MARCH 1, 1919.--"Do you know how to keep the child from crying?" began
the prospectus. "Do you know how always to obtain cheerful obedience?"
it continued. "To suppress the fighting instinct? To teach punctuality?
Perseverance? Carefulness? Honesty? Truthfulness? Correct
pronunciation?"
We pondered. Obviously, our rejoinder must be: "In reply to questions
NOS. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 the answer is in the negative."
The prospectus said that all this would be easy if you bought the book.
"Instead of a hardship," the advertisement said, "child training becomes
a genuine pleasure, as the parent shares every confidence, every joy and
every sorrow of the child, and at the same time has its unqualified
respect. This is a situation rarely possible under the old training
methods. And what a source of pride now as well as in after years! To
have children whose every action shows culture and refinement--perfect
little gentlemen and gentlewomen."
This gave us pause. After all, we were not certain that we wanted a
little gentleman who washed behind the ears, wore blue velvet and took
his baths with a broad "a." We felt that he might expect too much from
us. It might cramp our style to live with a person entirely truthful,
punctual, persevering, honest and careful. Also, we were a little
abashed about sharing confidences. The privilege of becoming a confidant
would involve a return in kind, and it would not be a fair swap. It
seemed to us that the confessions of the truthful, honest, careful and
persevering child could never be half so interesting as our own.
We were also a little bit discouraged over the promise to suppress the
fighting instinct. We did not feel qualified for the job of making it up
to him by chastising the parents of the various boys along the block who
drubbed him. And yet we were not entirely dissuaded until we read
something of the manner in which the new method should be applied. It
was hard to thrust aside the knowledge of how to keep the child from
crying. But, then, the book said: "No matter whether your child is still
in the cradle or is eighteen years old, this course will show how to
apply the right methods at once. You merely take up the particular
trait, turn to the proper page and apply the lessons to the child. You
are told exactly what to do."
It wasn't that we were afraid that somebody else around the house might
get hold of the book and turn it on us. That risk we might have faced.
But a quotation from Abraham Lincoln in the prospectus itself brought
complete disillusion. "All that I am and all that I ever hope to be I
owe to my mother." That's what Abraham Lincoln said, according to the
prospectus. It seemed, perhaps, like halving the proper acknowledgments,
and yet it lay in the right direction. But what of the punctual,
persevering and truthful child brought up under the new method? We could
see only one acknowledgment open to him. We pictured his first inaugural
address, and seemed to hear him say: "All that I am to-day I owe to
Professor Tunkhouser's book on _The Training of Children_. If I am
honest you have only to look on page 29 to know the reason. It is true
that I have persevered to gain this high office, and why should I not,
seeing that I was cradled in page 136?"
Of course, if he had not overlooked the chapter on proper gratitude he
might upon maturity return the purchase price of Professor Tunkhouser's
volume. That seemed almost the most to be expected.
And so we let him cry, and are going on in the old, careless way, hoping
to be able, unscientifically enough, to lick a working amount of truth
and general virtue into him at such time as that becomes necessary.
However, we did write to the publisher to ask him if by any chance he
had a book along the same lines about Airedale puppies.
* * *
JUNE 5, 1919.--"Izzie gonna teachie itty cutums English or not?" asks
Prudence Brandish in effect in her book _Mother Love in Action_, and
proceeds to protest vigorously against the practice of bringing up
children on baby talk. It is true that parents deserve part of the
blame, but babies ought to be made to realize that some of the
responsibility is theirs. Often they talk the jargon themselves without
any encouragement whatever. Indeed, they have been known to cling to
muddled words and phrases in spite of the soundest reasoning which all
their parents could bring to bear on the matter. H. 3rd, for instance,
has been told repeatedly that the word is "button," and yet he goes on
calling it "bur" or "but" or something like that.
We feel very strongly that he should get it straight, because it is the
only word he knows. He tried "moma" and "dayday" for a while, but
abandoned them when he seemed to sense opposition against his attempt to
use them broadly enough to include casual friends and total strangers.
