Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class and Moral Culture of Infancy Part 11

I have a bright little fellow in my school who had acquired a sad habit of sucking his thumb. I thought he actually began to grow thin upon it.

I had checked him many times, and he was good about it, but the habit was too strong for him. One day I drew on a little conversation about helping each other out of difficulties, which all agreed to; and all professed themselves willing to be helped and to listen to warnings. I then said there was one in the school whom I wished to cure of a bad habit, and I had a plan for doing it, but its success must depend upon whether he was willing, and upon whether the rest would be really friendly and not laugh at him, or tease him, but help him in every way they could. They were very desirous to know who and what it was, and very sure they would do all that was desired. I then spoke to little W----, who was only six, or at most, seven years old, and asked him if he was willing to let me tie that hand behind him that he might be cured of sucking his thumb; for I knew of no other way. I told him it would try his patience; for it was his right hand, and he would have to be dependent upon others for many things, and often would find it very inconvenient and annoying. After I had impressed him fully with the importance of the matter, he consented, and the rest of the children promised to be attentive to his wants. I never tied the hand behind him till he put the thumb into his mouth; but it had to be done every day for a fortnight. He bore it, and all the inconveniences, like a hero, and not one child forgot to be considerate and helpful. He was cured of the trick, and he has been an object of great interest among his companions ever since, because they helped to do him good.

Perhaps, dear A----, you will think I dwell longer than necessary upon this subject, knowing as _we_ do that the usual fault of schools is too much penalty, and too much low motive; but you and I are surrounded by those who are inclined, by their tendency of thought, to forget practical wisdom; who, in their lively sense that immortality begins now, and is not a distant good,--a sort of reward for well-doing, are in danger of forgetting that we are to be educated by circ.u.mstances, and that circ.u.mstances _will_ educate us, whether we direct them or not, in this beginning of our long career. Those who have most faith in the soul and its ultimate power to work itself free from all impediments, are most apt to despise all the minor aids that may help its first steps.

Then there is another cla.s.s of persons, who do not believe in the soul enough to think education of any use. They cannot very well tell you what they do believe; in truth they have no faith in anything, but finding it hard to control circ.u.mstances, and seeing instances of great failure where there have been most appliances, (they do not consider whether these appliances were wisely administered,) they give all up to chance, and believing neither in innate ideas nor in the use of means, rest satisfied with a low standard of action, and go through life without ever having a glimpse of anything better than themselves.

Indeed, if they see anything better, they understand it so little, that they think it must be a delusive appearance, and that an earnest view of any subject is extravagance, or even insanity. But I do not think so great a want of faith is very common.

This is too long a letter, so good-by for the present. When I think you are rested from this, I will write again.

M.

LETTER III.

MY DEAR ANNA,--Let me introduce you to my little family. It consists of twenty children, some of whom have been under my care for three years.

These latter are eight in number, and from nine to twelve years of age; then I have six who are not seven years old, who know how to read pretty well, but who study no lessons more difficult than a simple bit of poetry, the names of a few places on the map, a list of words from the black-board of the parts of a flower, or an interlined Latin fable, which I give them thus early, because Latin is one of the elements of our language, and its forms are so definite that it gives definiteness to ideas. These children print, write, draw from outlined forms and blocks, as well as from their own fancies, and listen to all sorts of information which I give them orally, and which they recount to me again when questioned. I tell a great many stories over maps, which are, in my dominions, not only lines running hither and thither with a few names interspersed, but real mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, which I clothe with verdure, and people with all kinds of animate forms, such as beasts, birds, fishes, and William Tells, or other interesting individuals and tribes. I have a book, called "Wonders of the World,"

which is my Aladdin's lamp, and when I take it down, little hands are clapped and bright eyes glisten.

