah!

you did not get it in that time. Try again; go more slowly, and we will

have it." It was all in vain; and it soon began to look more like real

obstinacy on Willy's part than any thing she had ever seen in him. She has

often told me how she hesitated before entering on the campaign. "I always

knew," she said, "that Willy's first real fight with himself would be no

matter of a few hours; and it was a particularly inconvenient time for me,

just then, to give up a day to it. But it seemed, on the whole, best not

to put it off."

So she said, "Now, Willy, you can't get along without the letter G. The

longer you put off saying it, the harder it will be for you to say it at

last; and we will have it settled now, once for all. You are never going

to let a little bit of a letter like that be stronger than Willy. We will

not go out of this room till you have said it."

Unfortunately, Willy's will had already taken its stand. However, the

mother made no authoritative demand that he should pronounce the letter as

a matter of obedience to her. Because it was a thing intrinsically

necessary for him to do, she would see, at any cost to herself or to him,

that he did it; but he must do it voluntarily, and she would wait till he

did.

The morning wore on. She busied herself with other matters, and left Willy

to himself; now and then asking, with a smile, "Well, isn't my little boy

stronger than that ugly old letter yet?"

Willy was sulky. He understood in that early stage all that was involved.

Dinner-time came.

"Aren't you going to dinner, mamma?"

"Oh! no, dear; not unless you say G, so that you can go too. Mamma will

stay by her little boy until he is out of this trouble."

The dinner was brought up, and they ate it together. She was cheerful and

kind, but so serious that he felt the constant pressure of her pain.

The afternoon dragged slowly on to night. Willy cried now and then, and

she took him in her lap, and said, "Dear, you will be happy as soon as you

say that letter, and mamma will be happy too, and we can't either of us be

happy until you do."

"Oh, mamma! why don't you _make_ me say it?"

(This he said several times before the affair was over.)

"Because, dear, you must make yourself say it. I am helping you make

yourself say it, for I shall not let you go out of this room, nor go out

myself, till you do say it; but that is all I shall do to help you. I am

listening, listening all the time, and if you say it, in ever so little a

whisper, I shall hear you. That is all mamma can do for you."

Bed-time came. Willy went to bed, unkissed and sad. The next morning, when

Willy's mother opened her eyes, she saw Willy sitting up in his crib, and

looking at her steadfastly. As soon as he saw that she was awake, he

exclaimed, "Mamma, I can't say it; and you know I can't say it. You're a

naughty mamma, and you don't love me." Her heart sank within her; but she

patiently went again and again over yesterday's ground. Willy cried. He

ate very little breakfast. He stood at the window in a listless attitude

of discouraged misery, which she said cut her to the heart. Once in a

while he would ask for some plaything which he did not usually have. She

gave him whatever he asked for; but he could not play. She kept up an

appearance of being busy with her sewing, but she was far more unhappy

than Willy.

Dinner was brought up to them. Willy said, "Mamma, this ain't a bit good

dinner."

She replied, "Yes, it is, darling; just as good as we ever have. It is

only because we are eating it alone. And poor papa is sad, too, taking

his all alone downstairs."

At this Willy burst out into an hysterical fit of crying and sobbing.

"I shall never see my papa again in this world."

Then his mother broke down, too, and cried as hard as he did; but she

said, "Oh! yes, you will, dear. I think you will say that letter before

tea-time, and we will have a nice evening downstairs together."

"I can't say it. I try all the time, and I can't say it; and, if you keep

me here till I die, I shan't ever say it."

The second night settled down dark and gloomy, and Willy cried himself to

sleep. His mother was ill from anxiety and confinement; but she never

faltered. She told me she resolved that night that, if it were necessary,

she would stay in that room with Willy a month. The next morning she said

to him, more seriously than before, "Now, Willy, you are not only a

foolish little boy, you are unkind; you are making everybody unhappy.

Mamma is very sorry for you, but she is also very much displeased with

you. Mamma will stay here with you till you say that letter, if it is for

the rest of your life; but mamma will not talk with you, as she did

yesterday. She tried all day yesterday to help you, and you would not help

yourself; to-day you must do it all alone."

"Mamma, are you sure I shall ever say it?" asked Willy.

"Yes, dear; perfectly sure. You will say it some day or other."

"Do you think I shall say it to-day?"

"I can't tell. You are not so strong a little boy as I thought. I believed

you would say it yesterday. I am afraid you have some hard work before

you."

Willy begged her to go down and leave him alone. Then he begged her to

shut him up in the closet, and "see if that wouldn't make him good." Every

few minutes he would come and stand before her, and say very earnestly,

"Are you sure I shall say it?"

He looked very pale, almost as if he had had a fit of illness. No wonder.

It was the whole battle of life fought at the age of four.

It was late in the afternoon of this the third day. Willy had been sitting

in his little chair, looking steadily at the floor, for so long a time

that his mother was almost frightened. But she hesitated to speak to him,

for she felt that the crisis had come. Suddenly he sprang up, and walked

toward her with all the deliberate firmness of a man in his whole bearing.

