WAYSIDE CHILDREN
The study of some particular child is of great interest. If the child
be one with whom one is brought into daily contact the study may
become most exhaustive and may prove the means of imparting a new and
helpful knowledge of childhood generally.
[Sidenote: The Study of Flowers and Children.]
A noted botanist has devoted years to the study of the chickweed. He
has added to his own and to the general knowledge of botany a vast
store of information by his temporarily exclusive attention to this
one plant. But he would be the last to deny the charm of a stroll
through lanes or fields where multitudes of flowers claim passing
attention and admiration. To pause every few minutes to observe a
cluster of primroses, a bank of mercury, or even a pink-tipped
daisy—to halt suddenly as a whiff of sweet perfume tells us of a
hidden nest of violets—to gather two or three of the cowslips that
spangle the meadows—all this may belong to the lightest side of the
study of botany. But it has a charm that few can resist, and thus far
at least the veriest beginner can follow.
So it is with the study of childhood. Almost everywhere we go on our
daily road of life there are children to be found, children differing
one from another as widely as the primrose from the violet, but each
one worth our notice and possessed of a special charm.
[Sidenote: The Loss to those who Fail to Notice Children.]
It is extraordinary to find on talking to one and another how few
people realise the pleasure that they lose by failing to observe the
little wayside children. There are many persons capable of passing
by without seeing the loveliest of wayside flowers, but there are
more who take no heed at all of our wayside children. And yet, if
the loss to the former is great, the loss to the latter is greater
far. A flower can charm the eye or delight the sense of smell: it can
interest the scientific observer who notes its construction and mode
of growth; but that is all. There is no reflected light, no joy felt
by the flower and flashed back in happy answering glance, be its eye
never so bright. For most people there is no increase of knowledge
from day to day, and certainly there is none of that increase of
understanding between observer and observed which lends such charm to
the chance meetings with the children who are about our path.
[Sidenote: Self-important People.]
Some people are too busy and rush along in too great a hurry. Some
people are too self-important. They are grown up, and fancy that the
fact that they are older has so greatly increased their value that
it would be lowering themselves to take notice of children. They will
assert that they cannot be bored with them. They will brush them
impatiently aside if they are too closely approached by children when
other people are present. There is a certain amount of insincerity in
all this, for when such people fancy that they are unobserved they
not infrequently yield to the natural temptation of noticing and even
playing with little children.
[Sidenote: Keeping the Proper Balance.]
Some people, again, fancy that to let children know that they are
observed is bad for their character, and, of course, it is possible
to make them self-conscious and conceited by taking too much notice
of them. On the other hand, there is a danger of children becoming
morbid, nervous, and secret if they find themselves ignored and
unappreciated. A child’s nature is essentially responsive. It
opens out and expands to a show of affection just as a flower to
the sunshine, and, as a bud will become withered and diseased when
continuously exposed to grey skies and rain, so the character of a
child will suffer irretrievable damage from a prolonged course of
neglect and cold looks.
Taking it, then, for granted that nothing but good is likely to
follow from a habit of noticing the children whom we meet, it is
interesting to remember how greatly our days have been brightened and
our own enjoyment increased by this very thing.
[Sidenote: The Children Under the Wall.]
There is a long grey wall leading towards the centre of the village.
It is what is called a “dry” wall, that is to say, it is built
without mortar. There is, therefore, no great interest in it nor
any special beauty except where the tints of the little lichens
catch the eye of the close observer. The monotony is broken here and
there by a bulge in the stonework where an elm-tree in the field has
gradually pushed its roots against the foundations.
[Sidenote: Two Nests of Children.]
But the path beside the wall is seldom lacking in attractions. It
is the daily playground of the children from the cottages which lie
back from the road between where the wall ends and the big barn juts
out endways on to the footpath. These cottages are but two in number
and have all the picturesqueness of old gables and steep stone-slab
roofs. Hoary and bent and lined with the passage of years they seem
to speak of old age in every feature. But they echo to-day with the
sound of children’s voices, and their old stone flags speak from
morning to night with the patter of little footsteps. From these two
houses come the troop of children who play beneath the long grey
wall. As a matter of fact there are ten of them altogether—six from
one cottage, four from the other. Of these the two eldest boys of the
six are just getting too old to play, and are generally doing jobs
for mother, or even sometimes for the farmer for whom their father
works, on the days when they are free from school. Then there is in
each house a baby too small to be trusted anywhere except in its cot
or in its mother’s arms. This leaves six children for the wayside,
when the two little girls who are old enough to go to school have
returned to superintend the amusements of the rest, or four who may
be found there at any hour of the day when the weather is at all
propitious.
[Sidenote: Good Marnin’.]