R., who comes from Virginia, could not be made to abandon a
narrow-minded point of view about H.'s conception of his relation to the
ashman.
"But" seems much more elastic and does not involve the child in
questions of race prejudice and other problems which he does not fully
comprehend as yet. The round disks on a coat are "buts," and H. seems
satisfied that so are doorknobs and ears and noses. He is, to be sure,
not quite content that all should be sewn on so firmly. There seems to
be no limit to his conception of the range of his one word "but." If he
could get his hands on the Washington Monument or the peak of the
Matterhorn, we feel sure that he would also classify these as buttons.
Much may be done with one word if it be used cosmically in this way. For
the sake of H. we have been trying to develop a theory that all the
problems of the world may be stated in terms of buttons. We intend to
point out to him that if he finds a gentleman with two buttons on either
hip to which suspenders are attached, he may safely set him down as a
conservative. If, in addition, the gentleman wears another gold button
tightly wedged into a starched collar just below his chin he may be
classified as an exponent of a high protective tariff and a Republican
majority in the Senate. From gentlemen with no buttons, either at the
hips or the neck, he may expect to hear about the soviet experiment in
Russia and the status of free speech in America.
We intend to tell H. that he is not far wrong in his attempt to limit
language to the one word "but" or "bur," since all the world struggles
in religion, in politics and in economics are between those who believe
in buttoning up life a little tighter and those who would cut away all
fastenings and let gravity do its worst or best. However, we have told
him fairly and squarely that we will not let him in on this simplifying
and comforting short cut to knowledge until he can make the word come
out clearly and distinctly--"button."
* * *
SEPTEMBER 3, 1919.--H. 3rd lay back in his carriage with his arms folded
across his stomach and said nothing. I tried to make conversation. I
pointed out objects of interest, but met no response. He smiled
complacently and was silent. Even carefully rehearsed bits of dialogue
such as "Who's a good boy?" to which the answer is "Me," and "Is your
face dirty," to which the answer is "No," failed to move him to speech.
I tried him in new lands with strange sights and pointed out the camels,
and buffaloes and rhinoceri of the zoo, hoping that he would identify
some one of them in his all-embracing "dog," which serves for every
member of the four-footed family. But still he smiled complacently and
was silent. I began to feel as if I were an Atlantic City negro wheeling
a tired business man down the Boardwalk.
Suddenly the possible value of suggestion came to me, and I turned to
the right and finally brought up at the foot of Shakespeare's statue in
the mall. And here again I sought to interest him in the English
language. "Man," said I, rather optimistically, pointing to the bronze.
H. 3rd looked intently, and taking his hands from his stomach answered
"Boy." "Man," I repeated. "Boy," said H. 3rd. And so the argument
continued for some time without progress being made by either side. At
last I stopped. Is it possible, I thought, that in this curious statue
the sculptor has succeeded in giving some suggestion of "sweetest
Shakespeare, fancy's child," which is communicated to H. 3rd and fails
to reach me? I looked again and gave up this theory for one more simple
and rational. Without question it was the doublet and hose which
confused him. Never, I suppose, had the child seen me, or the janitor,
or the iceman or any of his adult male friends clad in close fitting
tights such as Shakespeare wore. And then I looked at the doublet. No,
there was no denying that in this particular statue it appeared
uncommonly like a diaper.
* * *
SEPTEMBER 5, 1919.--W. H. Hudson points the way to an interesting field
of speculation in one of the early chapters of _Far Away and Long Ago_,
in which he speaks of his mother.
"When I think of her," he writes, "I remember with gratitude that our
parents seldom punished us, and never, unless we went too far in our
domestic dissensions or tricks, even chided us. This, I am convinced, is
the right attitude for parents to observe, modestly to admit that nature
is wiser than they are, and to let their little ones follow, as far as
possible, the bent of their own minds, or whatever it is that they have
in place of minds. It is the attitude of the sensible hen toward her
ducklings, when she has had frequent experience of their incongruous
ways, and is satisfied that they know best what is good for them;
though, of course, their ways seem peculiar to her, and she can never
entirely sympathize with their fancy for going into the water. I need
not be told that the hen is, after all, only stepmother to her
ducklings, since I am contending that the civilized woman--the
artificial product of our self-imposed conditions--cannot have the same
relation to her offspring as the uncivilized woman really has to hers.