She says there was something in his face which she has never seen since,

and does not expect to see till he is thirty years old.

"Mamma!" said he.

"Well, dear?" said his mother, trembling so that she could hardly speak.

"Mamma," he repeated, in a loud, sharp tone, "G! G! G! G!" And then he

burst into a fit of crying, which she had hard work to stop. It was over.

Willy is now ten years old. From that day to this his mother has never had

a contest with him; she has always been able to leave all practical

questions affecting his behavior to his own decision, merely saying,

"Willy, I think this or that will be better."

His self-control and gentleness are wonderful to see; and the blending in

his face of childlike simplicity and purity with manly strength is

something which I have only once seen equalled.

For a few days he went about the house, shouting "G! G! G!" at the top of

his voice. He was heard asking playmates if they could "say G," and "who

showed them how." For several years he used often to allude to the affair,

saying, "Do you remember, mamma, that dreadful time when I wouldn't say

G?" He always used the verb "wouldn't" in speaking of it. Once, when he

was sick, he said, "Mamma, do you think I could have said G any sooner

than I did?"

"I have never felt certain about that, Willy," she said. "What do _you_

think?"

"I think I could have said it a few minutes sooner. I was saying it to

_myself_ as long as that!" said Willy.

It was singular that, although up to that time he had never been able to

pronounce the letter with any distinctness, when he first made up his mind

in this instance to say it, he enunciated it with perfect clearness, and

never again went back to the old, imperfect pronunciation.

Few mothers, perhaps, would be able to give up two whole days to such a

battle as this; other children, other duties, would interfere. But the

same principle could be carried out without the mother's remaining

herself by the child's side all the time. Moreover, not one child in a

thousand would hold out as Willy did. In all ordinary cases a few hours

would suffice. And, after all, what would the sacrifice of even two days

be, in comparison with the time saved in years to come? If there were no

stronger motive than one of policy, of desire to take the course easiest

to themselves, mothers might well resolve that their first aim should be

to educate their children's wills and make them strong, instead of to

conquer and "break" them.

The Reign of Archelaus.

Herod's massacre had, after all, a certain mercy in it: there were no

lingering tortures. The slayers of children went about with naked and

bloody swords, which mothers could see, and might at least make effort to

flee from. Into Rachel's refusal to be comforted there need enter no

bitter agonies of remorse. But Herod's death, it seems, did not make Judea

a safe place for babies. When Joseph "heard that Archelaus did reign in

the room of his father, Herod, he was afraid to return thither with the

infant Jesus," and only after repeated commands and warnings from God

would he venture as far as Nazareth. The reign of Archelaus is not yet

over; he has had many names, and ruled over more and more countries, but

the spirit of his father, Herod, is still in him. To-day his power is at

its zenith. He is called Education; and the safest place for the dear,

holy children is still Egypt, or some other of the fortunate countries

called unenlightened.

Some years ago there were symptoms of a strong rebellion against his

tyranny. Horace Mann lifted up his strong hands and voice against it;

physicians and physiologists came out gravely and earnestly, and fortified

their positions with statistics from which there was no appeal. Thomas

Wentworth Higginson, whose words have with the light, graceful beauty of

the Damascus blade its swift sureness in cleaving to the heart of things,

wrote an article for the "Atlantic Monthly" called "The Murder of the

Innocents," which we wish could be put into every house in the United

States. Some changes in school organizations resulted from these protests;

in the matter of ventilation of school-rooms some real improvement was

probably effected; though we shudder to think how much room remains for

further improvement, when we read in the report of the superintendent of

public schools in Brooklyn that in the primary departments of the grammar

schools "an average daily number of 33,275 pupils are crowded into

one-half the space provided in the upper departments for an average daily

attendance of 26,359; or compelled to occupy badly lighted, inconvenient,

and ill-ventilated galleries, or rooms in the basement stories."

But in regard to the number of hours of confinement, and amount of study

required of children, it is hard to believe that schools have ever been

much more murderously exacting than now.

The substitution of the single session of five hours for the old

arrangement of two sessions of three hours each, with a two-hours interval

at noon, was regarded as a great gain. So it would be, if all the

brain-work of the day were done in that time; but in most schools with

the five-hours session, there is next to no provision for studying in

school-hours, and the pupils are required to learn two, three, or four

lessons at home. Now, when is your boy to learn these lessons? Not in the

morning, before school; that is plain. School ends at two. Few children

live sufficiently near their schools to get home to dinner before half

past two o'clock. We say nothing of the undesirableness of taking the

hearty meal of the day immediately after five hours of mental fatigue; it

is probably a less evil than the late dinner at six, and we are in a

region where we are grateful for _less_ evils! Dinner is over at quarter

past three; we make close estimates. In winter there is left less than two

hours before dark. This is all the time the child is to have for out-door

play; two hours and a half (counting in his recess) out of twenty-four.

