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Title: The book of the child
       An attempt to set down what is in the mind of children

Author: Frederick Douglas How

Release Date: January 29, 2023 [eBook #69896]

Language: English

Produced by: Bob Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE CHILD ***





Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_




                        The Book of the Child




                                 The

                          Book of the Child

                    An Attempt to set down what
                     is in the mind of Children


                      By Frederick Douglas How


                      E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
                   31 WEST 23RD STREET, NEW YORK
                                1907




                             PRINTED BY
                   SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD.,
                           BATH, ENGLAND.
                               (2319)




                               Preface


I am rather shy about this little book.

If it were not for the kindness of some few friends whose knowledge
of children far exceeds my own, it would never have seen the light.

For their encouragement and for the gift of their experiences and
advice I am deeply grateful. I know that they would rather I did not
mention them by name.

The thoughts which I have tried to put together have been growing in
my mind for years. Some, in fact, I have quoted from articles I wrote
some time ago for a magazine no longer in existence.

Perhaps my best excuse for letting this book appear is that, though I
have no children of my own, other people’s children have always been
very good to me.

                                                           F. D. HOW.

_May, 1907._




                              Contents


            CHAP.                             PAGE
               I. THE CHILD—ITS ARRIVAL          9

              II. THE CHILD—ITS MEMORY          24

             III. THE CHILD—ITS IMAGINATION     37

              IV. THE CHILD—ITS RELIGION        66

               V. THE CHILD—ITS IMITATION       96

              VI. THE CHILD—ITS PLEASURES      112

             VII. THE CHILD—ITS PATHOS         136

            VIII. WAYSIDE CHILDREN             162

              IX. CHILDREN’S MEETINGS          176

               X. APPENDIX                     187




                        The Book of the Child




                              CHAPTER I

                        THE CHILD—ITS ARRIVAL


Children have come into greater prominence during the last quarter
of a century than ever before in the history of this country. Many
things have been written about them, many things have been done
for them,—some foolish and some wise, but all suggested by a newly
aroused sense of the vital importance attached to their proper
upbringing.

[Sidenote: The Cause of the Children.]

[Sidenote: Legislation for Children.]

It is, of course, true that the Cause of the Children has been used
by both political parties for their own purposes, but, for all
that, there has been a large amount of most valuable legislation
on the subject during the last twenty years.[1] The helplessness
of children and their rights as citizens of this country have been
better understood and provided for, while their impressionable nature
has been realised, and the rigour of their training and discipline
considerably modified.

[Sidenote: The Better Position of Children.]

It may be that there has been too great a change in some directions.
There may be a freedom of intercourse between children and their
parents or teachers that borders on disrespect. But taking one thing
with another the position of children has altered for the better,
and it is no bad thing that few subjects have greater interest at
the present day than that of Children. It is an interest, too, that
has come to stay. Of a distinctly softening and refining nature like
the taste for gardening, which has brought into the world so many
books during the last few years, it is only now beginning to reveal
its true importance, and it will increase as from year to year more
people perceive its fascination and trace its results.

[Sidenote: Old-fashioned Discipline.]

Sixty or seventy years ago the chief interest in children shown by
parents and teachers was of an extremely disciplinary nature. Many
children were not allowed to sit down without permission when in
their parents’ presence, and it was in many families the rule that
the father and mother should be addressed as “Sir” and “Ma’am.”
Teachers of both sexes ruled mainly by fear, and allowed no intimacy
between themselves and their pupils. The rigour of such upbringing
and education must have withered many a tender-natured child as a
cold black wind in spring will shrivel the opening blossoms of the
fruit trees.

[Sidenote: Children of the Poor.]

[Sidenote: Metropolitan Working Classes’ Association.]

Among the working classes, until the Church began to establish its
schools, the children grew up anyhow, and could in few cases read or
write. Infant mortality and unhealthy conditions of childhood were
prevalent. So much was this the case that in 1847, while little was
yet being thought or written about Children, the Metropolitan Working
Classes’ Association for Improving the Public Health actually put
out a pamphlet on their proper rearing and training. This document
had some considerable circulation, but its usefulness must have been
greatly curtailed by the inability of so many people in those days to
read.

[Sidenote: Literature Concerning Children.]

Before this publication the literature on the subject of children was
extremely scanty. Not only was this the case but those people who did
from time to time write on the subject seem to have been ashamed
of doing so, and their works, appearing once or twice in a century,
are for the most part anonymous.

[Sidenote: The Office of Christian Parents.]

There exists a treatise printed by Cantrell Legge, printer to
the University of Cambridge, in the year 1616, with the title
“The Office of Christian Parents, showing how Children are to be
governed throughout all ages and times of their life. With a brief
Admonitorie addition unto children to answer in dutie to their
Parents’ office.”

[Sidenote: Personal Care of the Mother.]

[Sidenote: Possible Extinction of Boarding Schools.]