But I must not forget to mention my other six, who are sweet little buds of promise as one can well imagine; who love to hear stories about all living things, from oysters up through the more intelligent sh.e.l.l-fish that have heads as well as a foot, to small pink pigs and their mothers, b.u.t.terflies, birds, dogs, horses, cows, and fellow-children; and to learn that their stockings are made of wool that grew on the back of a lamb, their shoes of the skin of a calf, their ribbons from the coc.o.o.ns of a moth, the table of a tree, &c., &c. These little people were committed to my keeping directly out of their mothers' or their nurses'

arms. I am always diffident about taking the place of the former, but rejoice to rescue babes from the care of the latter.

The first thing to be taught these, is how to live happily with each other; the next, how to use language. It is not necessary to wait till they can read before we begin this last instruction. They love dearly to repeat the words of simple poetry or of poetic prose, (Mrs. Barbauld is my cla.s.sic for babes,) and it is curious to see how synthetical are their first mental operations, and how difficult they find it to disentangle the words of a short sentence, which evidently has. .h.i.therto been but one word of many syllables. Names of things can be made to stand forth distinctly before other words, because the objects of the senses do; but when I first ask children of three or four years old to make sentences and put in _the_ and _and_, their pleasure in recognizing the single word is even greater, and they will amuse themselves a great deal with the exercise, running to me to whisper, "just now I said _the_;" or, "Charley said _and_." If the printed word is pointed out at the same time, it is still more interesting, because then it becomes an object of the senses, a real thing, just as much as the book it is printed in. You know I take the royal road to the attainment of this art, and teach _words_ first, not letters. I find this a much better as well as happier way, for a word is a whole host of thoughts to a young child, and three words in a row a whole gallery of pictures. Bird, nest, tree! If a child has ever played in a meadow, or even in a garden, or sat on a gra.s.sy bank under the window, or has seen pigeons fly down into a city street, what subject of endless conversation does this combination of things present! The book that contains such words, and perhaps a story, of which they form a part, is itself an illuminated volume, and is immediately invested with a charm it cannot lose, for what child (or man) was ever tired of the thought of a bird, or a tree, to say nothing of that more rare and mysterious object, a nest? The warbled song, the downy breast, the sheltering wing, the snug retreat, have such an a.n.a.logy with the mother's carol or lullaby, the brooding bosom, and the beloved arms, a child's dearest home, that every sentiment is enlisted, and a thousand things, never to be forgotten, may be said. There is no need of pictures on such a page as this. I well remember the shining pages of my childhood's books,--a l.u.s.tre never emitted by white paper alone. I doubt not the ancient fancy of illuminating the works of great minds with gilded and scarlet letters grew out of some such early a.s.sociation with printed, or rather written thoughts;--for printing was not known then.

I believe you do not approve of this method of teaching to read; but I cannot help thinking a variety of experience like mine would make you a convert to my mode. I claim to have discovered it, and the bright little six years old rogue, upon whom I tried my first experiment, learned to read in six weeks, and every word was an experience to him, for I made up the lessons as we went on from day to day right out of his little life. He would scream with delight to see what he called _his_ words on the sheet upon which I daily printed a new lesson. I have no doubt every name of a thing looked to him like the thing itself, for his imagination was a very trans.m.u.ting one. You would have been as amused at his antics over the word "and" as I was. I only introduced such oysters of words occasionally into my gallery of pictures, but he never forgot any such useful members of society, though I think he could not have made pictures of them. One great point is, that children are always happy to read in this way; and to work their little brains against their will, seems to me cruel. It is quite an effort for them to learn to observe closely enough to distinguish such small particulars even as words, with which they have such vivid a.s.sociations, and altogether an unnatural one to learn arbitrary signs, to which nothing already known _can_ be attached. Until I was convinced that this was the best method, I always found myself instinctively helping innocent children along, through their first steps in reading, by means which, at the time, I half thought were tricks, and unsafe indulgences. I feared that I was depriving them of some desirable and wholesome discipline, such as we often hear of in our extreme youth from nursery-maids, who tell stories of parents who whip their children every morning that they may be good all day. But I will never again force helpless little ones, of three or four years old, to learn the alphabet and the abs, until every letter is interesting to them from the position it holds in some symbolic word.

