The American Child Part 2

Even unto honors, if they must carry them alone, children in America would rather not be born. A little girl who lives in my neighborhood came home from school in tears one day not long ago. Her father is a celebrated writer. The school-teacher, happening to select one of his stories to read aloud to the cla.s.s, mentioned the fact that the author of the story was the father of my small friend.

"But why are you crying about it, sweetheart?" her father asked. "Do you think it's such a bad story?"

"Oh, no," the little girl answered; "it is a good enough story. But none of the other children's fathers write stories! Why do _you_, daddy? It's so peculiar!"

It may be that all children, whatever their nationalities, are like this little girl. We, in America, have a fuller opportunity to become intimately acquainted with the minds of children than have the people of any other nation of the earth. For more completely than any other people do American fathers and mothers make friends and companions of their children, asking from them, first, love; then, trust; and, last of all, the deference due them as "elders." Any child may feel as did my small neighbor about a "peculiar" father; only a child who had been his comrade as well as his child would so freely have voiced her feeling.

We all remember the little boy in Stevenson's poem, "My Treasures,"

whose dearest treasure, a chisel, was dearest because "very few children possess such a thing."

Had he been an American child, that chisel would not have been a "treasure" at all, unless all of the children possessed such a thing.

Not only do the children of our Nation want what the other children of their circle have when they can use it; they want it even when they cannot use it. I have a little girl friend who, owing to an accident in her infancy, is slightly lame. Fortunately, she is not obliged to depend upon crutches; but she cannot run about, and she walks with a pathetically halting step.

One autumn this child came to her mother and said: "Mamma, I'd like to go to dancing-school."

"But, my dearest, I'm afraid--I don't believe--you could learn to dance --very well," her mother faltered.

"Oh, mamma, _I_ couldn't learn to dance _at all_!" the little girl exclaimed, as if surprised that her mother did not fully realize this fact.

"Then, dearest, why do you want to go to dancing-school?" her mother asked gently.

"The other girls in my cla.s.s at school are all going," the child said.

Her mother was silent; and the little girl came closer and lifted pleading eyes to her face. "_Please_ let me go!" she begged. "The others are all going," she repeated.

"I could not bear to refuse her," the mother wrote to me later. "I let her go. I feared that it would only make her feel her lameness the more keenly and be a source of distress to her. But it isn't; she enjoys it.

She cannot even try to learn to dance; but she takes pleasure in being present and watching the others, to say nothing of wearing a 'dancing- school dress,' as they do. This morning she said to her father: 'I can't dance, Papa; but I can talk about it. I learn how at dancing-school. Oh, I love dancing-school!'"

Her particular accomplishment maybe of minute value in itself; but is not her content in it a priceless good? If she can continue to enjoy learning only to talk about the pleasures her lameness will not permit her otherwise to share, her dancing-school lessons will have taught her better things than they taught "the other children," who could dance.

That mother was her little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual--even though that individual was merely a little child--that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been the basis of the child's happiness in the fulfillment of her desire? She _wanted_ to go to dancing-school because the other children were going; but may she not have _liked_ going because she felt that her mother understood and sympathized with her desire to go?

A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked, "But does that not make the children old before their time?"

So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer and fewer grandmothers who are "sweet old ladies," and more and more who are "charming elderly women." We hear less and less about the "older"

and the "younger" generations; increasingly we merge two, and even three, generations into one.

Only yesterday, calling upon a new acquaintance, I heard the four-year- old boy of the house, mentioning his father, refer to him as "Henry."

His grandmother smiled, and his mother said, casually: "When you speak _of_ father, dear, it would be better to say, 'my father,' so people will be sure to know whom you mean. You may have noticed that grandma always says, 'my son,' and I always say 'my husband,' when _we_ speak of him."

"Does he call his father by his Christian name?" I could not resist questioning, when the little boy had left the room.

"Sometimes," replied the child's mother.

"He hears so many persons do it, he can't see why he shouldn't. And there really _is_ no reason. Soon enough he will find out that it isn't customary and stop doing it."