The writer, whoever he may have been, appears to have at that very
early date grasped the importance of his subject, for he says, “The
Parent is put in trust to governe the chiefest creature under heaven,
to train up that which is called the Generation of God.” Being thus
impressed with the value of children, it is natural to find the
author of the treatise giving advice that is being more and more
strongly urged upon parents at the present day. Eminent doctors
insist upon the advantage to infants of being personally cared for
by the mother, and not handed over wholesale to a nurse. Educational
experts are more and more inclined to take the view that children
should be kept at home as long as possible. So far, indeed, has this
theory advanced that there is a suggestion of the ultimate extinction
of our great public boarding schools in favour of a larger number of
schools so situated that children may attend them as day scholars
while still living at home under parental care and influence.

[Sidenote: Interference of the Grandmother.]

The old writer of 1616 made a strong point of the child being cared
for by its parents from birth onwards. He (possibly from personal
experience) did not even approve of the interference of the
grandmother, for he quaintly observes, “In some places there comes in
the child-wive’s mother. She will not have her daughter troubled with
the noursing: and the Father cannot abide the crying of the child:
therefore a nurse is sent for in all hast”—a course of action of
which he entirely disapproves.

When the child is a little older he still thinks that its committal
to the care of a servant should be avoided.

“When a child beginneth to know his mother from another, there
groweth two absurdities, either the mother’s fondness maketh it a
crying child and restless, or els her careless committing it to a
servant spills it.”

[Sidenote: The Spoiling of Children.]

Here comes in also his first advice as to the disciplining of a
child. He appears to have held strong views as to the necessity of
firmness, but not to have been in favour of the great severity which
often obtained in those days. His observations are too valuable even
now to be passed over. What could be better than the following? “Here
cometh in the cockling of the parents to give the child the sway of
his owne desires to have whatsoever it pointeth to, and so it maketh
the parents and all the house slaves, and there is no end of noyse,
of crying, and wraling; or els there is such severitie as the heart
of the child is utterly broken.” Or again, “When parents do either
too much cockle their children, or by home example do draw them to
worser things, or els neglect the due discipline and good order, what
I pray you can come to passe? but as we see in trees which beeing
neglected at the first are crooked and unfruitful; contrarily, they
which by the hand and art of the husbandman are proined, stayed up,
and watered, are made upright, faire, and fruitfull.”

[Sidenote: Parents to Superintend their Children’s Upbringing.]

It will be observed that this writer implies in all the advice he
gives that the parent is the proper person to bring up a child, not
a servant at home or a teacher at a distance. “Parents,” he says,
“should watch and attend upon their children for the avoiding of evil
occasions and to see all duties rightly performed.”

How far have we got nowadays from this ideal! How greatly modern
habits of life have interfered with any such possibility! What the
ancient moralist quoted above would have said to the upbringing of
most children at the present day it is difficult to imagine. He sums
up his own point of view very pithily in the words, “The egges are
badly hatched when the bird is away; and the children are unluckily
nurtured whose parents are made careles, being absent through
pleasure.”

[Sidenote: Old-fashioned Severity Leads to Dissimulation.]

More than a century later, in 1748, there appeared another anonymous
publication on the subject. This had for its title “Dialogues on the
Passions, Habits, and Affections peculiar to Children.” The writer
was imbued with ideas so far in advance of his time that fear of
ridicule may have caused him to conceal his name. His sentiments
about the proper treatment of children are very much those at which
most people have arrived to-day, when the subject has received much
prominent attention for a quarter of a century. He combats the
prevailing opinion of that date that the right way to deal with
children is by a system of formal repression and severity. Thus he
makes one of his characters say, “I think it necessary that Children
should be kept at some distance. They are apt to grow pert, sawcy,
and ungovernable if we make too free with them, or permit them the
full liberty of speech in our Company.” To this the reply is made:
“To discover the Diseases of the mind ought to be and must be your
principal study. But in this you will never be successful if you set
out with a practice which teaches them to conceal every bad symptom.”

[Sidenote: A Phase of Lying.]

The truth contained in these words is very generally recognised
nowadays. If a parent wants to make a child untruthful it can be
done at once by causing fear, under the guise perhaps of respect,
to be the ruling sentiment. Children are only too ready to learn!
“As soon as they are born they go astray and speak lies.” It is a
tendency of childhood in every class. A gentleman whose work consists
in preparing little boys for the great public schools once said that
almost every small boy passes through a phase of lying. The mistress
of a little village school declared not long ago that there was only
one child there upon whose word she could absolutely rely.

It follows then that those in charge of children, and especially the
parents, should note the advice of the writer of the Dialogues. He
insists again and again upon the evil effects of fear.

[Sidenote: Children Susceptible of Fear.]

“Fear,” he says, “I think is the first Passion which we can
distinctly trace in the Mind of a Child. They are susceptible of it
almost sooner than they can conceive the Nature of Danger; and it
is the Misfortune of Numbers that the Nurses find this so easily
improved to their purposes that Children find the effects of this
passion as long as they live.”

Again, “As to Dread of Punishment which I have observed to be the
lowest and most grovelling kind of Fear, you must by gentle usage
remove it from the apprehension of such as have imbibed it from harsh
Parents or tyrannical Nurses.”

It is exceedingly remarkable to find a writer in the middle of the
eighteenth century who had studied children to such purpose, and who
ventured to advance opinions such as those quoted above.

[Sidenote: Literature of the last Half Century.]