When letters are learned in the ordinary way, they are often a.s.sociated with some image, as _a_ stands for _apple_, _b_ for _boy_, _c_ for _cat_; and these a.s.sociations may be so many hindrances (certainly in the case of the vowels) to the next step in the process, because they must all be unlearned before the letters can be applied to other words.

In our language there are so many silent letters in words, so many sounds for each vowel, and the alphabetic sound of the consonants is so different from their sound in words, that I do not care how late the a.n.a.lysis is put off.

After a while, I string columns of little words together, in which the vowel has the same sound, as _can_, _man_, _pan_, _tan_, and let these be the first spelling-lessons; but I prefer, even to this mode, that of letting children write from dictation the words they are familiar with on a page. One dear little boy came to school three months before he wished to read, or to look at a book, except for the pictures. At last he came into the cla.s.s without an invitation, and has learned very fast, and can read better than some children who have read longer. He is a perfect little dumpling, as gay and happy as a lark all day, and I would not for the world make it a task for him to use his brain, thus risking the diminution of his rotundity. He is as wise as a judge, though he has not lost his baby looks; and he might be made to reason subtly at an early age I doubt not; but I hope all such powers will be allowed to slumber peacefully as yet. He is in the mean time learning to read slowly; to print, to draw houses, to repeat poetry, to sing songs about birds, bees, and lambs, and to have as much fun between these exercises as I can furnish him with,--the latter in another apartment, of course.

I have taken no pains to teach him his letters. I have a great repugnance to _letters_, with their many different sounds, so puzzling to the brain;--but one day, finding he knew some of them, I pointed to _g_, and asked him if he knew the name of it. He said "gra.s.s," which was the first word in which he had seen _g_. So _w_ he first called "water,"

for the same reason. I gave him their sounds, but not their alphabetical names. I was obliged to give him two sounds for _g_, one hard, one soft, and he soon knew all the consonants by their powers. I hope he will not ask me anything about the vowels at present.[I]

I also cut out the words children first learn, as soon as they can put together a few in short sentences, and let them arrange them to correspond with the sentences in the book. I have devoted one copy of my Primer to this purpose, and keep the words thus separated, and pasted upon card-board, for such use.

I know all children learn to read, and some children learn rapidly, but I am always interested to know at what cost. It is a very important question, I a.s.sure you. One may not realize, at the time, the evils consequent upon the difficulties first encountered. The actual injury to the brain stands first among these. We grown people know the painful sensation consequent upon too long and too fixed attention to one subject, even in the arranging of piles of pamphlets which we are endeavoring to cla.s.sify. The brain whirls and experiences chills, and the whole body feels it. So with children, when made to read too long, before the eye has learned to discriminate words easily. The child is told that it is naughty, if it does not continue as long as the teacher's or the mother's patience holds out (as soon as that is exhausted, the lesson is sure to be over). How false this is! A little child should never be required to do anything intellectual as a duty. It should not be required even to _love_ as a duty, much less to think.

Both should be made inevitable by the interest inspired; its mental efforts should only be sports. Its habits of self-control, its kindness, its affection, should be cultivated, and this rather by example than by precept. When mothers do not succeed in teaching their children to read, because they have not the resolution to force them to it, they often say to me, "Do teach the child to read, it will be a great resource;" I reply, if I think they will believe me, that their instincts have perhaps been wiser than their understanding; but if I see that they are unreasonable, I reply that I will try, reserving to myself the privilege of trying just as much as I please, and no more. I can generally make the effort to read a voluntary one, if I do not find any previous painful a.s.sociations to do away. If I do, I wait patiently till I can replace them by others, and in the mean time make books vocal of such enchanting things that the desire will bubble up in the little mind, through all the rubbish that has gathered over it. The pleasure of reading together from a black-board, on which the letters should be printed with great exactness and perfection of form, in order to resemble those in the book, often gives this desire.