Ask any farmer, even the stupidest, how well his colt or his lamb would

grow if it had but two hours a day of absolute freedom and exercise in the

open air, and that in the dark and the chill of a late afternoon! In spite

of the dark and the chill, however, your boy skates or slides on until he

is called in by you, who, if you are an American mother, care a great deal

more than he does for the bad marks which will stand on his week's report

if those three lessons are not learned before bed-time. He is tired and

cold; he does not want to study--who would? It is six o'clock before he is

fairly at it. You work harder than he does, and in half an hour one lesson

is learned; then comes tea. After tea half an hour, or perhaps an hour,

remains before bed-time; in this time, which ought to be spent in light,

cheerful talk or play, the rest of the lessons must be learned. He is

sleepy and discouraged. Words which in the freshness of the morning he

would have learned in a very few moments with ease, it is now simply out

of his power to commit to memory. You, if you are not superhuman, grow

impatient. At eight o'clock he goes to bed, his brain excited and wearied,

in no condition for healthful sleep; and his heart oppressed with the fear

of "missing" in the next day's recitations. And this is one out of the

school-year's two hundred and sixteen days--all of which will be like

this, or worse. One of the most pitiful sights we have seen for months was

a little group of four dear children, gathered round the library lamp,

trying to learn the next day's lessons in time to have a story read to

them before going to bed. They had taken the precaution to learn one

lesson immediately after dinner, before going out, cutting their out-door

play down by half an hour. The two elder were learning a long

spelling-lesson; the third was grappling with geographical definitions of

capes, promontories, and so forth; and the youngest was at work on his

primer. In spite of all their efforts, bed-time came before the lessons

were learned. The little geography student had been nodding over her book

for some minutes, and she had the philosophy to say, "I don't care; I'm so

sleepy. I had rather go to bed than hear any kind of a story." But the

elder ones were grieved and unhappy, and said, "There won't _ever_ be any

time; we shall have just as much more to learn to-morrow night." The next

morning, however, there was a sight still more pitiful: the baby of seven,

with a little bit of paper and a pencil, and three sums in addition to be

done, and the father vainly endeavoring, to explain them to him in the

hurried moments before breakfast. It would be easy to show how fatal to

all real mental development, how false to all Nature's laws of growth,

such a system must be; but that belongs to another side of the question.

We speak now simply of the effect of it on the body; and here we quote

largely from the admirable article of Col. Higginson's, above referred to.

No stronger, more direct, more conclusive words can be written:--

"Sir Walter Scott, according to Carlyle, was the only perfectly healthy

literary man who ever lived. He gave it as his deliberate opinion, in

conversation with Basil Hall, that five and a half hours form the limit of

healthful mental labor for a mature person. 'This I reckon very good work

for a man,' he said. 'I can very seldom work six hours a day.' Supposing

his estimate to be correct, and five and a half hours the reasonable limit

for the day's work of a mature intellect, it is evident that even this

must be altogether too much for an immature one. 'To suppose the youthful

brain,' says the recent admirable report, by Dr. Ray, of the Providence

Insane Hospital, 'to be capable of an amount of work which is considered

an ample allowance to an adult brain is simply absurd.' 'It would be

wrong, therefore, to deduct less than a half-hour from Scott's estimate,

for even the oldest pupils in our highest schools, leaving five hours as

the limit of real mental effort for them, and reducing this for all

younger pupils very much further.'

"But Scott is not the only authority in the case; let us ask the

physiologists. So said Horace Mann before us, in the days when the

Massachusetts school system was in process of formation. He asked the

physicians in 1840, and in his report printed the answers of three of the

most eminent. The late Dr. Woodward, of Worcester, promptly said that

children under eight should never be confined more than one hour at a

time, nor more than four hours a day.

"Dr. James Jackson, of Boston, allowed the children four hours schooling

in winter and five in summer, but only one hour at a time; and heartily

expressed his detestation of giving young children lessons to learn at

home.

"Dr. S.G. Howe, reasoning elaborately on the whole subject, said that

children under eight years of age should never be confined more than half

an hour at a time; by following which rule, with long recesses, they can

study four hours daily. Children between eight and fourteen should not be

confined more than three-quarters of an hour at a time, having the last

quarter of each hour for exercise on the play-ground.

"Indeed, the one thing about which doctors do _not_ disagree is the

destructive effect of premature or excessive mental labor. I can quote

you medical authority for and against every maxim of dietetics beyond the

very simplest; but I defy you to find one man who ever begged, borrowed,

or stole the title of M.D., and yet abused those two honorary letters by

asserting under their cover that a child could safely study as much as a

man, or that a man could safely study more than six hours a day."