The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rush of literature
concerning children. It is possible that the great public efforts
made by the various agencies for bettering the lot of homeless,
starving, and ill-treated children began to call special attention to
the treatment of all children. It may be that the general tendency
of the age to level all distinctions between one and another helped
to gain greater consideration for the younger members of the
community. It may even be that a more general appreciation of the
Gospel teaching helped forward this result. Or, as some will say,
it may be simply that a wave of sentiment swept over the country and
brought with it a tenderer regard for little children. It does not
much matter what was the cause. The fact remains that a new interest
was awakened, the people of England wanted to understand childhood
better, and books and magazine articles on the subject appeared in
considerable numbers.

This result, even though some people have thought the supply
excessive, has been of great service. The future of a country largely
depends upon the proper upbringing of its children. This in its turn
depends upon a proper knowledge of the nature of childhood. This
knowledge has been stimulated and increased to an unprecedented
degree by the works of the best of the writers who have recently
dealt with the subject of children.

[Sidenote: Books About Children.]

To mention only two or three. Which of us has not been the wiser and
the better for the books of Kenneth Graham, for such an inimitable
character study as the Rebecca of Kate Douglas Wiggin, and for the
marvellously tender insight into the mystery of the mind of a little
child which has been shown by William Canton in the “Invisible
Playmate” and “W. V. her Book”?

It may be hoped that what is practically a new science may be studied
with even greater diligence in the future, and may be given its
proper position as of paramount importance.

Up to the present date more time and pains have been expended and
more literature published on the rearing and training of horses and
dogs than of the little children upon whom the future destiny of the
world depends.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Appendix.




                             CHAPTER II

                        THE CHILD—ITS MEMORY


[Sidenote: A Baby’s Earliest Impressions.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Berkeley on Blind Boys.]

It is just this—the memory of a child—that makes it so important to
begin the process of training at once. The waxen tablets of a baby’s
mind are very soft. It is impossible to say how soon impressions
are made upon them, or how deep those impressions may be. It is
not impossible that with the very beginning of separate existence
some vague markings are made upon these unsullied tablets. It is
exceedingly interesting to try to imagine what the very earliest
impressions are like. Are they first produced by the sense of sight
or the sense of touch? It has been conclusively proved that the
senses aid one another to a large extent in the early stages of their
use. Bishop Berkeley in an appendix to one of his treatises gives
the reports of two cases of boys born blind with what is called
congenital cataract. Both cases were cured, one at the age of nine,
the other at thirteen or fourteen. Neither of these boys when first
able to see had the least idea what he was looking at. They both
thought that all objects touched their eyes, and neither had any
conception of the shape or distance of an object. They were perfectly
familiar with differences in shape and material by the process of
touch, but when they first obtained sight the appearance of things
meant nothing to them until they had handled them.

But in these cases the sense of touch had existed for years and been
greatly cultivated. It was, therefore, natural that the familiar
sense should come to the aid of the unfamiliar.

[Sidenote: Memory Markings.]

In newborn babies the circumstances are altogether different. All
senses alike are novel, and it would be of great interest, if such a
thing were possible, to determine whether the earlier memory markings
are caused by the vision of light, the sound of voices, or the touch
of the hands that first come in contact with the infant form.

[Sidenote: Precocious Infants.]

But it seems altogether out of our power to determine this question
with any sort of certainty. None of us is able to remember the
impressions of early infancy, and insufficient observation of the
results of ocular, aural, or other contact with external things on
the part of babies has resulted in an absence of data upon which to
argue. Mothers, nurses, and maiden aunts are often ridiculed for
declaring that “baby” has shown some astoundingly precocious power
of observation or recognition, and no doubt these manifestations are
in a large number of cases accounted for by a desire on the part of
the narrator to be able to claim a special share of the infantile
affection, or a special power of imparting infantile accomplishments.

[Sidenote: Case of Very Early Memory.]

At the same time there is every probability that infants observe and
think more accurately than would be generally allowed by their casual
male acquaintances. The present writer can vouch for at least one
case where a permanent impression was made upon the mind of a very
young child, and memory markings were indented which certainly lasted
for several years. The facts are these: A man who shall be called
A. B. was invalided and ordered to spend a winter at the seaside.
While there a young married couple with their first baby shared his
lodgings. The child, a boy, was just six months old, and for some
eighteen weeks he was the frequent companion of A. B., especially
when the weather prevented either from going out. During many an
hour the baby boy lay on the cushions of a low basket chair kicking
and crowing with delight while his man friend talked or sang to him,
and so a firm friendship grew up between the two, though its verbal
expression was entirely confined to the elder of them.

When the baby was ten months old the inevitable parting came, and for
about two years they saw nothing of one another. At last, however, it
became possible for the child’s mother to bring him to a house where
his old friend was staying. During the journey she said to the little
chap, “Do you know who you are going to see? You are going to see A.
B.” Without a moment’s hesitation the boy said, “A. B. with beard?”
showing that he remembered what was no doubt to him the most striking
item in his friend’s appearance, though at the time that the memory
mark was made on his mind he was too young to pronounce the word
describing the thing that made the impression. But further evidence
of the child’s memory was forthcoming, for as soon as he was set down
on arrival at the front door of the house he ran straight to A. B.
with every mark of affectionate joy at seeing him again.

