The Young Mother Part 14

SEC. 4. _Walking._

"The way to learn how to write without ruled lines, is _to rule_," was the frequent saying of an old schoolmaster whom I once knew; and I may say with as much confidence and with more truth, that "the way for a child to learn to walk alone, is to hold by things."

I have antic.i.p.ated, in previous pages, much of what might have otherwise been contained in this section. A few additional remarks are all that will be necessary.

At first, the nursery will be quite large enough for our young pedestrian. Much time should elapse before he is permitted to go abroad, upon the green gra.s.s;--not lest the air should reach him, or the sun shine upon his face and hands, but because the surface of the ground is so much less firm and regular than the floor, that he ought to be quite familiar with walking on the latter, in the first place.

But when he can walk well in the play ground, garden, fields, and roads, it is highly desirable that he should go out more or less every day, when the weather will possibly admit; nor would I be so fearful as many are of a drop of rain or dew, or a breath of wind. For say what they will in favor of riding, sailing, and other modes of exercise, there is none equal to walking, as soon as a child is able;--none so natural--none, in ordinary cases, so salutary. I know it is unpopular, and therefore our young master or young miss must be hoisted into a carriage, or upon the back of a horse, to the manifest danger of health or limbs, or both.

Who of us ever knew a herdsman or a shepherd who found it for the health and well-being of the young calf or lamb to hoist it into a carriage, and carry it through the streets, instead of suffering it to walk? Such a thing would excite astonishment; and the man who should do it would be deemed insane. The health and growth of our young domestic animals is best promoted by suffering them to walk, run, and skip in their own way.

They ask no artificial legs, or horses, or carriages. But would it not be difficult to find arguments in favor of carrying children about, when they are able to walk, which would not be equally strong in favor of carrying about lambs and calves and pigs.

This is the more remarkable from the consideration, elsewhere urged, that in general we take more rational pains about the physical well-being of domestic animals, than of children. However, it will be seen, on a little reflection, that the number of those who carry children about, is, after all, very inconsiderable. The greater portion of the community regard it as too troublesome or costly; and if poverty brought with it no other evils than a permit to children to walk on the legs which the Creator gave them, it could hardly be deemed a misfortune.

It is scarcely necessary to add that there will be nothing gained to the young--or to persons of any age--from walks which are very long and fatiguing. Walking should refresh and invigorate: when it is carried beyond this, especially with the young child, we have pa.s.sed the line of safety.

SEC. 5. _Riding in Carriages._

It will be seen by the foregoing section, that I am not very friendly to the use of carriages for the young, after they can walk. Before this period, however, I think they may be often serviceable; and there are occasional instances which may render them useful afterward. On this account, I have thought it might be well to give the following general directions.

Carriages for children should be so constructed as not to be liable to overset. To this end, the wheels must be low, and the axle unusually extended. The body should be long enough to allow the child to lie down when necessary; and so deep that he may not be likely to fall out.

Everything should be made secure and firm, to avoid, if possible, the danger of accidents.

The carriage should be drawn steadily and slowly; not violently, or with a jerking motion. Such a place should be selected as will secure the child--if necessary--from the full blaze of a hot sun. This point might indeed be secured by having the carriage covered; but I am opposed to covered carriages, for children or adults, unless we are compelled to ride in the rain.

While the child is unable to sit up without injury, and even for some months afterwards, he ought by all means to lie down in a carriage, because it requires more strength to sit in a seat which is moving, than in a place where he is stationary. In a.s.suming the horizontal position, in a carriage, a pillow is needed, and such other arrangements as will prevent too much rolling.

After the child's strength will fairly permit, he may sit up in the carriage, but he ought still to be secured against too much motion. As his strength increases, however, the latter direction will be less and less necessary. I need not repeat in this place, (had I not witnessed so many accidents from neglect,) the caution recently given, that great care should be taken to prevent the child from falling out of the carriage.

While children are riding abroad in cold weather, much pains should be taken to see that they are suitably clothed. It is well to keep them in motion, while they are in the carriage, and especially to guard against their falling asleep in the open air, until they have become very much accustomed to being out in it.

It has been said by some writers, that a ride ought never to exceed the length of half an hour; but no positive rule can be given, except to avoid over-fatigue.

SEC. 6. _Riding on Horseback._

While children are very young, I think it both improper and unsafe to take them abroad on horseback; I mean so long as they are in health. In case of disease, this mode of exercise is sometimes one of the most salutary in the world. But after boys are six or seven years old, and girls ten, if they are ever to practise horsemanship, it is time for them to begin; both because they are less apt to be unreasonably timid at this age, and because they learn much more rapidly.

So few parents are good hors.e.m.e.n, that if there is a riding school at hand, I should prefer placing a child in it at once. But I wish to be distinctly understood, that I do not consider it a matter of importance, especially to females, that they should ever learn to ride at all.

