Journeys Through Bookland Volume X Part 11

Unfortunately in too many cases the parents fail to realize the importance of this change of relationship and allow children to drift without any effort to stem the tide that is bearing their progeny away.

Fathers are particularly blind. One would think that they would remember how it was with themselves in their youth and be guided accordingly. But as a matter of fact a large majority of the fathers of the land have forgotten the perils of their own boyhoods; they look upon their own sons as proof against the temptations they weathered, or as being exempt because of their better position in life. If these same fathers would only consider that the temptations come from within and are inseparable from our race and from the age of the children they would regard with the greatest concern every influence that is brought to bear upon their rapidly developing boys.

This is no light matter we are discussing and is one that ought to be considered seriously by every father. Every teacher, every psychologist knows that the time comes when a man must lead the changing youth. Who shall do it? Obviously the father. No man can put aside his responsibilities in this matter nor can he delegate it to the mother.

She may be the one big factor in the development of her boy's character and yet there is one time when all her carefully laid plans may go awry, when for a little while her restraining influence is powerless to save.

No father can, in fairness to the children he has brought into the world, say that when he has made the home and furnished it, when he has fed and clothed his wife and children he has done all that he ought to do. It matters not how difficult a task it has been to find the money to support his family, nor how hard he has been obliged to work to get the daily bread; it matters not how tired or how much in need of recreation he may be when he returns to his home at the close of the day; he finds his responsibility always facing him. Do not misunderstand the question, nor the purpose of these lines. This is in no sense a criticism nor is it a bit of preaching at the hard-working fathers upon whom rest the hopes of the race. Every true father is willing to give his life if necessary for his offspring and there is no greater devotion in the world than that of father to son. But the fact remains that many a busy man has been so overburdened with the cares of his everyday life that he has had no time to make himself familiar with even the smallest of his duties to his family.

Suddenly he becomes conscious that his son is growing away from him, that the little things that have bound them together have no longer the strength to hold, that they are drifting apart. Perhaps the father never has been on intimate terms with his son and has never really known what his child was thinking about or what his ideas and ideals really were.

When this consciousness comes to the father, when he learns that he is no longer the one big figure on his son's horizon and that his words have ceased to be accepted as final on every question, he is startled and seeks strenuously to regain his position. Difficult will it be. To regain what has been lost is always difficult; more difficult is it to displace an influence that is already established. How many, many times there comes to the earnest teachers the anxious parent with the oft-repeated statements and questions. "My boy has grown away from me. I don't know him any more. What I say no longer has any influence with him. I don't know what to do. How can you help me? He thinks more of what you say than of what I say and would follow you even if I objected.

What can I do? What advice can you give?" In many instances it is too late and never again can the father recover the influence he has lost.

On the other hand, it is possible in most cases for the father to reinstate himself if he proceeds in the right way. That way is never through command or restraint or discipline. _By only one process can he succeed, and that is by placing himself in the position of the boy, learning the boy's tastes and interests and in joining with the boy in the things the latter likes._ If there has never been much community of thought between the two, the parent may say in substance or show by his acts that he has rather neglected the youth because he was too young to be in sympathy with a man's work and because it was better for the mother to have the care of her son during his boyhood; but that now he is old enough to begin to think a man's thoughts and to take an interest in a man's occupations. Sometimes if this is followed by a real hearty confidence, if the father takes the boy with him on his business trips, shows him how the money for the family is made and what are the joys and compensations of a busy career, the boy's confidence is won, his interest aroused and a frank comradeship established, new bonds are created and the father finds a delightful companion, the boy an honored friend and a worthy leader. Such fathers have said again and again, "I have found a new and trustworthy friend, a helper whose enthusiasm and good sense is worth more to me than anything I have had in years; and it is _my_ boy who is doing it." Unfortunately, most men fail to realize the power of a boy's mind, the helpfulness of his companionship. His outlook on life is so fresh and true, his ambition so strong and his willingness to be taught so refreshing that intimacy with him makes the adult much stronger and better able to master the annoyances of the day, and to win the commercial victories upon which subsistence depends.

But at its best this latter-day acquaintanceship is never so strong nor so helpful as that which begins when the child is an infant and continues through boyhood to the larger youth and manhood. And it is easy to win the confidence and respect of the very young, easy to retain it when won. Yet many a sincere and anxious man fails utterly to earn that sympathetic companionship which any father may have for the asking, if the request is made in a way the child can understand and appreciate.