Here is an instance of infant memory that is absolutely true, and, as
the boy was in no way precocious or unnatural, it is fair to assume
that there must be plenty of cases where the impressions made upon
an infant’s mind during the period when its age is marked by months
and not by years are of a far more permanent nature than is generally
assumed.

[Sidenote: Memory at a Later Age.]

But for most illustrations of children’s memory we are compelled to
begin at a later age. Few people remember much that happened before
they were three years old, but from about that time it is common to
find a remarkably clear recollection of certain scattered events or
experiences.

It is a usual thing to hear it said by those who have passed middle
age, that their remembrance of their childhood grows clearer as time
goes on. This is accounted for by the fact that _fewer_ impressions
were made upon their minds during their earliest years, whereas in
later life the memory tablets get crowded with all sorts and kinds of
markings which become confused and partially unintelligible in a very
short time.

[Sidenote: Emotions of Surprise, Pleasure, or Pain.]

Besides being fewer in number it is also probable that in early
childhood the memory markings that endure are those of such
experiences as caused strong emotions of surprise, pleasure, or pain.
One of the very earliest recollections of the writer is of attending
a wedding when he was three years old. But none of the usual
incidents impressed him at all. The dresses of the bridesmaids, the
appearance of the bride, the bouquets, bells and other accompaniments
of a wedding have been completely forgotten. No remembrance of any
single person or circumstance remains excepting two things which
struck him with astonishment. First of all, he, in common with others
attending the service, was taken across a wide river in a boat, and,
secondly, he was put to stand close against the back of a harmonium,
the noise of which at such close quarters was to him extraordinary
and rather disagreeable.

[Sidenote: Joys Better Remembered than Griefs.]

The complete obliteration of everything connected with this visit—for
the ceremony took place a day’s journey from his home—seems to point
clearly to the fact that the unusual is not by itself enough to
permanently impress a child’s mind, but it must be coupled with
sensations of peculiar surprise, or special pleasure or pain. With
regard to the two latter it is a beneficent provision that the joys
of early life are remembered long after its sadnesses have been
forgotten.

[Sidenote: Summer Days at a Country Rectory.]

A man looks back on the summers he spent as a child in a country
rectory. It appears to him that the days were ever sunny: he recalls
the sharp hiss of the whetstone on the scythe, which told him as
he lay in his little bed that the parson’s man was mowing the
lawn before the dew was off the grass; he can remember the wild
strawberries in the less conventional part of the garden; he can
in fancy take his way to the cowhouse, mug in hand, to get a drink
of new and frothy milk; he can climb about the lower branches of a
favourite tree; he can rake and water his little square of garden;
he can come home atop of the last load of hay from the glebe fields;
but it is always in the dancing sunlight that he moves; it would seem
to him that there could never have been any single day in all his
childhood when rain came down and skies were grey and cold.

[Sidenote: The Old Nursery.]

And so, too, of the life indoors. He remembers much of this in
comparison with the later years. He remembers exactly where each
piece of furniture stood in the old nursery. He can tell you with
what colour the ottoman was covered in which his brothers’ and
sisters’ outdoor things were kept, and he vividly remembers standing
upon it to look out of the window and watch the gardener at work. He
can recall exactly how much of the spout was broken belonging to the
old grey teapot in which was brewed the senna tea, but he cannot tell
you what the stuff tasted of—though he is sure that it was nasty.
The nursery, the stairs, and the passages are in his memory so many
playgrounds; he forgets the many childish tears that he shed, and the
childish tragedies that befell him, while the games and the laughter
and the pleasantness of his early surroundings are easily recalled.

But if he examines carefully into his early impressions he will find
that the events which older persons might be expected to remember are
forgotten, while the little matters that brought to his babyhood’s
experience sensations of pain or pleasure—but especially the
latter—are clear. That is to say, the memory markings made in early
childhood do not include the greater number of things which came in
contact with the various senses of the child, but are really few in
number and connected invariably with special sensations.

It is a vast mistake to measure the importance of a child’s
interests by those of a grown-up person. It is easy for the latter to
forget every detail of a house in which he has passed some months or
even years of middle age, but he will remember a shallow step leading
down from one of his nurseries to the other.

How small a thing! Yes, but it was productive of great sensations.
It was the first step he had ever known—by it was revealed to him
the entirely new idea that one room could be on a different level
from another. Then he found that it was a splendid place to sit
upon—just the right height for him—and a still better place upon
which to set up bricks and toys in order to knock them down and hear
the crash of their fall. But, best of all, it was the place where
his first deed of daring was performed. There came a day when he
ventured to jump down! It was the first time that he had really cared
for spectators: it was the first time that he had looked round for
applause. For all these reasons—all connected with new sensations of
pleasure—that little shallow wooden step made a deeper memory mark
upon his mind than many subsequent places or events that have perhaps
helped to turn the current of his life. But, after all is said, it is
impossible not to feel that the unknown is so largely in excess of
the known, in this as in many other subjects, that the only thing to
be done is to try to induce those who have to do with little children
to remember that much is possible and even probable—to act, that is,
as if the youngest child may possibly remember for its good or ill
any smallest fact or object with which its senses are brought into
contact.