The comparison, therefore, holds good, the mother with us being
practically stepmother to children of another race; and if she is
sensible, and amenable to nature's teaching, she will attribute their
seemingly unsuitable ways and appetites to the right cause, and not to a
hypothetical perversity or inherent depravity of heart, about which many
authors will have spoken to her in many books:
"But though they wrote it all by rote
They did not write it right."
The very dim race memory of old tribal and even primitive life which is
in all of us is much stronger in children than in grown-ups. They are
closer to the past than their elders, and although we hear a great deal
about maternal instinct, it is probable that it is a much slighter and
more limited thing than the instinct of a young child.
I have noticed, for instance, that without any help from me H. 3rd has
learned to fall with amazing skill. He can trip over the edge of the
carpet, do a somersault ending on the point of his nose and come up
smiling, unless some grown-up makes him aware of his danger by crying
out in horror. He did not copy it from me. I have never even undertaken
to teach him by precept or illustration. The difficult trick of relaxing
in midair is his own contribution. He cannot be said to have learned it.
He seems always to have had it. At the age of eight months he pitched
headlong out of his carriage and landed on top of his head without so
much as ruffling his feelings. It may be fantastic, but I rather think
that his skill in preparing for the bump by a complete relaxation of
every muscle is a legacy from some ancestor back in the days when
knowing how to fall was of vital importance, since even the best of us
might, upon special occasions, miscalculate the distance from branch to
branch.
So strong is my faith in the child's superior memory of primitive life
that if the hallboy were to call me up on the telephone to-morrow to say
that there was an ichthyosaurus downstairs who wanted to see me, I would
not think of deciding what to do about it without first consulting H.
3rd.
Curiously enough, Hudson relates one incident which might well be cited
in support of the theory that the child is equipped at birth with
certain protective instincts, but he passes it over with a different
explanation. He says that on a certain afternoon his baby sister, who
could scarcely walk, was left alone in a room, and suddenly came
toddling to the door shrieking "ku-ku," an Argentine word for danger,
which was almost her single articulate possession. Her parents rushed
into the room and found a huge snake coiled up in the middle of the rug.
The child had never seen a snake before, and there was much speculation
as to how she knew it was dangerous.
"It was conjectured," writes Hudson, "that she had made some gesture to
push it away when it came onto the rug, and that it had reared its head
and struck viciously at her."
It seems to us that a much more plausible explanation lies in the theory
that this child who had never seen a snake profited from some old racial
memory of the danger of serpents.
Unfortunately, under modern conditions some restrictions must be put on
the liberty of small children. I have been told that a child knows
instinctively that he must not put his hand into a fire, but he has no
age-grounded instinct not to touch a radiator. Still, it might be fair
to say that in most New York apartment houses none of them would be hot
enough to hurt him much. I can testify that children of less than two
years of age are not equipped with any inherited protective knowledge
about matches, pins, cigarette stubs, $5 bills, or even those of larger
denominations; bits of glass, current newspapers or magazines, safety
razor blades (for which, of course, there is an excuse, since the
adjective may well mislead a child), watches or carving knives. But all
these articles are too recent to come within the scope of inherited
primitive knowledge.
* * *
DECEMBER 17, 1919.--We read Floyd Dell's _Were You Ever a Child?_ to-day
and found him remarking: "People talk about children being hard to teach
and in the next breath deplore the facility with which they acquire the
'vices.' That seems strange. It takes as much patience, energy and
faithful application to become proficient in a vice as it does to learn
mathematics. Yet consider how much more popular poker is than equations!