"The worst danger of it is that the moral is written at the end of the

fable, not at the beginning. The organization in youth is so dangerously

elastic that the result of these intellectual excesses is not seen until

years after. When some young girl incurs spinal disease from some slight

fall, which she ought not to have felt for an hour, or some business man

breaks down in the prime of his years from some trifling over-anxiety,

which should have left no trace behind, the popular verdict may be

'Mysterious Providence;' but the wiser observer sees the retribution for

the folly of those misspent days which enfeebled the childish constitution

instead of ripening it. One of the most striking passages in the report of

Dr. Ray, before mentioned, is that in which he explains that, 'though

study at school is rarely the immediate cause of insanity, it is the most

frequent of its ulterior causes, except hereditary tendencies.' _It

diminishes the conservative power of the animal economy to such a degree

that attacks of disease which otherwise would have passed off safely

destroy life almost before danger is anticipated_."

It would be easy to multiply authorities on these points. It is hard to

stop. But our limits forbid any thing like a full treatment of the

subject. Yet discussion on this question ought never to cease in the land

until a reform is brought about. Teachers are to blame only in part for

the present wrong state of things. They are to blame for yielding, for

acquiescing; but the real blame rests on parents. Here and there,

individual fathers and mothers, taught, perhaps, by heart-rending

experience, try to make stand against the current of false ambitions and

unhealthy standards. But these are rare exceptions. Parents, as a class,

not only help on, but create the pressure to which teachers yield, and

children are sacrificed. The whole responsibility is really theirs. They

have in their hands the power to regulate the whole school routine to

which their children are to be subjected. This is plain, when we once

consider what would be the immediate effect in any community, large or

small, if a majority of parents took action together, and persistently

refused to allow any child under fourteen to be confined in school more

than four hours out of the twenty-four, more than one hour at a time, or

to do more than five hours' brain-work in a day. The law of supply and

demand is a first principle. In three months the schools in that community

would be entirely reorganized, to accord with the parents' wishes; in

three years the improved average health of the children in that community

would bear its own witness in ruddy bloom along the streets; and perhaps

even in one generation so great gain of vigor might be made that the

melancholy statistics of burial would no longer have to record the death

under twelve years of age of more than two-fifths of the children who are

born.

The Awkward Age.

The expression defines itself. At the first sound of the words, we all

think of some one unhappy soul we know just now, whom they suggest. Nobody

is ever without at least one brother, sister, cousin, or friend on hand,

who is struggling through this social slough of despond; and nobody ever

will be, so long as the world goes on taking it for granted that the

slough is a necessity, and that the road must go through it. Nature never

meant any such thing. Now and then she blunders or gets thwarted of her

intent, and turns out a person who is awkward, hopelessly and forever

awkward; body and soul are clumsy together, and it is hard to fancy them

translated to the spiritual world without too much elbow and ankle.

However, these are rare cases, and come in under the law of variation. But

an awkward age,--a necessary crisis or stage of uncouthness, through which

all human beings must pass,--Nature was incapable of such a conception;

law has no place for it; development does not know it; instinct revolts

from it; and man is the only animal who has been silly and wrong-headed

enough to stumble into it. The explanation and the remedy are so simple,

so close at hand, that we have not seen them. The whole thing lies in a

nutshell. Where does this abnormal, uncomfortable period come in? Between

childhood, we say, and maturity; it is the transition from one to the

other. When human beings, then, are neither boys nor men, girls nor women,

they must be for a few years anomalous creatures, must they? We might,

perhaps, find a name for the individual in this condition as well as for

the condition. We must look to Du Chaillu for it, if we do; but it is too

serious a distress to make light of, even for a moment. We have all felt

it, and we know how it feels; we all see it every day, and we know how it

looks.

What is it which the child has and the adult loses, from the loss of which

comes this total change of behavior? Or is it something which the adult

has and the child had not? It is both; and until the loss and the gain,

the new and the old, are permanently separated and balanced, the awkward

age lasts. The child was overlooked, contradicted, thwarted, snubbed,

insulted, whipped; not constantly, not often,--in many cases, thank God,

very seldom. But the liability was there, and he knew it; he never forgot

it, if you did. One burn is enough to make fire dreaded. The adult, once

fairly recognized as adult, is not overlooked, contradicted, thwarted,

snubbed, insulted, whipped; at least, not with impunity. To this

gratifying freedom, these comfortable exemptions, when they are once

established in our belief, we adjust ourselves, and grow contentedly

good-mannered. To the other _régime_, while we were yet children, we also

somewhat adjusted ourselves, were tolerably well behaved, and made the

best of it. But who could bear a mixture of both? What genius could rise

superior to it, could be itself, surrounded by such uncertainties?

No wonder that your son comes into the room with a confused expression of

uncomfortable pain on every feature, when he does not in the least know

whether he will be recognized as a gentleman, or overlooked as a little

boy. No wonder he sits down in his chair with movements suggestive of

nothing but rheumatism and jack-knives, when he is thinking that perhaps

there may be some reason why he should not take that particular chair, and

that, if there is, he will be ordered up.

No wonder that your tall daughter turns red, stammers, and says foolish

things on being courteously spoken to by strangers at dinner, when she is

afraid that she may be sharply contradicted or interrupted, and remembers

that day before yesterday she was told that children should be seen and

not heard.