                             CHAPTER III

                      THE CHILD—ITS IMAGINATION


The imagination of the poet, of the novelist, of the advertiser of a
patent medicine, is as nothing compared with that of a little child.
No one who is unable to realise this will understand children or be
really successful in their upbringing.

[Sidenote: The Riotous Imagination of Children.]

[Sidenote: Unimaginative Parents.]

Whence come all the marvellous ideas that people the brain of a
mere baby of two or three years? Is it that it has descended but a
step or two down the staircase and still has a mind to some extent
untrammelled by human limitations and the hard dry facts of earth?
Or is it that, possessed of a keenly receptive power, it has not
learnt to control or arrange the multitudes of facts that present
themselves daily to its senses? This wonderful imagination is no
doubt closely allied with the early powers of memory of which mention
has been made, and may also have something at least to do with the
early propensity to untruthfulness. Many a child has suffered at the
hands of an unimaginative parent for words which have been ruthlessly
called lies though they have been so strongly prompted by a vivid
imagination that they have seemed as true to the utterer as much that
is unintelligible but has to be accepted.

[Sidenote: Arrangement of the Numerals.]

[Sidenote: The Circle of the Months.]

A moment’s thought will show at what an early age imagination came
into play with most people. By far the greater number have by its aid
clothed certain abstract ideas in definite concrete forms, and have
done this when so young that it is impossible for them to remember
the time when these things first took shape. For instance, most
people have a definite arrangement of the numerals. A common form for
this to take is that of the numbers one to twelve appearing to run
slightly upwards and towards the right, those from twelve to twenty
taking a downward turn in the same direction. At the number twenty a
sharp turn is taken to the left, and from that point to one hundred
they run uphill with an increasing steepness. Many other directions
and shapes are discovered by questioning people on this subject, but
it is very rare to find an example of the numerals being nothing but
an abstract idea. The same thing occurs with the months. To most
people they appear in a circle, winter being in some cases at the
top, and summer in others. In one case a person imagines them in a
semicircle, and in another (the strangest yet met with) they are in
a zig-zag, three months running up, and three down, and so on, the
form being like that of a rather straggling M.

[Sidenote: Effects of Colour.]

Colour also is occasionally imagined, and there is no doubt that
children are specially susceptible to its influence at a very early
age. A writer in the eighteenth century to whom allusion has been
made in Chapter I makes the following observation: “There are some
children so tenderly organised that many kinds of sounds are harsh
to their Infant Ears and apt to fright them, and some colours strike
them with too great and quick a Glare and have the same Effect till
by Custom they are made familiar to their Organs.”

[Sidenote: Colour of the Days.]

It is certain at all events that colour has played an important part
in the imagination of many people from their earliest years. A lady
declares that all her life long the days of the week have appeared
to her to be of certain definite colours. Thus, Sunday is brick red,
Monday the same, Tuesday lilac, Wednesday white, Thursday dark brown,
Friday grey, and Saturday mauve and yellow. All this imagining took
place so near the start of her life that the colour, form, etc., of
the days appear to this lady to be facts dating from the beginning
of time itself. It should be noted that in these and all similar
instances the imagination is apparently independent of outside
influences such as pictures or descriptions which might be supposed
to have affected a little child.

[Sidenote: The Imaginary Child-Friend.]

It is possible to go further than this and to say that the most vivid
imaginings are as a rule those which a child produces absolutely
and apart from the suggestion of others. Under this head comes the
imaginary child-friend called into existence in most cases by one
who has no playmate of similar age. The grown-up people in the
house know nothing of this imaginary friend until the real child is
overheard talking to it and calling it by name. It is remarkable to
notice how nothing seems to disturb the commonplace reality of the
whole thing in the mind of the child. When the imaginary friend is
in the room his or her presence is never for a moment forgotten, and
plans are gravely made to suit the convenience not of one only but of
_both_ the children.

Next in importance to the unsuggested imaginings are those to which
a sensitive child gives way on the slightest hint. This is a very
practical matter, and one to which those who have to do with children
should take heed.

[Sidenote: Imaginary Terrors.]

It is impossible to say at how early an age a suggestion of any kind
may bear fruit. A lady once said that her childhood was one long
misery owing to a vivid imagination of the terrors that awaited her
for having committed a certain fault when a baby in the nursery. It
was not, she said, that much had been made of it at the time, but
there was some suggestion of an awful unknown punishment, which her
childish brain worked upon and developed until she dared not be left
alone and became a thoroughly morbid and wretched little being.

It is obvious that too great care cannot possibly be taken by those
to whom children are entrusted, inasmuch as a chance word may set a
child’s imagination working and affect the tendency of its thoughts
and actions for years.

[Sidenote: Untruthfulness and Imagination.]

It was suggested at the beginning of this chapter that there is
probably some relation between this power of imagination and the
tendency to untruthfulness which is found in so many children. It is
one of the most difficult things possible to define exactly where
the knowledge of untruthfulness comes in. Probably no two children
are alike in this, and it requires the utmost tact and a close
knowledge of a particular child’s character to determine the point
where the one thing ends and the other begins.