One little fellow, whose perceptive powers are sharper than those of my dumpling, reflects upon himself more, and although equally fat, appears, from a certain anxious expression on his face, to have had some trials.

He says his sister sometimes "hurts his feelings." He thinks some words are beautiful and "full of pictures." He tells very small fibs, such as "Mother says I must read those words, and those." Do not suppose I let this fibbing pa.s.s. I make a great point of not believing it, and of comparing it with truth, and of proving to him that his mother knows nothing about it.

Another little darling, who cannot speak plain, says, "Oh, is 'at _feathers_? Why! is it _feathers_? Oh, now tell me where _wings_ is! Oh!

is 'at _wings_? Oh! I want to kiss oo."

I hear these little ones read four or five times a day. The lesson occupies about fifteen minutes each time. All "study" together, as they call it. I put my pointer on the book of each in turn, making it a habit that they shall not look off the book for the s.p.a.ce of three minutes, perhaps, during which each reads. They keep within a few sentences of each other, near enough to think they read together, as I detain them long upon the repet.i.tion of all they know; but I see very clearly which will start off soon and outstrip the rest. I say nothing of which reads the best, but sometimes make such remarks as, "L---- will learn to read very fast, I think, he is so attentive." This makes L---- all the more attentive, and helps the others to make the effort; for with these four, to be able to read is the most charming of prospects. I am determined that no touch of weariness shall break the charm. In three months they will be able to read the two first stories in the Primer, which occupy about two pages. Their eyes will by that time become so accustomed to a.n.a.lyzing the looks of the words, that they will be able to print them without the book, and soon new words will be learned very rapidly. I stave off the spelling as long as possible, but you may be sure that these children will spell well by and by. I am convinced of this by experience, for the next cla.s.s above these in age have begun within a few weeks to write stories of their own, composing instead of copying them from books, as they have done for two years, and I am myself quite astonished at their spelling. They have never spelled a word they did not understand, and their spelling in composition is better than that of some children still older who learned to spell elsewhere, and who hate spelling-books.

One of my exercises in thinking is to ask the children to tell me the names of all the actions they can think of; and to help them I say, for instance, "What can the bird do?" "What can the fly do?" "How many things can the fly do?" Another is to ask them what things are made of, and where they are found, "Are they vegetables, or are they from animals, or are they minerals?" They are vastly entertained by this, and one little fellow became so much excited, and wearied himself so much with his investigations at home, that his mother begged me to suspend the exercise for a time. Jemmy's head is a little too big for his body; and the look of research in his great eyes gives evidence of precocity, the thing of all others to be shunned. His mother has put thick boots upon him lately, and turned him out into the snow, and he looks like a b.u.t.terfly in boots, with his ethereal head and spiritual orbs.