But did a schoolboy ever drop in on a group of teachers who had sat up
all night parsing, say, a sentence in Henry James, or seeing who could
draw the best map of the North Atlantic states? And when you come to
think of it, it seems extremely improbable that any little boy ever
learned to drink beer by seeing somebody take a tablespoonful once a
day."
Most of this is true. The only trouble with all the new theories about
bringing up children is that it leaves the job just as hard as ever.
We believe in the new theories for all that. They work, we think, but,
like most worth while things, they are not always easy. For instance, H.
3rd came into the parlor the other day carrying the carving knife.
Twenty years ago I could have taken it away and spanked him, but then
along came the psychologists with their talk of breaking the child's
will, and sensible people stopped spanking. Ten years ago I could have
said, "Put down that carving knife or you'll make God feel very badly.
In fact, you'll make dada feel very badly. You'll make dada cry if you
don't obey him." But then the psychoanalysts appeared and pointed out
that there was danger in that. In trying to punish the child by making
him feel that his evil acts directly caused suffering to the parent
there was an unavoidable tendency to make the child identify himself
with the parent subconsciously. That might lead to all sorts of ructions
later on. The child might identify himself so completely with his father
that in later life he would use his shirts and neckties as if they were
his own.
Of course, I might have gone over to H. 3rd and, after a short struggle,
taken the carving knife away from him by main force, but that would have
made him mad. He would at length have suppressed his anger and right
away a complex would begin in his little square head.
Picture him now at thirty--he has neuralgia. Somebody mentions the
theory of blind abscesses and he has all his teeth pulled out. No good
comes of it. He goes to a psychoanalyst and the doctor begins to ask
questions. He asks a great many over a long period of time. Eventually
he gets a clue. He finds that when H. 3rd was eight years old he dreamed
three nights in succession of stepping on a June bug.
"Was it a large, rather fat June bug?" asks the doctor carelessly, as if
the answer was not important.
"Yes," says H. 3rd, "it was."
"That June bug," says the doctor, "was a symbol of your father. When you
were twenty months old he took a Carving knife away from you and you
have had a suppressed anger at him ever since. Now that you know about
it your neuralgia will disappear."
And the neuralgia would go at that. But by that time I'd be gone and
nothing could be done about this suppressed feud of so many years'
standing. My mind went through all these possibilities and I decided it
would be simpler and safer to let H. 3rd keep the carving knife as long
as he attempted nothing aggressive. A wound is not so dangerous as a
complex.
"And, anyhow," I thought, "if he can make that carving knife cut
anything he's the best swordsman in the flat."
* * *
DECEMBER 20, 1919.--Our attitude toward H. 3rd and the carving knife
turns out to have been all wrong. We received a letter from Floyd Dell
to-day in which he points out that no Freudian could possibly approve
our policy of non-interference. Mr. Dell says we should have used force
to the utmost.
"Psychoanalytically speaking," he writes, "I think you were wrong about
H. 3rd and the carving knife. There is really no Freudian reason why,
when he came carrying it into the parlor, you should not have gone over
to him and, 'after a short struggle,' taken it away from him by main
force. Of course, that would have made him mad. But what harm would that
have done?... Unless, of course, you had previously represented yourself
to him as a Divine and Perfect Being. In that case his new conception of
you as a big bully would have had to struggle with his other carefully
implanted and nourished emotions--and his sense of the injustice of your
behavior might have been 'repressed.'
"But you know quite well that you are not a Divine and Perfect Being,
and, if you consider it for a moment from the child's point of view, you
will concede that his emotional opinion of you under such circumstances,
highly colored as it is, has its justification. When you yourself want
something very much (whether you are entitled to it or not) and when
some one (however righteously) keeps you from getting it, how do you
feel? But you know that you live in a world in which such things happen.
H. 3rd has still to learn it, and if he learns it at his father's knee
he is just that much ahead. The boys at school will teach it to him,
anyway. The fact is, parents are unwilling that their children should
hate them, however briefly, healthily and harmlessly.