The foundation of it all is a sympathy in the things that children know and love. _A child lives on a plane of his own. You cannot take him very far from it nor subst.i.tute anything in its place except by the slowest and most careful management._ There can be no sympathy, no understanding that is not located on the childish plane. The father must come down where the child lives, must find his interest in the things that the child loves and must be sincere in every manifestation of that interest.

Right here is where so many fathers fail. They try to interest the child in things which the older mind enjoys, and finding themselves unable to create the artificial atmosphere give up in discouragement and disgust.

Such a course is foolish in the extreme. The older person who knows more and has had the experiences that are now new to youngsters must go back into his memories and join in the little things that make up the big complex of a child's world. Unless you become as little children you can never enter into the lives of children.

To become young again in a genuine fashion is not permitted to many of us and we must accordingly seek some common ground where we can meet the children and be as they are in seeming if not in reality. We may not be able to play their games with interest and sympathy, or the boys may be so skilful that we lose standing rather than gain influence by partic.i.p.ation. We may not be able to sympathize with the rivalries of school or talk intelligently on the sports that make up a large part of their daily occupation. Where, then, can we meet them and how shall we put ourselves on an equality with them and at the same time preserve our leadership?

Such a question is not easy to answer in detail, but many a man has found a way and a simple one at that. In the first place, play is part of the life of every child and he has as much right to his fun as any adult has to the recreation he finds necessary to keep him at the top of his working power. _Many a child may properly complain that he has had no childhood_, that all the time he was being repressed and never allowed to express himself in his own way. He may not realize at the time that anything is wrong in the treatment that his father gives him, but the time comes when he will know and understand. Right there is a fact that every father ought to know and realize so thoroughly that he will never lose sight of it. _Yes, some time every boy will know just what kind of a father he has had and just how worthy of respect and veneration that father has been._ A little boy is credulity itself and everything tends to make him believe in his father. But as he grows older he will surely know. Woe be it to the parent who when disillusionment comes falls below the standard the child has set. Some time the boy will know. If he has never had the pleasure that was his due, if he has never had the fun in his home that he had a right to expect, his estimate of his parent will be appallingly low.

Through play in the home in the evening after the day's work is ended has many a father laid the foundation for an influence that controlled when other ties seemed strained to the breaking point. It is in this playtime that the boy expresses himself most fully. Every animal has its playtime, and the most savage of the beasts play with their little ones to educate them to succeed in the struggle for existence. If play is a natural expression of the child's mind and body, anything that represses play is a hindrance to development. In the cheery home where to have fun and lots of it is a daily habit every child grows and matures as perfectly as a plant where there are just the right amounts of sun and moisture and where the soil is perfectly adapted to growth. A little less light, a little less moisture, and the plant will wither and fail.

A little less play and more repression and the child will become morose and fail to keep pace with his mates. To repress is so easy, to reconstruct so difficult!

After the play comes the work, but the work may be made as interesting as the play and may proceed in the same spirit of jollity and freedom that marked the time given up wholly to amus.e.m.e.nt. The work is the second factor in the father's influence--something on the plane of the child's own mind, not too difficult, not too long continued. Closely related, too, it must be with things that the child has done and understands. Some phase of school work may need to be carried on by the older ones in the family, but the younger boys are free to work with the father in anything that will stimulate and inspire. What shall the work be? To every one who has had to do with a large number of children the answer comes quickly enough. _In reading and conversation will the boy and his father come most closely together_, in a field that is attractive to both and where it is as easy to find entertainment and pleasure as it is to gain information and culture.

Two quotations from men of good judgment come into mind at this point.

Arthur T. Hadley, recently President of Yale University, has said, "Men in every department of practical life, men in commerce, in transportation or in manufactures, have told me that what they really wanted from our college was men who have this selective power of using books efficiently. The beginnings of knowledge are best learned in any home fairly well furnished with books." Professor William Mathews has added, "It is not the number of books which a young man reads that makes him intelligent and well-informed, but the number of well-chosen ones that he has mastered so that every valuable thought in them is a familiar friend."

In those two quotations the ideas of prime importance to every father are, first, that the beginnings of knowledge are best learned in the home; and, second, that it is the mastery of what is read that really counts. In school a child learns to read; at his home he reads to learn.

At school he learns how he ought to read; but it is at his home that he learns to read in that manner. What a boy does in school is a small part of the total amount of his reading, and its influence is small indeed.

In home reading, then, reading of the right material in the right way, is to be found the great influence in education and the great factor in the building of character.