I have but one child under my care that I call a prodigy; and my influence has not yet been strong enough to check her ardor as it ought to be checked. She is sent to school because she is happier at school than in the nursery, to which rich people's children are so often banished. (I never intend to have a nursery in my house.) This child has been with me three years, and is but six now. She might be made one of those wonders of learning that occasionally astonish the world, if the plan of her education had not been to supply as little food as possible for her cravings. Fortunately she did not ask to read for a long time, but I have not a scholar so perseveringly industrious, so absorbed in whatever she is doing, so full of nervous energy. She is as conscientious as she is intellectual. I have never had to repeat a request to her, or to subject her to a rule. She always sees and does the fitting and the lovely thing. Before she learned to read she would sit for the hour together with a book in hand, (upside down, perhaps,) and improvisate stories wonderful to hear, in which the characters preserved their individuality, and the descriptions of nature were as vivid as those of a poet of many years. She was quite lost to outward things while improvisating thus. One day after school, the maid who came for her not having arrived, she threw herself on the floor, and began a story about a naughty child. I cannot now remember all the very words, for it was a year ago; but the qualities of the heroine were a combination of all the faults she knew anything about. "If people were ill, she always made a noise; she would shut the door hard if told that it would make people's heads ache. She hid other people's things, and would not tell where she had put them. She was very cross to her little brother, and often hurt the baby. She cut valuable things with the scissors, tore up her books, and left the pieces of paper on the parlor carpet. One day it rained very hard, and her mother told her not to go out, lest she should take cold. She was always disobedient, so she went up-stairs and put on a very nice dress and her best bonnet, with blue ribbons, and thin stockings and shoes, and nothing to keep herself warm, but went out in the rain, and paddled and paddled about, and wet her dress, and spoilt the blue ribbons on her bonnet; and when she came in she was very, very sick indeed, and had a dreadful fever, and people slammed the doors and made a great noise, and she had dreadful, oh, dreadful pains in her head and her side, and she could not eat or drink anything; and at last she died and did not go to heaven!" She stopped, completely out of breath. After a few moments' pause, I said, "Oh, I am sorry for the poor little girl that was punished so much. Was she so very naughty she could not go to heaven?"

She made no reply for some time, and then recommenced in a low, solemn voice: "When she was lying in her bed, she was very sorry she had not obeyed her mother, and a heavenly angel came down out of the heavenly sky and took her up into heaven." After a short pause she burst out again very energetically--"Then how she ramped! She trampled on the clouds, and put her foot in the sun, moon, and stars!" I made no further comment. I rarely interrupted her utterances, for they never were addressed to any one, and seldom indulged in, unless she thought herself alone. They were picturesque and symbolical, but never vague. The moral was always very apparent. But her imagination sometimes clothes objects with a light of its own. I was leading her up-stairs the other day, and as we stepped into the hall, we saw a large spider running before us.

She dropped my hand and bounded forward, "Oh, you beautiful, smiling creature!" was her exclamation.

Would not a bird have been her pa.s.sport into paradise at that moment?

Another of these children was walking in the mall with me one day, when the sun was shining with an afternoon light upon the bare trees, over rather a dreary landscape of snow and ice. "Oh, the trees look like golden twigs," said my little poetess, so full of joy that I could hardly hold her.

This, dear A----, is the

"time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth and every common sight, To us do seem, Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream."

To return a moment to my little prodigy. When she did not for a long time ask to read, she wished to print, and it must have been this practice which gradually so accustomed her eye to the shapes of words, that when she suddenly conceived the desire to read, she remembered them with marvellous rapidity. Everything else was abandoned for the time, and in the course of two or three weeks she could read very well. I had often seen her take up the books which contained the stories she liked, and I supposed, at first, that she must have learned to read them herself in some unaccountable way. She had often repeated such stories from the book from beginning to end, word for word. But I found it was not the case,--that she had never actually read them before. However, I never could trace the steps. Spelling she does not find easy. Even now, several months after she has been able to read currently, if, when she comes to a new word, I propose to her to spell it, she will mention the letters (I never taught her their names, but she doubtless learned them while printing so industriously), and then say again, "What is it?" as if that had not helped her at all. But she never forgets a word after it is once told her. She joins in an exercise I frequently practise with older scholars, of spelling a few lines of the reading lesson, but she is not so ready as the others, although none read better, and few as well. She now composes stories on the slate instead of improvisating aloud so much; and I am surprised to find how many words she spells aright. But I try no experiments upon her, as my plan is to clip her wings. If she was enshrined in as rotund a body as some of the other children, I might venture a little, but she already looks too ethereal;--one sees at a glance that the sword of her fervent little spirit might easily be made to cut its sheath.