I knew a very clever girl, who had the misfortune to look at fourteen as

if she were twenty. At home, she was the shyest and most awkward of

creatures; away from her mother and sisters, she was self-possessed and

charming. She said to me, once, "Oh! I have such a splendid time away from

home. I'm so tall, everybody thinks I am grown up, and everybody is civil

to me."

I know, also, a man of superb physique, charming temperament, and uncommon

talent, who is to this day--and he is twenty-five years old--nervous and

ill at ease in talking with strangers, in the presence of his own family.

He hesitates, stammers, and never does justice to his thoughts. He says

that he believes he shall never be free from this distress; he cannot

escape from the recollections of the years between fourteen and twenty,

during which he was so systematically snubbed that his mother's parlor was

to him worse than the chambers of the Inquisition. He knows that he is now

sure of courteous treatment; that his friends are all proud of him; but

the old cloud will never entirely disappear. Something has been lost which

can never be regained. And the loss is not his alone, it is theirs too;

they are all poorer for life, by reason of the unkind days which are gone.

This, then, is the explanation of the awkward age. I am not afraid of any

dissent from my definition of the source whence its misery springs.

Everybody's consciousness bears witness. Everybody knows, in the bottom of

his heart, that, however much may be said about the change of voice, the

thinness of cheeks, the sharpness of arms, the sudden length in legs and

lack of length in trousers and frocks,--all these had nothing to do with

the real misery. The real misery was simply and solely the horrible

feeling of not belonging anywhere; not knowing what a moment might bring

forth in the way of treatment from others; never being sure which impulse

it would be safer to follow, to retreat or to advance, to speak or to be

silent, and often overwhelmed with unspeakable mortification at the rebuff

of the one or the censure of the other. Oh! how dreadful it all was! How

dreadful it all is, even to remember! It would be malicious even to refer

to it, except to point out the cure.

The cure is plain. It needs no experiment to test it. Merely to mention it

ought to be enough. If human beings are so awkward at this unhappy age,

and so unhappy at this awkward age, simply because they do not know

whether they are to be treated as children or as adults, suppose we make a

rule that children are always to be treated, in point of courtesy, as if

they were adults? Then this awkward age--this period of transition from an

atmosphere of, to say the least, negative rudeness to one of gracious

politeness--disappears. There cannot be a crisis of readjustment of social

relations: there is no possibility of such a feeling; it would be hard to

explain to a young person what it meant. Now and then we see a young man

or young woman who has never known it. They are usually only children, and

are commonly spoken of as wonders. I know such a boy to-day. At seventeen

he measures six feet in height; he has the feet and the hands of a still

larger man; and he comes of a blood which had far more strength than

grace. But his manner is, and always has been, sweet, gentle,

composed,--the very ideal of grave, tender, frank young manhood. People

say, "How strange! He never seemed to have any awkward age at all." It

would have been stranger if he had. Neither his father nor his mother ever

departed for an instant, in their relations with him, from the laws of

courtesy and kindliness of demeanor which governed their relations with

others.

He knew but one atmosphere, and that a genial one, from his babyhood up;

and in and of this atmosphere has grown up a sweet, strong, pure soul, for

which the quiet, self-possessed manner is but the fitting garb.

This is part of the kingdom that cometh unobserved. In this kingdom we are

all to be kings and priests, if we choose; and all its ways are

pleasantness. But we are not ready for it till we have become peaceable

and easy to be entreated, and have learned to understand why it was that

one day, when Jesus called his disciples together, he set a little child

in their midst.

A Day with a Courteous Mother.

During the whole of one of last summer's hottest days I had the good

fortune to be seated in a railway car near a mother and four children,

whose relations with each other were so beautiful that the pleasure of

watching them was quite enough to make one forget the discomforts of the

journey.

It was plain that they were poor; their clothes were coarse and old, and

had been made by inexperienced hands. The mother's bonnet alone would have

been enough to have condemned the whole party on any of the world's

thoroughfares. I remembered afterward, with shame, that I myself had

smiled at the first sight of its antiquated ugliness; but her face was one

which it gave you a sense of rest to look upon,--it was so earnest,

tender, true, and strong. It had little comeliness of shape or color in

it, it was thin, and pale; she was not young; she had worked hard; she had

evidently been much ill; but I have seen few faces which gave me such

pleasure. I think that she was the wife of a poor clergyman; and I think

that clergyman must be one of the Lord's best watchmen of souls. The

children--two boys and two girls--were all under the age of twelve, and

the youngest could not speak plainly. They had had a rare treat; they had

been visiting the mountains, and they were talking over all the wonders

they had seen with a glow of enthusiastic delight which was to be envied.

