You, mothers and fathers [said this particular advertising folder which
I found in my morning's mail], do you know what goes on in the soul of
your child?
I, for one, know very little of what goes on inside of Harold. My
information on the subject would hardly furnish material for a single
university extension lecture on child psychology. It is an imperfect,
unsystematised knowledge based on accidental glimpses into Harold's
soul, odd flashes of self-revelation, and occasional questions the boy
will put to me. I don't know whether Harold is more reticent than the
average boy in the second elementary grade, but in his case it does no
good to cross-examine. He grows confused, suspicious, and afraid. He
resents the intrusion of my rough fingers into his sensitive world of
ideas. So I do not insist on detailed accounts of how the boy passes
his time in class or at play; for what are time and space and
grammatical sequence to the child? I am content to wait, and now and
then I make discoveries.
Harold and I were discussing one day the rather important question,
raised by himself, from what height a man must fall down in order to be
killed. It began, I think, with umbrellas and how they behave in a high
wind. From that we passed on to parachutes and balloons and the loftier
mountain tops. We dwelt for some time upon the difficulties and dangers
of mountaineering.
"Once there was a man," said Harold, "who used to drive six mules up a
mountain."
"Six mules," I said. "How do you know?"
"A bishop told me," he said.
The sense of utter helplessness before the closed temple of Harold's
private life oppressed me. Let alone his soul, I found that I did not
even know how the boy was spending his time and who his associates
were. Fortunately, in this case it was a bishop; but it might have been
some one much worse.
And why had Harold never spoken of his friend the bishop until our talk
of parachutes and mountain climbing brought forth his perfectly
matter-of-fact statement? Was it indifference on Harold's part? Was it
studied reticence? I thought with a pang of self-accusation how I would
have behaved, after meeting a bishop; how I would have turned the
conversation at the dinner-table to the declining influence of the
Church; how I would have found a way of comparing the Woolworth Building
with ecclesiastical architecture; how I might have steered a course from
golf to bridge and from bridge to chess; always ending with a careless
allusion to what the bishop said when we met.
There was, as it turned out, a simple explanation for Harold's
statement. A notable conclave of bishops and laymen had been in session
for some days in our neighbourhood, and one of the visiting dignitaries
had addressed the school children at the opening exercises one morning.
I say the explanation is simple, though it is largely my own hypothesis
based on Harold's words as I have given them above; but I believe my
supposition to be true. With regard to the six mules up a steep mountain
I am not so sure; but probably it was a missionary bishop who
entertained the children with an account of his experiences in Montana
or British Columbia. What else the bishop told them Harold could not
say. He admitted, regretfully, that the bishop used long words.
But I am not at all certain that other bits of information from that
ecclesiastical speech have not lodged in Harold's memory, to be brought
forward on some utterly unexpected but quite appropriate occasion. In
the meanwhile I can only think that it must be a very fine sort of
bishop, indeed, who could find time for an audience of school children
and was not afraid to use long words in their presence. As I can
testify, the encounter thus brought about did Harold good; and I am
inclined to think that it did the bishop good.
We finally decided that no man could fall from a height over one hundred
and fifty feet and reasonably expect to live.
You, mothers and fathers [this advertising folder petulantly insists],
can you appease the wonder that looks out of the eyes of your child?
From Harold's eyes, I am inclined to think, no wondering soul looks out.
The world to him is quite as it should be. Everything fits into its
place. Harold does not think it strange that a bishop should address him
any more than he would think it strange to have the Kaiser walk into the
class-room and begin to do sums on the blackboard. Why should there be
anything to puzzle him? He has learned no rules of life and is,
therefore, in no position to be astonished by the exceptions of life. If
only you are unaware that two things cannot be in the same place at the
same time, or that the whole is greater than any of its parts, the world
becomes a very easy thing to explain. To Harold everything that is, is.
Everything that appears to be, is. Everything that he would like to be,
is; and nothing contradicts anything.
It is true that Harold asks questions. But I believe he asks questions
not because he wonders, but because he suspects that he is being
deprived of something that should be his. It is that partly and partly
it is the desire to make conversation. He insists on having his privacy
respected, but often he appears to be seized with an utter sense of
loneliness. All children experience this recurrent necessity of clinging
to some one, and they do so by putting questions the answers to which
frequently do not interest them or else are already known to them. To
postpone the bed-time hour a child will try to make conversation as
desperately as any fashionable hostess with an uncle from the country in
her drawing-room. Children rarely deceive themselves, but they are
expert at the game of hoodwinking and concealment. I think we find it
difficult to understand how passionately they desire to be let alone
whenever they do not need us.
And how desperately bent we are upon not letting them alone! The number
of ways in which I am constantly being urged to make myself a nuisance
to Harold is extraordinary. I am assailed by advertising folders, uplift
articles in the magazines, Sunday specials, Chautauqua lectures,
pedagogical reviews, and the voice of conscience in my own breast, to
inflict myself upon the boy, to win his confidence, make him my comrade,
guide his thoughts, shape his moral development, keep a diary of his
pregnant utterances, and in every other way that may occur to a fertile
mind bent on mischief, peer into him, pry into him, spy on him, spring
little psychological traps under him--a disgusting process of infant
vivisection which has no other excuse than our own vacant curiosity.
Provided Harold digests his food, sleeps well, does his lessons, and
abstains from unclean speech, it is no business of mine what Harold is
doing with his soul. I am thankful for what he consents to reveal at
odd moments. I guess at what I can guess and am content to wait.
And waiting, I have my reward--occasionally. Not until several weeks
after I had discovered that Harold had the entrée into ecclesiastical
circles did the subject come up again. The boy paused between two
spoonfuls of cereal and asked me whether a bishop would not find it
easier to go up a mountain in an aeroplane. I foolishly asked him what
he was driving at and he grew shy. I am afraid he now thinks bishops are
not proper.
But who shall say that the connection between high altitudes and the
episcopal dignity is not really an important one? Harold is apparently
occupied with the question and I shall take care not to disturb him.