Children love to use their fingers, and I give them a slate when they come to school, and teach them to print, which accelerates the learning to read. I encourage them also to draw from beautiful outlines, from things they see in the room, and also from their own fancies. I draw upon the black-board before them, very slowly, giving directions for imitation. I never criticise their productions, whether successful or not. I often see a promise in the freedom of a stroke, or in the child's appreciation of his own drawing, which an unpractised eye could scarcely detect. If a little child brings me a slate with three marks drawn upon it which he calls a horse, or a dog, can I be so unsympathizing as to question it? Perhaps I add ears, legs or a tail, and my little disciple does not know the next moment whether he or I completed the picture, but the next specimen of his art will probably have at least one of these appendages.

I drew on the black-board to-day, a square house, with a door in the middle of the front, a window on each side the door, and one in each chamber over the parlors. Two chimneys surmounted the house, and the windows were divided each into six panes of gla.s.s. These things I mentioned as I drew them. It was not many minutes before I was called to look at two houses of four times the size of mine, with the additional embellishments of stairs to go up into the chambers, one of the windows open (which I thought decidedly the stroke of genius in this artist), smoke from the chimneys, steps to the doors (my house had been left hanging in mid air), pumps with individuals, I cannot call them men, suspended to their handles, and various other hieroglyphics which I could not stay to hear explained. These limners are four years old, their faith in themselves and others yet unshaken, and I should be the last one to suggest that stairs could not be seen through the walls of a house, or that men were not lines and dots, or birds as large as houses, for I have known children to cry at such criticisms, and to be quite checked in their artistic exploits by a laugh.

After such rude practice as this, the child, by imperceptible advances, begins at last to see things more as they are, and then a little criticism is safe, but it must still be guarded, sympathizing, and helpful. The next thing to be inculcated after this is that objects must _not_ be drawn just as they are, but only as they appear. I made this remark to a child of seven to-day for the first time. He had learned too much to make similar mistakes to those of the little people lately mentioned, but in attempting to copy the drawing of a stool, he could not comprehend how the rungs that joined the legs of the stool could be drawn so as to look right, because one of them could not _really_ be made to pa.s.s behind the leg. I pointed to a chair and told him to suppose he was drawing it upon the wall near which it stood, for his paper represented that wall, though for convenience sake it was laid flat upon the table. I asked him if he could see the whole of the legs farthest from him, and if the rungs of those legs did not pa.s.s behind the front legs. He saw it clearly. Then I told him we must draw things as they appeared, not as they really were. Nothing must be drawn which cannot be seen, although we know more is there than we can see without going behind it. He was delighted with this discovery. Now he understood about the rungs of the stool, and also why two legs appeared longer than the other two. The stool was finished intelligently, though not with elegance, and the paper was sprinkled with attempts at various chairs which he could see from his seat, some of which really looked as if one could sit down in them, and not as if they were flattened out and hanging against the wall. Some of the legs would have gone through the floor, to be sure, if they had been real chairs, in order to afford a comfortable and even seat, but I saw that the idea was seized, which was quite enough for my unexacting demands. A child much younger and less practised, drew the same stool right, without a word from me, and probably would be completely puzzled were I to give her the same explanation, for art speaks to her without articulate voice. I have one little girl with eyes which she seems scarcely yet to have used. I took a great deal of pains to teach her to draw a little upon the black-board last winter, but if I drew a perpendicular, she thought she imitated me by drawing a horizontal line. I endeavored to wake up the love and perception of form by hanging upon the board various exquisitely shaped vases and leaves, but neither these nor rectangular forms aroused her imitative powers. I never ceased to make these trials, for I remembered that a genius in that line once said to me, "the art of seeing must precede the art of drawing." During the long vacation she resided in the country, and nature must have opened her eyes, for since she came back to school (about two months ago), she has actually been able to imitate quite intelligibly some of those very forms, and prefers some of them to others. I a.s.sure you I enjoy her imperfect performances far more than I do the successful efforts of many others. A German friend gave me a book the other day which promises to pour a flood of light upon what I now look upon as my benighted efforts to simplify to children the art of drawing. It is the method of a man of genius, discovered after much groping. He, too, had wooden models made, and stood by them, and pointed out to his pupils which part to draw first, as I have done, but at last he has reduced the whole thing to a few lessons upon some rectilinear blocks, a niche, a cylinder, a grindstone, and a ball. I am revelling in the perfect adaptation I see in it to the end proposed, which is practical teaching of perspective without a word being said about vanishing points, aerial perspective, or any of those technicalities which weary my unmathematical brain, and which I have faithfully administered to myself from time to time.[J]