"The Victorian parent spanked his offspring and commanded them to love
him any way. The modern parent refrains from spanking (for good reasons)
and hopes the child will love him. The Freudian parent does not mind if
his children do hate him once or twice a day, so long as they are not
ashamed of doing so. If H. 3rd swats his father in an enraged struggle
to keep possession of the precious carving knife he is expressing and
not repressing his emotions. And so long as he has done his best to win
he is fairly well content to lose. What a child doesn't like is to have
to struggle with a big bully that he mustn't (for mysterious reasons)
even try to lick! The privilege of fighting with one's father, even if
it does incidentally involve getting licked, is all that a healthy child
asks for. Never fear, the time will come when he can lick you; and
awaiting that happy time will give him an incentive for growing up.
Quite possibly you don't want him to grow up; but that is only another
of the well-known weaknesses of parents!"
* * *
DECEMBER 22, 1919.--Concerning H. 3rd and the carving knife I am
gratified to find support for my position from Dr. Edward Hiram Reede,
the well-known Washington neurologist, who finds that from the point of
view of H. 3rd there was soundness in my policy of non-interference.
"Speaking for him," he writes, "I commend your action. Urged as he is by
the two chief traits of childhood, at the present time--curiosity and
imitation--I see no reason for direct coercion. So long as the modern
child is environed by a museum, as the modern home appears, his
curiosity must always be on edge, and if each new goal of curiosity is
wrested from him by the usual 'Don't!' or the more ancient struggle for
possession instead of by a transference of interest, then the contest
will be interminable.
"H. 3rd by right of experience looks upon the armamentarium of the
kitchen as his indisputable possessions and can hardly be expected to
except a carver. The deification of the parent occurs in accord with the
ancestor worship of primitive forebears, and the father will remain the
god to the child so long as observation daily reveals the parent as a
worker of miracles. Parental self-canonization is not at all necessary
to produce this."
* * *
DECEMBER 23, 1919.--Recently, a reader wrote to inform us that in her
opinion we were a "semi-Bolshevist," and added, "your style is cramped
by this demi-semi attitude, and your stuff seems a little grotesque both
to conservatives and radicals." This seemed fair comment to us and we
confessed frankly that we were not a conservative and on clear and
pleasant days not quite a radical. This business of sticking to the
middle of the road, with perhaps a slight slant to the left, seems ever
so difficult. One is ambushed and potted at from either side. Seemingly,
even in our confession we have again offended, for Miss Mora M. Deane
writes:
"As it happens I have just read your comment on my letter; and since you
have turned out to be merely an egotist who twists an adverse criticism
to his own advantage, I must now add to my letter that part which I
lopped off considerately. This precisely because I did not know you were
an egotist. The deleted part which originally closed the letter follows:
"At any rate I have lately heard intelligent persons from both camps
saying, 'Heywood Broun is responsible for my going to see some pretty
rotten plays and for reading some stupid books.'
"I myself should like to warn you against letting Heywood 3rd ever read
Floyd Dell's book. The very idea of his advising about children leaves a
bad taste in the mouth. You'll be sorry some day if you ever take him
seriously."
Of course, Miss Deane does wisely to let us have the deletion. First
impulses are usually sound.
And in one respect Miss Deane has scored more heavily than she could
well have realized. Her warning that I should protect H. 3rd from
radical literature touches an impending tragedy in my life. Almost by
intuition Miss Deane seems to realize that the child and I are not in
agreement in our political opinions. Of the fifteen or twenty words in
which H. 3rd is proficient one is "mine" and another is "gimme." When he
goes to the park he wears a naval uniform with the insignia of an ensign
on his left arm. There is gold braid on his cap. Moreover, H. 3rd has in
his own right two Liberty bonds, a card of thrift stamps, a
rocking-horse, a railroad, a submarine, three picture books, an
automobile and a Noah's ark. Any effort to socialize a single one of
these holdings is met by a protest so violent that I cannot help but
realize that the child's sense of property rights is strongly developed.