Only a word-for-word record would do justice to their conversation; no

description could give any idea of it,--so free, so pleasant, so genial,

no interruptions, no contradictions; and the mother's part borne all the

while with such equal interest and eagerness that no one not seeing her

face would dream that she was any other than an elder sister. In the

course of the day there were many occasions when it was necessary for her

to deny requests, and to ask services, especially from the eldest boy; but

no young girl, anxious to please a lover, could have done either with a

more tender courtesy. She had her reward; for no lover could have been

more tender and manly than was this boy of twelve. Their lunch was simple

and scanty; but it had the grace of a royal banquet. At the last, the

mother produced with much glee three apples and an orange, of which the

children had not known. All eyes fastened on the orange. It was evidently

a great rarity. I watched to see if this test would bring out selfishness.

There was a little silence; just the shade of a cloud. The mother said,

"How shall I divide this? There is one for each of you; and I shall be

best off of all, for I expect big tastes from each of you."

"Oh, give Annie the orange. Annie loves oranges," spoke out the oldest

boy, with a sudden air of a conqueror, and at the same time taking the

smallest and worst apple himself.

"Oh, yes, let Annie have the orange," echoed the second boy, nine years

old.

"Yes, Annie may have the orange, because that is nicer than the apple, and

she is a lady, and her brothers are gentlemen," said the mother, quietly.

Then there was a merry contest as to who should feed the mother with

largest and most frequent mouthfuls; and so the feast went on. Then Annie

pretended to want apple, and exchanged thin golden strips of orange for

bites out of the cheeks of Baldwins; and, as I sat watching her intently,

she suddenly fancied she saw longing in my face, and sprang over to me,

holding out a quarter of her orange, and saying, "Don't you want a taste,

too?" The mother smiled, understandingly, when I said, "No, I thank you,

you dear, generous little girl; I don't care about oranges."

At noon we had a tedious interval of waiting at a dreary station. We sat

for two hours on a narrow platform, which the sun had scorched till it

smelt of heat. The oldest boy--the little lover--held the youngest child,

and talked to her, while the tired mother closed her eyes and rested. Now

and then he looked over at her, and then back at the baby; and at last he

said confidentially to me (for we had become fast friends by this time),

"Isn't it funny, to think that I was ever so small as this baby? And papa

says that then mamma was almost a little girl herself."

The two other children were toiling up and down the banks of the

railroad-track, picking ox-eye daisies, buttercups, and sorrel. They

worked like beavers, and soon the bunches were almost too big for their

little hands. Then they came running to give them to their mother. "Oh

dear," thought I, "how that poor, tired woman will hate to open her eyes!

and she never can take those great bunches of common, fading flowers, in

addition to all her bundles and bags." I was mistaken.

"Oh, thank you, my darlings! How kind you were! Poor, hot, tired little

flowers, how thirsty they look! If they will only try and keep alive till

we get home, we will make them very happy in some water; won't we? And you

shall put one bunch by papa's plate, and one by mine."

Sweet and happy, the weary and flushed little children stood looking up in

her face while she talked, their hearts thrilling with compassion for the

drooping flowers and with delight in the giving of their gift. Then she

took great trouble to get a string and tie up the flowers, and then the

train came, and we were whirling along again. Soon it grew dark, and

little Annie's head nodded. Then I heard the mother say to the oldest boy,

"Dear, are you too tired to let little Annie put her head on your shoulder

and take a nap? We shall get her home in much better case to see papa if

we can manage to give her a little sleep." How many boys of twelve hear

such words as these from tired, overburdened mothers?

Soon came the city, the final station, with its bustle and noise. I

lingered to watch my happy family, hoping to see the father. "Why, papa

isn't here!" exclaimed one disappointed little voice after another. "Never

mind," said the mother, with a still deeper disappointment in her own

tone; "perhaps he had to go to see some poor body who is sick." In the

hurry of picking up all the parcels, and the sleepy babies, the poor

daisies and buttercups were left forgotten in a corner of the rack. I

wondered if the mother had not intended this. May I be forgiven for the

injustice! A few minutes after I passed the little group, standing still

just outside the station, and heard the mother say, "Oh, my darlings, I

have forgotten your pretty bouquets. I am so sorry! I wonder if I could

find them if I went back. Will you all stand still and not stir from this

spot if I go?"

"Oh, mamma, don't go, don't go. We will get you some more. Don't go,"

cried all the children.

"Here are your flowers, madam," said I. "I saw that you had forgotten

them, and I took them as mementoes of you and your sweet children." She

blushed and looked disconcerted. She was evidently unused to people, and

shy with all but her children. However, she thanked me sweetly, and

said,--

"I was very sorry about them. The children took such trouble to get them;

and I think they will revive in water. They cannot be quite dead."

"They will _never_ die!" said I, with an emphasis which went from my heart

to hers. Then all her shyness fled. She knew me; and we shook hands, and

smiled into each other's eyes with the smile of kindred as we parted.

As I followed on, I heard the two children, who were walking behind,

saying to each other, "Wouldn't that have been too bad? Mamma liked them

so much, and we never could have got so many all at once again."

"Yes, we could, too, next summer," said the boy, sturdily.