To vary the occupations of my cherubs, I let them write Foster's prepared copies with a pencil, which helps very much to regulate the motions of the hand, as there is a great interest felt in tracing each mark upon the blue line. They also look at pictures in books and on the wall, where I hang all the pretty things I can find, and tell me what is in them; and sometimes amuse themselves at a table of sh.e.l.ls, where I hear them recounting in low voices the histories I have given them of these little tenants of the seas. When I kept caterpillars, or rather raised b.u.t.terflies, they never were tired of watching the chrysalides, hoping to see the expected b.u.t.terflies. After these came forth in their glory, we were all poisoned by handling the coc.o.o.ns, and since that experience of itching hands, and arms, and swollen eyes, I have been afraid to venture upon that branch of natural history. Sh.e.l.ls are the most convenient natural objects for children to handle. We talk over flowers often, and I teach the names of their different parts, and encourage the children to make collections of leaves, and learn the names of their shapes, preparatory to learning the art of a.n.a.lyzing them thoroughly. For this purpose I have drawn all the shapes I can find named in botanies, into a book, from which I teach them. Flowers are better for teaching beauty than botany, to little children, as they object particularly to tearing them to pieces.

I have not said one word about my little Robin, who stands most of the time at the window watching the horses in the stable opposite, the scene being often spiritualized by the descent of a flight of pigeons, which he generally apprises us of by a shout. Occasionally he turns round and sits down, and watches inside proceedings, and when an interesting story about living things is in progress, I sometimes find him in my lap, or behind me in the chair I am sitting in. His eyes are blue, and his long golden straight hair hangs down from his tall forehead like a cleft banner of light. Robin will not look inside of a book yet. He is like a caged bird in the city where he is imprisoned in winter. In summer he lives out of doors, and rides on horseback on his father's knee, and holds the reins in driving. His mother says horses are the predominating idea, and also sentiment of his life, at present, and this stable-peep into their city life is duly recounted every day at home. I often mourn over my lost residence by the Common, where the children who looked out of window could see trees and a lovely landscape, but you must not think I allow my scholars to be pent up five hours in the house. Twice a day, I array them all, summer and winter, and take them to our city paradise, which happily is very near. There we actually see a squirrel once in a while. One day we saw a b.u.t.terfly emerging from its chrysalis, and always the sparkling water and waving trees. And we have clear s.p.a.ce and fresh air for half an hour. If you will not tell, I will confess that I have sometimes coasted down the least public side of Fox-hill with a babe in my lap, and I find I have not forgotten how to slide,--an accomplishment in which I excelled in my youth. In wet weather, I put on some of the out-door garments, open a window, and have a merry dance or play. The material for the early cultivation I would give is all nature, and art taken picturesquely. The nomenclatures of science are not for children, but its beauties and wonders are, and may be culled for them by a skilful hand till they have had a peep at the wide range of the universe. I believe you think it best not to open these store-houses until the mind is capable of comprehending them more fully, but I cannot think so, dear Anna. Children's love of nature forbids me to think so. I once opened a little soul's eyes with a bunch of flowers. It was a child who had never been to school before, but who had not been cultivated at home, because her mother had suffered from being over-educated, and wished to try the experiment of _nature_, as she called it,--by which she meant, I perceived, total neglect. She had allowed her, therefore, to grow up in the nursery and in the care of servants, both of which I consider as far from _nature's_ teachings as possible.