If such is the case, what more important work can there be for the father than to read with his son, to watch these beginnings of education which mean so much more than the mere instruction in school, and to be a power in developing that right method of reading which means not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the acquirement of power and the making of character. The busy man is tired at night and inclined to think that he has no time to give to reading with his boys. He may think, too, that reading childish stories is beneath his dignity. Such is not the case. There is a great abundance of literature that is manly, and at the same time interesting to a boy. If the father feels that he is past the time when he has any sympathy with the fairy stories and the little poems that the infants like, if he thinks the nursery rhymes are silly and the fables too old to be true, that is because he has not recently read them. Busy men, men of power and influence, like to renew their youth by going to the simple things they loved as children, and not a few of them find that the years have given them new powers of interpretation and that what was to them at one time only an amusing tale is now replete with the philosophy of the universe. Yet there may be fathers of so practical a mind that works of imagination have no hold upon them. To them, however, the world of literature is by no means barren. There are history, biography and essays upon a thousand subjects, any one of which will interest a boy and at the same time his father. Particularly is this true when the reading is aloud and interspersed with free conversation upon the subjects that come to the surface. If the father can only select the right material and read it with his son there is no question whatever about the interest that will develop for both. A busy man has little time to select reading; in all probability he has not had the experience to enable him to do so wisely, for he has been so absorbed in business that he has forgotten what he knew best as a boy and is unable to tell just what appealed to him most.

It may be that he never in his youth had the opportunity to read the best of literature and does not know where to turn to find it. He hears his little family talking about what they read at school and how they ought to read and feels himself behind the times and hesitates to make an exhibition of himself before his children. To any father, a collection such as that in _Journeys Through Bookland_ is of inestimable value. When it is considered that in addition to the literary material there are abundant suggestions as to how interest may be created and how the reading may be made most profitable, then the set becomes indispensable. In other words, _Journeys_ contains the material that must be in every family to make it "fairly well furnished with books,"

and it provides a way of "mastering the books so that every valuable thought is a familiar friend."

If fathers could be persuaded to spend one evening with their boys in the reading and discussion of some selection in _Journeys_, they would not willingly forego the pleasure thereafter. It has happened so many times that we know this is not an overstatement. Fathers by the score have written us on the subject. One says, "I have solved the problem of keeping my boys off the streets, or, rather, _Journeys_ has done it for me." "I have never spent a happier evening. The boys staid up with me till after their usual bed time and when they had retired, I read on for half the night," says another. "I feel young again, and John and I are great chums. _Reminiscences of a Pioneer_ kept me telling stories long after we had finished reading the sketch." Who are these fathers?

Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we may expect, for they are somewhat interested in reading, because of their life work. But they are not the most numerous, by any means. Railroad men, manufacturers, farmers, men in hundreds of vocations acknowledge the delight of reading _Journeys_ with their children. Is there anything finer, more wholesome, more inspiring than the thought of fathers and children reading together, and together feeling the inspiration that radiates from the great masterpieces.

But this chapter is not an argument for the purchase of _Journeys_. That you, father of a growing boy, are reading these lines is evidence that you have thought well enough of the _Journeys_ idea to place a set of books in your family. You have done this because you recognized that in this age of specialists, you, a business man, could not be expected to select reading matter for your son and a.s.sist him in his growth and development with the same skill as can those who have devoted many years to that special problem. No attempt is made to advise you on the conduct of your business or to direct the management and control of your son.

But a sincere effort has been made to help you to join with your boy in that hearty sympathy which will make him happier, better and more of a man; which will make you young again and add to your pleasure without increasing your burdens. What we want is to make the books most effective, to help them be the power for good that we know they can be, and more than anything else, to make them a living bond between father and son. So let us examine the books together with these thoughts in mind and see if we cannot find just the things that will arouse your enthusiasm and make you young again, an equal and a friend who can lead your boy where you want him to go and where he will gladly follow you.