They are sure of their "next summers," I think, all six of those

souls,--children, and mother, and father. They may never again gather so

many ox-eye daisies and buttercups "all at once." Perhaps some of the

little hands have already picked their last flowers. Nevertheless, their

summers are certain. To such souls as these, all trees, either here or in

God's larger country, are Trees of Life, with twelve manner of fruits and

leaves for healing; and it is but little change from the summers here,

whose suns burn and make weary, to the summers there, of which "the Lamb

is the light."

Heaven bless them all, wherever they are.

Children in Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia is a country of gracious surprises. Instead of the stones

which are what strangers chiefly expect at her hands, she gives us a

wealth of fertile meadows; instead of stormy waves breaking on a frowning

coast, she shows us smooth basins whose shores are soft and wooded to the

water's edge, and into which empty wonderful tidal rivers, whose courses,

where the tide-water has flowed out, lie like curving bands of bright

brown satin among the green fields. She has no barrenness, no

unsightliness, no poverty; everywhere beauty, everywhere riches. She is

biding her time.

But most beautiful among her beauties, most wonderful among her wonders,

are her children. During two weeks' travel in the provinces, I have been

constantly more and more impressed by their superiority in appearance,

size, and health to the children of the New England and Middle States. In

the outset of our journey I was struck by it; along all the roadsides they

looked up, boys and girls, fair, broad-cheeked, sturdy-legged, such as

with us are seen only now and then. I did not, however, realize at first

that this was the universal law of the land, and that it pointed to

something more than climate as a cause. But the first school that I saw,

_en masse_, gave a startling impetus to the train of observation and

inference into which I was unconsciously falling. It was a Sunday school

in the little town of Wolfville, which lies between the Gaspcreau and

Cornwallis rivers, just beyond the meadows of the Grand Pré, where lived

Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Benedict Bellefontaine, and the rest of the

"simple Acadian farmers."

"Mists from the mighty Atlantic" more than "looked on the happy valley"

that Sunday morning. Convicting Longfellow of a mistake, they did descend

"from their stations," on solemn Blomidon, and fell in a slow, unpleasant

drizzle in the streets of Wolfville and Horton. I arrived too early at one

of the village churches, and while I was waiting for a sexton a door

opened, and out poured the Sunday school, whose services had just ended.

On they came, dividing in the centre, and falling to the right and left

about me, thirty or forty boys and girls, between the ages of seven and

fifteen. I looked at them in astonishment. They all had fair skins, red

cheeks, and clear eyes; they were all broad-shouldered, straight, and

sturdy; the younger ones were more than sturdy,--they were fat, from the

ankles up. But perhaps the most noticeable thing of all was the quiet,

sturdy, unharassed expression which their faces wore; a look which is the

greatest charm of a child's face, but which we rarely see in children over

two or three years old. Boys of eleven or twelve were there, with

shoulders broader than the average of our boys at sixteen, and yet with

the pure, childlike look on their faces. Girls of ten or eleven were there

who looked almost like women,--that is, like ideal women,--simply because

they looked so calm and undisturbed. The Saxon coloring prevailed;

three-fourths of the eyes were blue, with hair of that pale ash-brown

which the French call "_blonde cendrée_" Out of them all there was but one

child who looked sickly. He had evidently met with some accident, and was

lame. Afterward, as the congregation assembled, I watched the fathers and

mothers of these children. They, too, were broad-shouldered, tall, and

straight, especially the women. Even old women were straight, like the

negroes one sees at the South, walking with burdens on their heads.

Five days later I saw in Halifax the celebration of the anniversary of the

settlement of the province. The children of the city and of some of the

neighboring towns marched in "bands of hope" and processions, such as we

see in the cities of the States on the Fourth of July. This was just the

opportunity I wanted. It was the same here as in the country. I counted on

that day just eleven sickly-looking children; no more! Such brilliant

cheeks, such merry eyes, such evident strength; it was a scene to kindle

the dullest soul. There were scores of little ones there, whose droll, fat

legs would have drawn a crowd in Central Park; and they all had that same,

quiet, composed, well-balanced expression of countenance of which I spoke

before, and of which it would be hard to find an instance in all Central

Park.

Climate undoubtedly has something to do with this. The air is moist, and

the mercury rarely rises above 80° or falls below 10°. Also the

comparative quiet of their lives helps to make them so beautiful and

strong. But the most significant fact to my mind is that, until the past

year, there have been in Nova Scotia no public schools, comparatively few

private ones; and in these there is no severe pressure brought to bear on

the pupils. The private schools have been expensive, consequently it has

been very unusual for children to be sent to school before they were

_eight or nine_ years of age; I could not find a person who had ever known

of a child's being sent to school _under seven!_ The school sessions are

on the old plan of six hours per day,--from nine till twelve, and from one

till four; but no learning of lessons out of school has been allowed.

Within the last year a system of free public schools has been introduced,

"and the people are grumbling terribly about it," said my informant.

"Why?" I asked; "because they do not wish to have their children

educated?" "Oh, no," said he; "because they do not like to pay the taxes!"