What bits of sunshine they make! Let the day be as dull and the road
as monotonous as possible it cannot be altogether cheerless when a
couple of little chaps with sunny tousled hair and ruddy cheeks
stop pulling their soap box full of mud and stones to laugh up in
your face and say “Good marnin’, Sir,” though it be four o’clock in
the afternoon. Whereby hangs a tale. These two urchins are somewhere
between two and four years old, and it had been their habit to greet
a friend with a friendly pat and a shout of “Hey!” Thereupon one day,
the friend, thinking that their manners might now be taken in hand
and it being then shortly after breakfast, said “You must say ‘Good
morning, Sir,’” which after one or two tries they very creditably
did, and have continued at all hours from that day forward.
[Sidenote: Friendly Children.]
But further down the wall is a little group of three. One, a still
smaller boy, evidently the next in order of the fair-haired family.
He cannot yet keep up with his brothers, and so is taken in hand by
the two dark-haired little girls who look up shyly and smilingly from
beneath long-fringed lashes. The younger, “Nellie,” has been ill and
is a queer little figure pinned up in a shawl which reaches to the
ground; the elder is a fat roundabout lady of nearly four, with dark
beady eyes, and a trick of sliding a grubby little hand into that of
her special friends when they stop for a minute’s chat. She is full
of character and thoroughly appreciates the importance of being in
charge of the other two, looking up with an absurd apologetic smile
when the little invalid thrusts forward a few bits of dusty grass and
a much-mauled daisy as an offering to the powers that be.
But, meantime, school has come out, and the number of wayside
children is rapidly increasing. A girl of ten or so is quietly
knitting as she strolls homewards, her busy fingers hardly stopping
as she smiles and curtseys, turning as an afterthought to ask
whether she may bring some water-cresses to the house.
[Sidenote: Over the Garden Wall.]
Leaning over a garden wall is a delightful little person. She has a
very short way to go home and knows that tea will not be ready yet.
So she stops as soon as she is inside the wicket to indulge in a
further look at the “busy world,” of the lane in which she lives,
and to seize any chance there may be of a gossip. The garden ground
inside the wall is considerably above the level of the road—a most
convenient thing for this sturdy little lady of five, for it enables
her to lean her arms upon the wall and her face upon her arms, and so
to survey the world in much comfort.
Should any one approach whom she wishes to avoid, nothing is simpler
than to crouch down and hide until the undesirable passer-by is out
of sight. Should, however, a friend appear who is welcome, but whose
presence causes a sudden fit of shyness, the rosy cheeks are quickly
hidden in the dimpled arms and a cloud of dark curls tossed over all
until a finger judiciously inserted somewhere where the crease of the
fat little neck may be supposed to be causes a chuckle of delight,
and a crimson face and two great blue eyes are momentarily lifted to
be buried again in an instant beneath the mass of soft dark hair.
But this is a regulation bit of by-play which never lasts long.
Confidences are soon exchanged and news imparted about the sort of
day it has been in school and the health of a doll which fell to her
lot at the last treat. Then sometimes—when she is in her tenderest
humour—a pair of bright red lips are put up for a kiss, and she trots
off down the path to where mother is waiting under the porch of
clematis.
And so it would be possible to go on for long enough.
[Sidenote: In the Country.]
By the roadside, in the field ways, by the pathway near the brook, at
many a cottage doorway, by many a wicket-gate, our country children,
in the beauty of healthfulness and youth, add a hundredfold to the
happiness of those who passing by have eyes to see and hearts to
understand.
[Sidenote: And in the Town.]
But there are others. It is impossible to pass along the side streets
of our many towns without finding the little wayside children. They
are mostly those who are of that specially attractive age which makes
them just too young to go to school and just too old to be kept in
the house, so they get somewhere between the two places, and are
generally playing in the gutter.
They have not often the same beauty as the country children, and they
have not the same readiness to accept the approaches of “grown-ups.”
Their surroundings almost from their birth make them suspicious and
on their guard against possible dangers. But they are children for
all that. They will notice and respond to a friendly smile. It is
wonderful how a sharp and anxious little face is beautified by the
smile that after a moment of doubt will come in answer.
Go down a long street of mean houses, each one the counterpart of
every other, and see if there be anything to brighten the way that
can compare with the laughter and the play of the wayside children.
It is more difficult perhaps to appreciate these little ones, but it
should be remembered that a friendly greeting is worth more to them
than to a country child who gets a dozen such on its way from school.
The reflected light, the responsive happiness is not so evident at
first sight as in the case of country children, but it is even more
real when once confidence has been established.
[Sidenote: How a Child’s Friendship was Won.]
A man whose daily walk led him down a certain dingy street saw a tiny
boy with grimy face and badly developed limbs playing with a banana
skin in the gutter. The man nodded to him—the boy shrank away in
terror. Next day the man nodded again. The boy had decided there was
nothing to be afraid of, and spat at the man. Next day the boy only
stared. The day after he shouted “Hi!” as the man went on. In time
the little fellow smiled back at the greeting which he now began to
expect. Finally the triumph was complete when the boy—a tiny chap—was
waiting at the corner and seized the man’s fingers in his dirty
little fist. It was a dismal street, but it became one of the very
brightest spots in all that man’s walk through life.