For instance, there is in the sixth volume that kindly humorous account of a boyhood in Wisconsin in the early part of the last century, _Reminiscences of a Pioneer_ (Volume V, 340). Every man will be interested in it, and he cannot read it aloud to a boy of seven without catching the attention of the child. Even a lad of sixteen will get into the spirit of the thing, although it may not be the same incidents that will attract him. Think of the contrast between that humble log cabin with its visiting Indians and the luxurious steam-heated flat of your son, or the farm house with all modern conveniences that a friend of yours may have in the very region where our little friend was frightened more by the strange Dutch immigrants than he was by the red men whom he saw every day. Think of a six or seven year old boy that had never seen an apple and who could enjoy chokecherries and crab apples, even though he couldn't get his face back into line on the same day in which he ate them fresh from the tree. Think of offering raw turnips to the guests and of people coming twenty miles to get a small piece of salt pork, because they were so tired of fresh meat and fish. Think that these things happened less than a hundred years ago and within forty miles of the now big and flourishing city of Milwaukee. What lessons there are in courage, skill, self-reliance and contentment in the lives of these early pioneers, especially the devoted mother who kept her yeast alive so many years, and stood off the Indians with one hand while she tended to her increasing family with the other. Can you imagine a boy who wouldn't be interested in the st.u.r.dy youngster who earned and refused his first quarter of a dollar for paddling a man across the river in a heavy dugout? Don't you think your son will have a host of questions to ask about it all and that you will be glad to talk to him about the Indians he likes to imitate when he plays? Can't you see that reading such as this is worth while and that every moment spent in this way is an investment for yourself in the boy's confidence and good graces?

Other selections of a somewhat similar nature, all of which will appeal to boys at the time when Indians and adventure are of more interest than anything else, are the following:

_The Arickara Indians_, Volume IV, page 472.

_The Buccaneers_, Volume V, page 359.

_Captain Morgan at Maracaibo_, Volume V, page 365.

_Ringrose and His Buccaneers_, Volume VIII, page 1.

_David Crockett in the Creek War_, Volume VIII, page 37.

_Braddock's Defeat_, Volume V, page 379.

_The Capture of Vincennes_, Volume VI, page 428.

_The Black Hawk Tragedy_, Volume VII, page 58.

_Pere Marquette_, Volume VIII, page 121.

_George Rogers Clark_, Volume VI, page 422.

Have no fear that the boy's love for Indians and adventure is a thing to suppress. It is an evidence of growth and of development. You know every boy lives over in himself the history of his race, and as there was a time when the life of mankind was a struggle with physical difficulties and personal danger so there is a time when every boy feels within himself the admiration for brave deeds and the desire to fight and conquer. Your province it is to meet him on that ground, enjoy with him the tales of lofty daring and physical prowess, the tales of stirring adventure and narrow escapes, and to lead him gently with you into the fields of history where achievements in science, commerce and engineering take the place of battles with wild animals and wilder Indians.

Don't feel that you have not the time to do the things recommended. We can always find the time to do the things we like to do, and this means of joining in the thoughts of your boy will be one of the things you will most enjoy when you have once accustomed yourself to it.

We get out of reading just what we put into it. That is to say, the same selection read by different people will have just as many meanings as there are people reading it. By a.s.sistance, a person may be caused to see more in what he reads and in time may approximate the full understanding of his teacher. But it is unwise and useless to expect a child to read with the same appreciation that an adult has. Accordingly the father, if he is wise, will be satisfied when his boy is really interested in a thoroughly good selection if he sees at the same time that the boy is setting about his interpretation in the right way. To ill.u.s.trate: If you are reading about a storm at sea and you are a survivor of a shipwreck in such a storm, your appreciation of the description will be infinitely more vivid than that of your son, who has not even seen the sea. All that you can do is to give him some idea of the power of the waves, make him feel that the sight is a thrilling one and that there is imminent danger to life and property in the storm.

Some time he will have the experience to interpret and then his mind will recur to the description and he will understand it somewhat as you do now. This brings us to think for a moment on the permanent value of all that is read. _The mind holds things in abeyance, brings them out to the light now and then, and each time finds them more and more intelligible and influential._ Many a maxim learned in youth when an understanding of it was impossible becomes a power for good for the person in later years when its inner significance appears.

Some poetry will appeal to boys, even though they may look askance at most of it. Some lyrics are virile and powerful, well worthy the study of the keenest minds. There is an unfounded prejudice against poetry in many men because of the fancied puerility of it and its silly sentiment.

Such a prejudice always disappears if the person reads enough and selects the things that are worthy of study. Narrative poems are more likely to appeal to men and boys than the lyrics. When the narrative is a stirring one and the action dramatic, the poetic form adds decidedly to its interest and effectiveness. Take, for instance, that little poem by Robert Browning that is known as _Incident of the French Camp_ (Volume IV, page 174). No man can read it without being stirred by it, and its appeal to boys is immediate and strong. But strong as it is, the whole influence of it may be intensified if it is discussed in the manner indicated on the pages immediately after the poem. What we would have you do is to read the little epic with your boy and talk it over with him along the lines of the comments given. It will not be necessary for you to point the moral. He will see it for himself, but if you can show a little enthusiasm and delight in the incident he will go away feeling better toward you and will be a convert to poetry, at least to some kinds of it. Later in life the lesson will come back to him and he will seek for more of the same sort.