"Alas!" I thought, "if it were only their silver which would be taxed!"

I must not be understood to argue from the health of the children of Nova

Scotia, as contrasted with the lack of health among our children, that it

is best to have no public schools; only that it is better to have no

public schools than to have such public schools as are now killing off our

children.

The registration system of Nova Scotia is as yet imperfectly carried out.

It is almost impossible to obtain exact returns from all parts of so

thinly settled a country. But such statistics as have been already

established give sufficient food for reflection in this connection. In

Massachusetts more than two-fifths of all the children born die before

they are twelve years old. In Nova Scotia the proportion is less than

one-third. In Nova Scotia one out of every fifty-six lives to be over

ninety years of age; and one-twelfth of the entire number of deaths is

between the ages of eighty and ninety. In Massachusetts one person out of

one hundred and nine lives to be over ninety.

In Massachusetts the mortality from diseases of the brain and nervous

system is eleven per cent. In Nova Scotia it is only eight per cent.

The Republic of the Family.

"He is lover and friend and son, all in one," said a friend, the other

day, telling me of a dear boy who, out of his first earnings, had just

sent to his mother a beautiful gift, costing much more than he could

really afford for such a purpose.

That mother is the wisest, sweetest, most triumphant mother I have ever

known. I am restrained by feelings of deepest reverence for her from

speaking, as I might speak, of the rare and tender methods by which her

motherhood has worked, patiently and alone, for nearly twenty years, and

made of her two sons "lovers and friends." I have always felt that she

owed it to the world to impart to other mothers all that she could of her

divine secret; to write out, even in detail, all the processes by which

her boys have grown to be so strong, upright, loving, and manly.

But one of her first principles has so direct a bearing on the subject

that I wish to speak of here that I venture to attempt an explanation of

it. She has told me that she never once, even in their childish days, took

the ground that she had right to require any thing from them simply

_because_ she was their mother. This is a position very startling to the

average parent. It is exactly counter to traditions.

"Why must I?" or "Why cannot I?" says the child. "Because I say so, and I

am your father," has been the stern, authoritative reply ever since we can

any of us remember; and, I presume, ever since the Christian era, since

that good Apostle Paul saw enough in the Ephesian families where he

visited to lead him to write to them from Rome, "Fathers, provoke not your

children to wrath."

It seems to me that there are few questions of practical moment in

every-day living on which a foregone and erroneous conclusion has been

adopted so generally and so undoubtingly. How it first came about it is

hard to see. Or, rather, it is easy to see, when one reflects; and the

very clearness of the surface explanation of it only makes its injustice

more odious. It came about because the parent was strong and the child

weak. Helplessness in the hands of power,--that is the whole story.

Suppose for an instant (and, absurd as the supposition is practically, it

is not logically absurd), that the child at six were strong enough to whip

his father; let him have the intellect of an infant, the mistakes and the

faults of an infant,--which the father would feel himself bound and _would

be_ bound to correct,--but the body of a man; and then see in how

different fashion the father would set himself to work to insure good

behavior. I never see the heavy, impatient hand of a grown man or woman

laid with its brute force, even for the smallest purpose, on a little

child, without longing for a sudden miracle to give the baby an equal

strength to resist.

When we realize what it is for us to dare, for our own pleasure, even with

solemnest purpose of the holiest of pleasures, parenthood, to bring into

existence a soul, which must take for our sake its chance of joy or

sorrow, how monstrous it seems to assume that the fact that we have done

this thing gives us arbitrary right to control that soul; to set our will,

as will, in place of its will; to be law unto its life; to try to make of

it what it suits our fancy or our convenience to have it; to claim that it

is under obligation to us!

The truth is, all the obligation, in the outset, is the other way. We owe

all to them. All that we can do to give them happiness, to spare them

pain; all that we can do to make them wise and good and safe,--all is too

little! All and more than all can never repay them for the sweetness, the

blessedness, the development that it has been to us to call children ours.

If we can also so win their love by our loving, so deserve their respect

by our honorableness, so earn their gratitude by our helpfulness, that

they come to be our "lovers and friends," then, ah! then we have had

enough of heaven here to make us willing to postpone the more for which we

hope beyond!

But all this comes not of authority, not by command; all this is perilled

always, always impaired, and often lost, by authoritative, arbitrary

ruling, substitution of law and penalty for influence.

It will be objected by parents who disagree with this theory that only

authority can prevent license; that without command there will not be

control. No one has a right to condemn methods he has not tried. I know,

for I have seen, I know, for I have myself tested, that command and

authority are short-lived; that they do not insure the results they aim

at; that real and permanent control of a child's behavior, even in little

things, is gained only by influence, by a slow, sure educating,

enlightening, and strengthening of a child's will. I know, for I have

seen, that it is possible in this way to make a child only ten years old

quite as intelligent and trustworthy a free agent as his mother; to make

him so sensible, so gentle, so considerate that to say "must" or "must

not" to him would be as unnecessary and absurd as to say it to her.