This is a far cry from the days when children were taught to address their parents as "honored sir" and "respected madam." But, it seems to me, the parents are as much honored and respected now as then; and--more important still--both they and the children are, if not dearer, yet nearer one another.

In small as well as in large matters they slip into their parents'

places--neither encouraged nor discouraged, but simply accepted.

Companions and friends, they behave as such, and are treated in a companionable and friendly manner.

The other afternoon I dropped in at tea-time for a glimpse of an old friend.

Her little girl came into the room in the wake of the tea-tray. "Let _me_ pour the tea," she said, eagerly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOY OF THE HOUSE]

"Very well," her mother acquiesced. "Be careful not to fill the cups too full, so that they overflow into the saucers; and do not forget that the tea is _hot_" she supplemented.

The little girl had never poured the tea before, but her mother neither watched her nor gave her any further directions. The child devoted herself to her pleasant task. With entire ease and unconsciousness she filled the cups, and made the usual inquiries as to "one lump, or two?"

and "cream or lemon?"

"Isn't she rather young to pour the tea?" I suggested, when we were alone.

"I don't see why," my friend said. "There isn't any 'age limit' about pouring tea. She does it for her dolls in the nursery; she might just as well do it for us here. Of course it is hot; but she can be careful."

There are few things in regard to the doing or the saying or the thinking of which American parents apprehend any "age limit." Their children are not "tender juveniles." They do not have a detached life of their own which the parents "share," nor do the parents have a detached life of their own which the children "share." There is the common life of the home, to which all, parents and children, and often grandparents too, contribute, and in which they all "share."

This is the secret of that genuine satisfaction that so many of us grown-ups in America find in the society of children, whether they are members of our own families or are the children of our friends and neighbors.

A short time ago I had occasion to invite to Sunday dinner a little boy friend of mine who is nine years old. Lest he _might_ feel his youth in a household which no longer contains any nine-year-olds, I invited to "meet him" two other boys, playmates of his, of about the same age.

There chanced also to be present a friend, a professor in a woman's college, into whose daily life very seldom strays a boy, especially one nine years old.

"What interesting things have you been doing lately?" she observed to the boy beside her in the pause which followed our settling of ourselves at the table.

"I have been seeing 'The Blue Bird,'" he at once answered. "Have _you_ seen it?" he next asked.

No sooner had she replied than he turned to me. "I suppose, of course, _you've_ seen it," he said.

"Not yet," I told him; "but I have read it--"

"Oh, so have I!" exclaimed one of the other boys; "and I've seen it, too. There is one act in the play that isn't in the book--'The Land of Happiness' it is. My mother says she doesn't think Mr. Maeterlinck could have written it; it is so different from the rest of the play."

Those present, old and young, who had seen "The Blue Bird" debated this possibility at some length.

Then the boy who had introduced it said to me: "I wonder, when you see it, whether _you'll_ think Mr. Maeterlinck wrote 'The Land of Happiness'

act, or not."

"I haven't seen 'The Blue Bird,'" the third boy remarked, "but I've seen the Coronation pictures." Whereupon we fell to discussing moving-picture shows.

During the progress of that dinner we considered many other subjects, lighting upon them casually; touching upon them lightly; and--most significant of all--discoursing upon them as familiars and equals. None of us who were grown-up "talked down" to the boys, and certainly none of the boys "talked up" to us. Each one of them at home was a "dear partner" of every other member of the family, younger and older, larger and smaller. Inevitably, each one when away from home became quite spontaneously an equal shareholder in whatever was to be possessed at all.

A day or two after the Sunday of that dinner I met one of my boy guests on the street. "I've seen 'The Blue Bird,'" I said to him; "and I'm inclined to think that, if Mr. Maeterlinck did write the act 'The Land of Happiness,' he wrote it long after he had written the rest of the play. I think perhaps that is why it is so different from the other acts."

"Why, I never thought of that!" the boy cried, with absolute unaffectedness. He appeared to consider it for a moment, and then he said: "I'll tell my mother; she'll be interested."