Here is an example. A short time ago a little boy still in the
nursery was taken out by his father in the carriage for a drive. When
they arrived at the farther end of the town the little chap was sent
home in the carriage by himself, his father having been deposited at
his place of business. When the carriage arrived back at the door of
the house the parlourmaid came out and carried the child indoors,
being surprised to find him in tears. Struggling out of her arms he
set off upstairs to the nursery, sobbing bitterly all the way. “What
is the matter, dear?” said the nurse. “I’se had to walk by mine own
self all froo the town, and I was dreffly frightened,” was the reply.
“How ever did you get across the High Street, my poor darling?”
“There was lots of cabs and cawwiages and things, and I knewed I
would be runned over!” All this with many sobs and much burying
of his head in nurse’s lap. Hearing the wailing in the nursery up
came the parlourmaid, to whom the nurse poured out her indignation.
“Just fancy! Making this poor lamb walk home all through the town
by himself! It’s a mercy he was not killed again and again!” “Walk
through the town! Why, whatever do you mean? Why, I lifted him out of
the carriage at this very door not ten minutes ago!”

Well, the temptation to punish the little fellow must have been
great. One hopes it was resisted. There can be small doubt that a
vivid imagination had mastered him as he drove home alone. It was
all “what might have been,” and it became so real to him that it
seemed to be “what was.”

[Sidenote: Confession of an Imaginary Sin.]

Again, a case recurs to the recollection of the writer where a small
child was summoned into the presence of an angry parent who listened
to no excuses, but insisted so strongly and so often on the guilt
of the small boy, that at last he actually seemed convinced by the
reiterated accusation and, imagining that his parent must know best,
actually confessed to a sin which subsequent events proved the
impossibility of his having committed.

Now for an example where it is probable that the imagination of the
child is used for ulterior purposes and the borderland between fancy
and untruthfulness is likely to be crossed.

[Sidenote: Jinks.]

There is a little girl who a few years ago was possessed of many
dolls, but the supreme favourite was an old monkey-doll by name
“Jinks.” He was so much hugged and cuddled from the first that he
soon became shabby. He quickly lost all his hair except a tuft on
each side of his face, and his clothes were reduced to a pair of dark
blue trousers and a sort of shabby white jersey. But the shabbier he
became the more she loved him, and in time, being an ingenious little
person, she began to make use of him, as is often the case among
grown-up people. The first instance on record is of the simplest
kind, but showed much insight into human nature. The little girl had
been disobedient and was being duly lectured on her fault. She stood
there looking very serious with “Jinks” tightly clasped in her arms.
All of a sudden the length of the lecture became more than she could
bear. Something must be done. Suddenly she held up the ugly old doll
and with a pleasant smile upon her face remarked, “Look at Jinks! ’ow
’e’s laughing!” It was an ingenious and effective ruse, but a ruse it
was and not mere play of imagination.

On another more recent occasion she made use of “Jinks” in a rather
more elaborate fashion. Her everyday gloves were knitted woollen
ones and these she disliked intensely. One day she was seen starting
out in a pair which were properly kept for Sundays. She was stopped
and asked why she had put on her best gloves. “Why,” she answered at
once, “You see when I was getting ready I thought p’raps I should
meet Jinks on the stairs—and he can’t _bear_ to see me in those
woolly gloves!”

Most people who have little children among their friends can remember
similar instances, and these are just the cases where firm but
sympathetic interference is necessary to prevent confusion between
imagination and want of truth.

[Sidenote: The Idea of Death.]

[Sidenote: Desire for a Legacy.]

Possessed as they are of such great powers of imagination in many
directions it is curious to notice how often children seem unable
to realise or picture to themselves matters with which they will be
familiar enough in after life. Take, for instance, the subject of
death. A child will imagine the death of a doll. This is a fancy that
occurs rarely, and the imagination goes as a rule no further. A child
does not picture to itself the sorrow and loss commonly caused by the
death of a real person. A little girl of three years old was sitting
on her godfather’s knee. There was an immense affection between the
two, and either would have missed the other sadly. An old man in
the village known by sight to the little girl had lately died, and
she had just remarked to her godfather quite as a bit of cheerful
gossip, “Old John is dead.” The conversation then turned upon a
certain gold watch which the little maiden desired more than anything
in the world. Once more she was told, “No, I really can’t give it
to you; I want it so badly myself.” Then followed these apparently
callous words. “Your hair is _rather_ white like old John’s. I s’pect
you will be dead soon. Then can I have the watch?”

At first sight this sounds heartless and calculating, but as a matter
of fact it was certainly not the former. The subject of death was too
big for her imagination, that was all.

[Sidenote: Small Imagination of Suffering.]

In this same connection it is found that pain as affecting others
is often very slightly realised by children, and they seem to be
unable to imagine suffering such as has not come within their own
experience. It is for this reason that little children often inflict
tortures on animals, especially on flies and other small creatures
which are at their mercy. It is not from a love of cruelty as some
people have said, but simply because their imagination falls short in
this direction, and they do not realise the effects of their actions.

But, with certain exceptions, a child has invariably an immense
capability for imagining. As has been stated, the most vivid fancies
seem to spring up unbidden, but it is equally true that it is
possible in a large degree to influence the _kind_ of imagination.
Happiness is an essential atmosphere for the upbringing of a child,
and happiness is to a large extent dependent in childhood upon
imagination. By supplying this atmosphere the best kind of imaginings
can be ensured.