That is, his own property rights, for he is often inclined to dispute my
title to cigarette stumps, safety razor blades and carving knives.
Moreover, H. 3rd is unblushingly parasitic. We fail to remember that he
has ever offered to make any return for the regular income of milk and
oatmeal, and sometimes carrots, which is issued to him regularly by his
parents. To be sure, he once gave me a chicken bone and on another
occasion a spool of cotton, but both times he promptly took them away
again. I am even inclined to question whether, in any strictly legal
sense, the chicken bone or the spool were his. Granting that they had
been carelessly discarded by other members of his family, and that, by
his own efforts, H. 3rd rescued the spool from the scrapbasket and the
chicken bone from behind the trash box, the fact remains that it was I
who bought the chicken and Miss X who purchased the spool. We were
entitled at least to a royalty during the life of the two utilities, but
H. 3rd merely absorbed them without explanation or promise.
I doubt whether Dell or Eastman or even Karl Marx himself could avail to
check the rampant individualism of the child. He has always displayed an
impatience and an irritation at abstract arguments. The best that can be
done is to avoid introducing contentious subjects. For the present Miss
X and I are able to carry on destructive and seditious conversations
even in his presence by spelling out "p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t" and
"b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e" and other words which might make him mad. We
have even been able to keep Trotzky's picture above the mantelpiece in
the red room, but in this case Miss X adopted a subterfuge which seems
to me rather questionable. She told H. 3rd that it was a portrait of
Nicholas Murray Butler.
When H. 3rd is twenty-one he will come into undisputed possession of the
two Liberty bonds and the card of thrift stamps for which Miss X and I
starved and scraped. I rather hope he will thank us, but beyond that I
expect nothing except good advice. I can see him now squaring his
shoulders, as becomes a man of property and independent income, and
then laying a kindly hand on my shoulder as he says, "Dad, can't you
understand how wrong you are? Don't you see that if you disturb or even
threaten the institution of private property you undermine the home,
imperil the state and destroy initiative?"
* * *
JANUARY 21, 1920.--When the rest went out and left me alone in the
house, they said that H. 3rd would surely sleep through the evening.
Nobody remembered that he had ever waked up to cry. But he did this
night. I didn't quite know what to do about it. I sang "Rockabye Baby"
to him, but that didn't do any good, and then I said "I wouldn't cry if
I were you." This, too, had no effect, and, in fact, no sooner had I
uttered it than I recognized it as a piece of gratuitous impertinence.
How could I possibly tell whether or not I would cry if the safety pins
were in wrong or anything else of that sort was not quite right?
Nor was it even fair to assume that H. 3rd was crying for any such
personal reasons. After all, he lives in a state which has recently
suspended five duly elected assemblymen, and in which as fine a book as
Jurgen has aroused the meddlesome attention of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, and his country has gone quite hysterical on the
subject of "Reds" and "Red" propaganda and I haven't paid him back yet
for that $50 Liberty Bond of his which I sold.
And after I had thought of these things it seemed to me that he was
entirely justified in crying, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself
because I didn't cry, too, since there were so many wrong things in the
world to be righted. Humbly I left him to continue his dignified protest
without any further unwarranted meddling on my part.
* * *
JANUARY 24, 1920.--"My attention has been called," writes John S.
Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice,
"to a paragraph of your article in the _Tribune_ of January 21, wherein
you refrain from blaming H. 3rd for crying, because among other things,
he 'lives in a state which has recently suspended five duly elected
assemblymen, and in which as fine a book as _Jurgen_ has aroused the
meddlesome attention of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.'
"I assume that H. 3rd is too young to appreciate the contents of any
publication, but some day he will be old enough, and no doubt his
character will be molded and his conduct controlled, in a measure, by
what he reads and the thoughts suggested by such reading. That is the
usual thing.
"If, when H. 3rd or any other young person, reached the age of
understanding a stranger came into the home and attempted to entertain
the young mind with stories and suggestions such as are contained in
the book in question, whoever had in charge the moral welfare of the
young person would no doubt be very indignant and the stranger would be
expelled forthwith. We cannot properly have a rule for the protection of
our own and fail to extend that protection to others."