The child was afraid of me and of the children. She looked at us for about three weeks with a fixed gaze as if we were not living beings, but perhaps walking pictures, her features only occasionally relaxing, I should rather say puckering into a woful wail, which expressed utter desolation and want of comprehension of our natures. She was impervious to all my blandishments, which I lavished more bountifully than usual to meet the case. When spoken to, she answered in a monosyllable, or not at all. When she wanted anything, she spoke one word to convey the idea, as a savage would, (she was five years old), and these utterances were never voluntary. She liked to sit close by her brother, who was two years older than herself, and who treated her with great tenderness and gentleness, though every manifestation from her was of the roughest kind. I was sure, however, that I did not see the whole, for his manner of taking her hand and saying "little sister" was so peculiar, that I did not doubt she was genial to him when not in this purgatory of people.

One day I had a beautiful bunch of flowers from a greenhouse on my table. This child's grandfather owned a greenhouse, but perhaps she had never been allowed to handle the flowers, which were altogether too precious for children, and wild pinks and violets had not been accessible to her. I had been trying many days in vain to interest her about a bee of which I had a picture. I had told her the bee made honey out of flowers. On that day I drew the tumbler that contained these splendid denizens of the greenhouse to the edge of the table, and said,--

"Did you ever see a little bee making honey?"

"No."

"Did you ever go into the country in summer when the gra.s.s is all green?"

"No."--(I knew she had.)

"Did you ever see pretty flowers growing?"

"No."

"I will tell you how little bees make honey--did you ever eat any honey?"

"Yes."

"They have a long hair sticking out of their heads, and they put it in there, where that yellow dust is, and there they find a little sweet drop that tastes like sugar, and they carry it home, and put it into a little hole, and then they come and get more, and carry that home, and they put that yellow dust into a little pocket by the side of their little leg, and by and by they get enough to make a great deal of honey."

"Do the bees make it all themselves?" said she, with a brightening look (the first look of intelligence I had seen), and at the same time making a plunge at the flowers.

"Yes," I said, and taking them out of the gla.s.s I put them all into her hand, for I did not even know that she could speak plain. She seized them eagerly, and without taking her eyes from them went on volubly asking a great many questions. I described the hive and how they all lived together, and told her G.o.d must have taught them how to make honey, for they could not speak or understand anybody's words, and that if they wandered ever so far away from their hive, they always knew the way back again. She held the flowers all the rest of the morning. When school was done, I told her to put them into the gla.s.s, and she should have them again in the afternoon. As soon as she returned, she very unceremoniously took possession of them,--the first act of volition she had ever ventured upon in my presence,--and nestling close to me asked me the same questions she had asked before, over and over again, and repeating them, and hearing my answers again and again, whenever she could secure my attention. As long as the flowers lasted, she seized upon them every day, and after they were withered to all other eyes, they retained their charm in hers. I varied the lesson often, by telling her of the silkworm, of the b.u.t.terflies, and of many varieties of the bee family, and from that time a communication was established between us. She was never afraid of me any more; liked to sit near me; and have my sympathy in all things, provided I did not express it too openly. It was curious to see such _mauvaise honte_ in such a tiny thing, for she was always reserved, and often relapsed into long silences, and was wholly without enterprise in matters in which the other children were very active, such as drawing, making block-houses, and even playing. But I could catch her eye at any time by a story of any living thing, and she would sometimes surprise me by the intelligence of her questions.

For a long time she could not learn to read, or rather would not. Every new attempt at anything was begun in tears and despair, not from weakness, but from pride apparently. Her mother had begun to think it time to attend to her poor hidden soul a little; and after a long summer vacation which she pa.s.sed in the country, she came back to school with pleasure and with a new face, and though always backward in comparison with children who had had motherly intercourse, and been taught early to use their faculties, she went steadily on. There was no compet.i.tion to discourage her, and she learned to read immediately when she once wished to. None but mothers can do justice to little children. She sometimes made me think of your remark that every child needs _four_ mothers. But I think the two heaven-appointed parents will do, if they see their duties and fulfil them.