[Sidenote: Parental Sympathy.]

A child whose parents are occupied entirely with themselves and their
own affairs and have no sympathy with childish fancies will shrink
up into itself and have a stunted mental and spiritual growth: the
terrified child will grow up amid horrible imaginings; it is only the
child to whom gentleness and sympathy are as the very air it breathes
who will imagine happy and beautiful things, and live to enjoy the
fulfilment of them here and hereafter.

[Sidenote: Poetic Imaginings.]

This leads naturally to the poetic imaginings of many children who
have outgrown their babyhood, but have not yet had their fancies
blurred and obscured by the tasks and troubles of the world. They
possess a gift which all may envy—the gift of endowing all manner
of things, both those which are beautiful in themselves and those
which are not, with a glory not their own. This gift comes from the
power of connecting one thought with another, or perhaps of allowing
one idea unconsciously to suggest another, which is the root of all
imagination. It is a gift that has brought sunshine and happiness to
thousands of children, and is preserved by some in after life. All
our great poets and painters have kept hold of this power, and many
persons share vicariously in its delights as they read the glorious
thoughts or gaze on the exquisite pictures that have been thus
inspired.

And yet there are some who scoff. They have forgotten their
childhood’s gift, and are too self-satisfied to regret it. Not so the
old poet Wordsworth. He felt the power leaving him. The brightness of
his poetic imagination was on the wane, and he thus lamented it:—

  There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
  The earth and every common sight,
          To me did seem
  Apparell’d in celestial light,
  The glory and the freshness of a dream.
  It is not now as it hath been of yore;
          Turn wheresoe’er I may
          By night or day,
  The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

There are many people who have never troubled to understand children
and who are mightily sceptical as to the powers and the charm that is
claimed for them. It is hardly possible to do better here than to ask
such persons to read the example given below of a child’s poetical
imaginings.

The story is told in the first person, and is in the main literally
true. It is called

                             “I WONDERS”

[Sidenote: “I Wonders”]

“It was a lovely September day. I had any number of duties to fulfil
at home. There was a pile of letters waiting to be answered, there
was a magazine article hardly begun for which I had received an
urgent demand from the publishers only that morning, and there was a
meeting of school managers which my conscience told me I ought on no
account to miss. But, as I said before, it was a simply lovely day
and nature (human and the other) cried shame on staying indoors.
Whether I should have had sufficient strength of mind to have
resisted the temptation had I been left to fight it out with nature
I shall never know, for the enemy received a sudden reinforcement
before which I yielded ignominiously and at once. I had gone so far
as to clear my blotting-pad of loose letters and to open my ink
bottle when there came a tiny tap at the study door. ‘Come in!’ I
called, and there ensued a curious twisting at the handle of the
door, productive of no result. ‘Come in!’ I called again, and this
time there was no further delay.

“With a little burst the door flew open and revealed that my visitor
was no less and no greater a person than Helen.

[Sidenote: Helen.]

“Now Helen needs some description, and no better time for giving it
could be found than as she stood there at the top of the three or
four steps which lead up to my sanctum, her face flushed with her
struggle with the door handle.

“Helen was a town-bred child of five years old, and the colour gave
her usually pale face an added charm. Charm is the right word to use,
for, though she did not possess any very great beauty (excepting her
large dark eyes and lashes), it was impossible not to fall under her
charm. She fascinated by her various moods, often serious almost
to melancholy, but suddenly bursting out into utter and abandoned
joyousness. She fascinated again by her vivid imagination, by the
sensitiveness with which she shrank from an unresponsive look or
word, and by the gradual unfolding of her nature to anyone who
_understood_. She had come to stay with us in our completely country
house, and was entranced with the mystery and delight of all she saw.

“On that particular morning she had come to demand that I should
fulfil a promise to go out and pick blackberries, for had not I said
that I had passed quantities of big ones, all ripe and ready, only
the day before? There she stood in her white sun bonnet and her short
red flannel jacket, beneath which came the bottom of her white frock
and a little pair of legs which country sun and air were already
beginning to assimilate to those of our village bairns in colour
though not in thickness.

“‘Well?’ I said, to which her only reply was to hold up and shake at
me an empty basket with which she had provided herself. ‘What’s that
for?’ said I. ‘I wonders!’ she answered, using an expression with
which we had already become familiar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you had better
tell me.’ ‘Can’t you guess?’—with some scorn—and then triumphantly,
‘Backberwies, o’ course!’

“There was very little more to be said. Nature might have been
resisted alone, but nature _and_ Helen would have proved too much for
a stronger and more reluctant man than I. And so it was arranged.
Helen was to meet me in the hall in a quarter of an hour, which would
give me time to scribble a couple of notes, one (by the way) to the
publishers to say that great pressure prevented my finishing the
article that day, which was true—in a sense!

“I have been many walks with many people, but none that I can compare
with the one upon which Helen and I started that sunny September
morning. I have walked as an undergraduate with learned dons who
discoursed of matters beyond my ken. I have walked with ladies of
sentiment, who vainly appealed to my sympathy and imagination. But
never till that morning did I walk with a companion who carried me
with her into another world and who obtained complete sway over my
every thought and action. This did not begin all at once.