Mr. Sumner is incorrect in his assumption that any stranger who told H.
3rd such merry and gorgeous stories as those of _Jurgen_ would be
expelled forthwith by "whoever had in charge the welfare of the young
person." To be sure, this description hardly fits us. We mean to have as
little to do with the morals of H. 3rd as possible. It seems to us a
sorry business for parents to hand down their own morals, with a tuck
here and a patch there, and expect a growing child to wear them with any
comfort. Let the child go out and find his own morals.
But if H. 3rd went out and found _Jurgen_ and read it at the age of
adolescence, or thereabouts, it might be excellent literature for him.
After all, a boy has to learn the facts of sex some time or other, and
Cabell has been felicitious enough in _Jurgen_ to present them not only
as beautiful, but merry as well. Those elements ought to be present in
everybody's sex education. The new knowledge comes to almost all
youngsters as a distinct shock, because, while the things their boy
companions tell them may be merry enough, they are also sufficiently
gross to be distinctly harmful in a number of cases; and, if their
parents tell them it is either in some form so highly poetic that it
means nothing, or as something decidedly grim and solemn as Sunday
School. In either case this knowledge is apt to be regarded as something
of which to be ashamed, and it seems to us that the world is just
beginning to realize that shame is almost the most destructive of all
the evil forces in the world. And so, unless our opinions change, we
shall continue to pray each night, "Oh God, please keep all shame out of
the heart and mind of H. 3rd."
* * *
MARCH 10, 1920.--Some little time ago we were asked what method we were
going to use to instil moral ideas into the head of H. 3rd. We said then
that we rather hoped that he would be able to get along, for a while at
any rate, without any. We felt that it was the last thing in the world
concerning which we wanted to be dogmatic. Unfortunately, the moral
sense seems to arise early. Already H. 3rd is constantly inquiring "Good
boy, dada?" Usually this comes after he has chipped the furniture or
broken some of the china.
Of course, we ought not to answer him. We have no idea whether he is a
good boy or not. The marks of his destruction are plain enough, but
without knowing his motives we can't pass on his conduct. We were
slightly annoyed when he broke the lamp, but perhaps it was no more than
pardonable curiosity on his part. Perhaps it was wanton. How can we
tell? And yet, it is impossible to preserve neutrality. After the
fifteenth or sixteenth reiteration of the query we always say, "Yes, you
are a good boy," and then he goes away satisfied. But we are not. He is
beginning to make us feel like the Supreme Court or Moses. It's too much
responsibility.
* * *
MARCH 12, 1920.--"Your troubles are just beginning," writes M. B. "H.
3rd knew he was a bad boy when he broke that lamp. He has simply been
testing your moral sense, which for some months he has suspected of
being inadequate. I foresee that you will be a great disappointment to
him as time goes on. In twelve years or so he will find your political
views unsound and your literary tastes decadent. I doubt whether he will
approve of the way you spend Sunday.
"You may think you can retain his affection, if not his respect, by
keeping clear of the arbitrary methods of a bygone generation. Alas! I
don't think there is even that hope for the radical parent of a
conservative child. By the time H. 3rd has grown to adolescence he will
feel that dogmatism is a _sine qua non_ of parenthood, and he will wish
that he had had a real father. He may even resolve to have military
discipline in his home.
"I am sorry. I wish I could see brighter things for you in the days to
come. Please forgive the impertinence of this prophecy. It has been
wrung from the experience of one who has been condemned out of the mouth
of fourteen as a socialist, a pacifist and (if he had known the word) a
pagan."
We have feared as much. Already we have found that we do not know the
child. A week ago we were delighted when he picked up a pocketbook and,
with a scornful exclamation of "Money!" threw it far across the room.