Some of the princ.i.p.al objections to riding on horseback, by boys, as an ordinary exercise, are the following:

1. Walking, as I have already intimated, is one of the most HEALTHY modes of exercise in the world. It is nature's exercise; and was unquestionably in exclusive use long before universal dominion was given to man, if not for many centuries afterward; and I believe it would be very difficult to prove that it interfered at all with human longevity; for the first of our race lived almost a thousand years.

2. Young children, in riding on horseback, are rather apt to acquire, rapidly, the habit of domineering over animals. It seems almost needless to say how easy the transition is, in such cases, should opportunity offer, from tyranny over the brute slave, to tyranny over the human being. There are slave-holders in the family and in the school, as well as elsewhere. It is the SPIRIT of a person which makes him either a tyrant or slave-holder. And let us beware how we foster this spirit in the children whom G.o.d has given us.

CHAPTER XI.

AMUs.e.m.e.nTS.

Universal need of amus.e.m.e.nts. Why so necessary. Error of schools. Error of families. Infant schools, as often conducted, particularly injurious.

Lessons, or tasks, should be short. Mistakes of some manual labor schools. Of particular amus.e.m.e.nts in the nursery. With small wooden cubes--pictures--shuttlec.o.c.k--the rocking horse--tops and marbles--backgammon--checkers--morrice--dice--nine-pins--skipping the rope--trundling the hoop--playing at ball--kites--skating and swimming--dissected maps--black boards--elements of letters--dissected pictures.

However heterodox the concession may be, I am one of those who believe amus.e.m.e.nts of some sort or other to be universally necessary. Indeed I cannot possibly conceive of an individual in health, whatever may be the age, s.e.x, condition, or employment, who does not need them, in a greater or less degree.

Now if by the term amus.e.m.e.nt, I merely meant employment, n.o.body would probably differ from me--at least in theory. Every one is ready to admit the importance of being constantly employed. A mind unemployed is a VACANT mind. And a vacant or idle mind is "the devil's work-shop;" so says the proverb.

By amus.e.m.e.nt, however, I mean something more than mere employment; for the more constantly an adult individual is employed, the greater, generally, is his demand for amus.e.m.e.nt. Indolent persons have less need of being amused than others; but perhaps there are few if any persons to be found, who are so indolent as not to think continually, on one subject or another. And it is this constant thinking, more than anything else, that creates the necessity of which I am speaking. The mere drudge, whether biped or quadruped--he, I mean, whose thinking powers are scarcely alive--has little need of the relief which is afforded by amus.e.m.e.nt.

The young of all animals--man among the rest--appear to have such an instinctive fondness for amus.e.m.e.nt, that so long as they are unrestrained, they seldom need any urging on this point. In regard to _quality_, the case is somewhat different. In this respect, most children require attention and restraint; and some of them a great deal of it.

But what is the nature of the amus.e.m.e.nt which adults--nay, mankind generally--require? I answer, it is relief from the employment of thinking. For it is not that mankind do not really think at all, that moralists complain so loudly. When they tell us that men will not think, they mean that they will not think as rational beings. They think, indeed; and so do the ox, and the horse, and the dog, and the elephant--but not as rational men ought to do; and this it is that const.i.tutes the burden of complaint. But you will probably find few persons belonging to the human species who do not think constantly, at least while awake; and whose mental powers do not become fatigued, and demand relief in amus.e.m.e.nt.

Children's minds are so soon wearied by a continuous train of thinking, even on topics which are pleasing to them, that they can seldom he brought to give their attention to a single subject long at once. They require almost incessant change; both for the sake of relief, and to amuse for the _sake_ of amus.e.m.e.nt. And it is, to my own mind, one of the most striking proofs of Infinite Wisdom in the creation of the human mind, that it has, during infancy, such an irresistible tendency to amus.e.m.e.nt.

How greatly do they err, who grudge children, especially very young children, the time which, in obedience to the dictates of their nature, they are so fond of spending in sports and gambols! How much more rational would it be to encourage and direct them in their amus.e.m.e.nts!

And how exceedingly unwise is the practice, whenever and wherever it exists, of confining them to school rooms and benches, not only for hours, but for whole half days at once.

If individuals and circ.u.mstances were everywhere combined, with the special purpose to oppose the intentions of nature respecting the human being, at every step of his progress from the cradle to maturity, and from maturity to the grave, I hardly know how they could contrive to accomplish such a purpose more effectually than it is at present accomplished. But it is proper that I should here explain a little.

All our family arrangements tend to repress amus.e.m.e.nt. Everything is contrived to facilitate business--especially the business or employments of adults. The child is hardly regarded as a human being,--certainly not as a _perfect_ being. He is considered as a mere fragment; or to change the figure, as a plant too young to be of any real service to mankind, because too young to bear any of its appropriate fruits. Whereas, in my opinion, both infancy and childhood, at every stage, should bring forth their appropriate fruits. In other words, the child of the most tender years should be regarded as a whole, and not as the mere fragment of a being; as a perfect member of a family--occupying a full and complete, only a more limited sphere than older members: and all the rules and regulations and arrangements of the family should have a reference to this point. So long as a child is reckoned to be a mere cipher in creation, or at most, as of no more practical importance, till the arrival of his twenty-first birth day, or some other equally arbitrary period, than our domestic animals--that is, of just sufficient consequence to be fed, and caressed, and fondled, and made a pet of--so long will our arrangements be made with reference to the comfort and happiness of adults. There may indeed be here and there a child's chair, or a child's carriage, or newspaper, or book; but there will seldom be, except by stealth, any free juvenile conversation at the table or the fireside. Here the child must sit as a blank or cypher, to ruminate on the past, or to receive half formed and pa.s.sive impressions from the present.