There are a great number of poems of similar import in the books. Any one of the following will be capital for reading aloud with your boy.

Try them and be convinced.

_Beth Gelert_, Volume III, page 42.

_Sheridan's Ride_, Volume IV, page 223.

_Bernardo Del Carpio_, Volume IV, page 270.

_The Wooden Horse_, Volume IV, page 383.

_Little Giffin of Tennessee_, Volume IV, page 461.

_Bruce and the Spider_, Volume V, page 314.

_How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, Volume V, page 335.

_Sohrab and Rustum_, Volume VI, page 173.

_How's My Boy?_ Volume VII, page 169.

_The Battle of Ivry_, Volume VIII, page 76.

_Herve Riel_, Volume VII, page 168.

Any one of the national anthems or patriotic poems is fine reading and a source for many a kindly talk that will tend to make a better citizen of your son and perhaps give you a fresher and truer conception of your own duties and responsibilities to the government. These you may readily find from the index in the tenth volume, under the t.i.tle, _Patriotic Poems_.

For older boys there are plenty of good selections, and the discussion of some of them must help to bring nearer to the lad his increasing responsibilities. A normal boy of sixteen has a lot of the man in him and wants to be treated as a man, at least to have his ideas, hopes and ambitions given some consideration. He does not want always to be called "Bobby" or "Jimmy" or "Tommy." He likes better to be called "Smith,"

"Jones," or "Robinson," or whatever his last name is. He is tired of being told to do this and that and would like to join in some of the family councils and feel that father is beginning to see the man and forget the "kid." He will be interested in anything that relates to commerce, or manufacture or government if it is presented to him in such a way that he can "be somebody" in the discussion.

It is easy to interest boys in speaking, in orations, in debates. In _Journeys_ (Volume IX, page 321) is printed the _Gettysburg Address_ by Abraham Lincoln. It is the one great, masterly American address, noted not only for its perfect construction, but for its sentiment, its power and its brevity. In no other great address are all these elements combined. Tested by any standard it rings true in thought and is perfect in form. It is worth while to commit it to memory, and father and son should be equally interested in the task, if it can be called a task.

Preceding the address is a note giving its historical setting, and following it is an a.n.a.lysis of the thought and a series of questions tending to give the thought a more personal application. _The Fate of the Indians_ and _A Call to Arms_, both in Volume IX, are good orations accompanied by studies.

An essay that is in effect almost an oration is the extract from the _Impeachment of Warren Hastings_ by Macaulay (Volume IX, page 32), and in this volume are studies on that essay (page 248).

_The Boston Ma.s.sacre_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a pleasing bit of history which in this volume (page 370) is used as the basis of a study in argument. You may prefer to read the studies first and arrange the arguments for your sons or for yourself and your boy. It is surprising into what different directions the argument will lead you and how many interesting questions will arise which will make good subjects for discussion. To make conversation worth while there is needed only something interesting to talk about. To be a good talker is worth a great deal to any young man and there is no better way to give him this power than by conversing freely with him while he is young.

Moral instruction is difficult. A thousand little things tend to neutralize it and there is an almost universal spirit of opposition to moral teaching, on the part of youth. And yet it is easy to give moral lessons in an indirect way that shall arouse no opposition and that shall be effective for lifetime. _Journeys_ is full of what for lack of a better name we call character-building literature. Some of it is adapted to boys and girls of a very tender age and more of it to the older children. _The Cubes of Truth_ (Volume VI, page 406), by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is a beautiful little essay that expresses a great truth in a way to impress it indelibly upon the memory of every person who reads it. So clear is the language, so clever the idea that the selection is read with absorbing interest, and so impressive is the lesson that no real attention need be called to it. In reading it the beauty of the language and the quaintness of the figure are the real subjects of discussion, but all the time the great lesson is making its subtle appeal. Cardinal Newman's _Definition of a Gentleman_ (Volume IV, page 170) is more obviously a didactic selection, but here again the definition is given so clearly and so forcibly that no possible offense can be taken and the weight of the statements will produce their effect without much comment.

In this connection it should be necessary merely to call attention to the chapter on character-building, to be found in this volume. In preparing that chapter the writer had in mind children of all ages and both s.e.xes, but it will be an easy matter for you to select the things which you know will appeal to your son.