"He will be an artist," we said, but last Saturday morning he came
charging down upon the crap game loudly shouting, "I want a dollar!" He
had to be forcibly restrained from gathering up the entire stake--it was
two dollars and not one--which lay upon the floor. We were so
disconcerted by the revelation of his spirit that we threw twelve twice
and failed on an eight. Of course, that is not the thing which disturbs
us. We fear that H. 3rd will grow up to be a business man. As such, of
course, he may become the support of our old age, but we shall consider
support more than earned if it entails our receiving with our allowance
a monthly homily on the reason and cure for unrest.
* * *
APRIL 6, 1920.--Some time ago I wrote a bitter attack on H. 3rd, the
reactionary, in which I stated that his political emotions made it
necessary for his parents to avoid the use of "proletariat" and such
words except when disguised by the expedient of spelling out
"p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t." And it is only fair to say that the device
takes a good deal of the zest out of sedition. I also stated at the time
that we had been able to keep the picture of Trotzky over the
mantelpiece in the red room by mendaciously telling H. 3rd that it was a
portrait of Nicholas Murray Butler.
It now becomes necessary for me to make a public apology to H. 3rd. It
is perhaps a tasteless proceeding for me to drag his private political
views into print, but the retraction ought to have as much publicity as
the original slander. H. 3rd is not a reactionary. He is a liberal. It
would have been perfectly safe for us to have said "proletariat" right
out and to have confessed the identity of Trotzky. H. 3rd might not have
been altogether in support, but he would have been interested.
I discovered that he was a liberal early on Sunday morning while we were
walking in Central Park. We happened to go near the merry-go-round and
H. 3rd, drawn by the strains of "Dardanella," dragged me eagerly toward
the pavilion. I supposed, of course, that he wanted to ride and had just
time to strap him on top of a camel before the platform began to move.
No sooner were we in motion round and round, slow at first and then
faster and faster as the revolutions increased in violence, than H. 3rd
began to cry. As soon as possible I lifted him back to the firm and
stable ground and briskly started to walk away from the scene of his
harrowing experience. I thought he wanted to get as far away from it as
possible, but after a few steps I noticed that he was not following me.
Instead he was hurrying back to the merry-go-round as fast as his legs
would carry him. "Perhaps," I thought, "he intends to discipline his
will and is going to ride that merry-go-round again just because he is
so much afraid of it." I knew that people sometimes did things like that
because I had read it in _The Research Magnificent_. H. 3rd is not among
them. He howled louder than before when I tried to put him on the camel
again. I even tested the fantastic possibility that it was the camel and
not the carrousel to which he objected, but he yelled just as vigorously
when offered a horse and later a unicorn.
Then, I ceased to interfere and resolved to watch. When the
merry-go-round began to whirl H. 3rd edged up closer and closer with a
look of the most intense interest which I have ever seen on his face. He
was fascinated by the sight of men, women and children engaged in a wild
and, perhaps, a debauching experiment. Hitherto he had observed that
people went forward and back in reasonably straight lines, but this
progress was flagrantly rotary. I could not get him away. He stood his
ground firmly. He would not retreat a step, nor would he go any nearer.
In fact, he was already so close to the carrousel that he could have
leaped on board with no more than a hop. By leaning just a little he
could have touched it. But he did neither. He preferred a combination of
the closest possible proximity and stability. And after a while I
realized just what it was of which he reminded me. He was an editor of
_The New Republic_ watching the Russian Revolution. The mad whirling
thing lay right at his feet, but his interest in it and even its
imminence never disturbed his tranquillity. The lines of communication
with the safe and sane rear remained unbroken. He could retreat the
minute the carrousel attempted to become overly familiar.
And so we knew that H. 3rd was and is a liberal.
* * *
APRIL 18, 1920.--The nurse said that H. 3rd had a fight in the park with
one of his little playmates and won it. She was proud and partisan.
"Woodie," she said, using the fearful nickname which has fastened itself
upon the child, "wanted to play with Archie's fire engine, and Archie
wouldn't let him. Woodie hit him in the mouth and made it bleed, and
Archie cried."