The arrangements of the infant school, also, seem designed for the same purpose--to repress as much as possible the infantile desire for amus.e.m.e.nt. Not that this was their original, nor that it now is their legitimate intention. Their legitimate object is, or should be, not to develope the intellect by over-working the tender brain, but to promote cheerfulness and health and love and happiness, by well contrived amus.e.m.e.nts, conducted as much as possible in the open air; and by unremitting efforts to elicit and direct the affections.

Infant schools should repress rather than encourage the hard study of books. Lessons at this age should be drawn chiefly from objects in the garden, the field, and the grove; from the flower, the plant, the tree, the brook, the bird, the beast, the worm, the fly, the human body--the sun, or the visible heavens. These lessons, whether given by the parent, as const.i.tuting a part of the family arrangements, or by the infant or primary school teacher, should, it is true, be regarded for the time being as study, but they should never be long; and they should be frequently relieved by the most free and unrestrained pastimes and gambols of the young on the green gra.s.s, or beside the rippling stream, uninfluenced, or at least unrepressed, by those who are set over them.

The public or common school, overlooking as it does any direct attempts to make provision for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the pupils, even during the scanty recess that is afforded them once in three hours, would appear to a stranger on this planet, at first sight, to be designed as much as possible to defeat every intention of nature with reference to the growth of the human frame. For we may often travel many hundred miles and not see so much as an enclosed play ground; and never perhaps any direct provision for particular and more favorable amus.e.m.e.nts.

I might speak of other schools and places of resort for children, and proceed to show how all our arrangements appear to be the offspring of a species of utilitarianism which rejects every sport whose value cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. I might even refer to those schools of our country where these ultra utilitarian notions are carried to an extent which excludes amusing conversation or reading even during meal-time; and devotes the hours which were formerly spent in recreation, to manual labor of some productive kind or other.--But I forbear. Enough has been said to ill.u.s.trate the position I have taken, that there is in vogue a system which bears the marks of having been contrived, if not by the enemies of our race, either openly or covertly, at least by those whom ignorance renders scarcely less at war with the general happiness.

Now I would not deny nor attempt to deny that change of occupation of body or mind is of itself an amus.e.m.e.nt, and one too of great value.

Undoubtedly it is so. To some children, studies of every kind are an amus.e.m.e.nt; and there are few indeed to whom none are so. Labor, with many, when alternated with study, is amusing. And yet, after all, unless such labors are performed in company, where light and cheerful conversation is sure to keep the mind away from the subjects about which it has just been engaged, I am afraid that the purposes for which amus.e.m.e.nts were designed, are very far from being _all_ secured.

But perhaps I am dwelling too long on the general principle that people of every age, and children in particular, need, and must have amus.e.m.e.nts, whether they are of a productive kind or not; and that it is very far from being sufficient, were it either practicable or desirable, to turn all study and labor into amus.e.m.e.nt. [Footnote: I will even say, more distinctly than I have already done, that however popular the contrary opinion may be, neither study nor work ought to be regarded as mere amus.e.m.e.nt. I would, it is true, take every possible pains to render both work and study agreeable; but I would at the same time have it distinctly understood, that one of them is by no means the other; that, on the contrary, work is _work_--study, _study_--and amus.e.m.e.nt, _amus.e.m.e.nt_.] My business is with those who direct the first dawnings of affection and intellect. Principles are by no means of less importance on this account; but the limits of a work for young mothers do not admit of anything more than a brief discussion of their importance.

I will now proceed to speak of some of the more common amus.e.m.e.nts of the nursery.

I have seen very young children sit on the floor and amuse themselves for nearly half an hour together, with piling up and taking down small wooden cubes, of different sizes. Some of them, instead of being cubes, however, may be of the shape of bricks. Their ingenuity, while they are scarcely a year or two old, in erecting houses, temples, churches, &c., is sometimes surprising. Girls as well as boys seem to be greatly amused with this form of exercise; and both seem to be little less gratified in destroying than in rearing their lilliputian edifices.

Next to the latter kind of amus.e.m.e.nt, is the viewing of pictures. It is surprising at what an early age children may be taught to notice miniature representations of objects; living objects especially.

Representations of the works of art should come in a little later than those of things in nature. I know a father who prepares volumes of pictures, solely for this purpose; though he usually regards them not only as a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to children, but as a medium of instruction.

Battledoor or shuttlec.o.c.k may be taught to children of both s.e.xes very early; and it affords a healthy and almost untiring source of amus.e.m.e.nt.