[Sidenote: Through the Village.]

“There was a little bit of the village through which we must pass,
and here there were sundry dangers. Old Sawyer’s black and white
sow had got loose and certainly looked formidably large and fierce
as she shoved her snout with deep grunts into the ditch beside the
road. Then a farmer’s collie-dog—a particular friend of mine, but a
stranger and therefore a possible foe to my companion—came prancing
up. These and other sources of terror, such as the village flock of
geese, made it essential that we should proceed with caution and with
such strength as a union of hands might afford. However, it did not
take long to bring us to the end of the cottages and out on to the
road beside which I had seen the blackberries hanging all ready to
be picked. It was a good wide road with a broad strip of grass on
either side, along one of which was a row of telegraph posts which
brought the single wire by which we were connected with the busy
world. The hedges were high and bushy—full of honeysuckle, now out of
bloom, wild roses by this time showing only their scarlet fruit, wild
hops climbing everywhere with rapid eager growth, clematis giving
promise of a hoary show of old man’s beard, and in and out and over
and through it all the long thorny brambles with their many-coloured
leaves and their shiny black and red and green berries.

[Sidenote: The Backberwy People.]

“With just one look round to assure herself that nobody and nothing
was about, Helen let go my hand and rushed off like a mad thing along
the grass, just recovering herself with a gasp from a bad stumble
over a dried and hidden heap of road scrapings. All of a sudden
she stopped. She had caught sight of the ‘backberwies’ and of the
numberless other brilliant and tempting objects in the hedge. In a
moment her imagination had caught fire. ‘I wonders!’ she said as I
came up. Then, when her breath was quite recovered, she added very
earnestly, ‘Can us get them backberwy people? It’s vewy dangewous,
isn’t it? Look at them nettles and fistles! Is them the backberwies’
policemen—I wonders?’

“If they were, they proved very useful as far as warding off attacks
on the part of a little bare-legged maiden went. However, by dint of
_very_ careful steering she managed to get close up to a splendid
cluster of fruit and had picked some four or five when one of the
sharp hooky thorns tore her finger and brought tears into her eyes.
Even so, the play went on. ‘Oh! the backberwies’ dog has bit me!’ she
cried, as she held up the poor little finger for me to see. It was
really a nasty prick, and I could see that it hurt her a good deal,
so I tied her handkerchief round it, and said we would try to find a
place further on where the dogs were not so savage.

[Sidenote: The Backberwy Ball.]

“We went on a yard or two and passed close to one of the telegraph
posts through which a light breeze was humming. Helen stopped short
with eyes dilated and open mouth. ‘Oh! I _wonders_!’ she cried.
‘What is it?’ I asked her. She whispered to me to keep quite still
while she went to see, and proceeded to put her ear against the
post, holding up one finger of the injured hand in warning to me not
to stir. ‘There’s beautiful music,’ she said at last very softly,
‘there’s a ball, and all the little backberwies is dancing!’ I said
that if the old blackberries let the young ones go to a ball without
them it served them right if they got picked themselves. I then
suggested that we should go on to the next post and see what was
going on there. As we went Helen noticed that near each one there was
a heap of stones and a bare gravelly patch of ground. ‘Them is the
backberwy houses,’ she said, ‘and all the backberwies are out, and
the children are gone to a dancing class, so the old backberwies send
them by theirselves.’ So the little difficulty which I had mentioned
was explained away, though to the vividness of her imagination it had
evidently presented a real difficulty and had not been forgotten.

“Presently, after listening to the music in several telegraph posts,
saying that there was an organ in one and fiddles in another, while
in a third she declared that the blackberries were singing, she
returned to the hedge and the more serious duty of filling her little
basket. All the time, however, she kept up a comment upon what she
saw. The red hips and haws were ‘the backberwies’ soldiers,’ the
elderberries were their clergymen, and the sloes were guards. Every
few minutes she stopped in a sort of ecstasy at all that was around
her, and gazing in one direction and another would softly say, ‘Oh! I
wonders!’ It was evidently a revelation of beauty to her, and at the
same time a scene of mystery, a sort of fairyland where everything
thought and lived and breathed.

[Sidenote: The Wicked Soldiers.]

“At last the basket was getting nearly full, and in stretching up
for some specially fine berries a dog-rose thorn tore the back of my
hand, leaving a long scratch. Helen’s anger knew no bounds.

“‘The wicked, wicked soldiers,’ she said, and then taking several of
the bright red hips she tore them into fragments and threw them away.
And now we had wandered backwards and forwards along that special
bit of hedge until all the blackberries within reach were picked, and
only the baby green ones were left. ‘Will they die if we leaves them
all alone?’ she said, and then she gathered as many as possible, and
carrying them in her two hands placed them in little heaps near each
telegraph post that they might be noticed when the balls and concerts
were over.

“I said that I wondered what the young blackberries would do when
they came out and found all their fathers and mothers gone, and only
the little babies left. And Helen said ‘I wonders.’”




                             CHAPTER IV

                       THE CHILD—ITS RELIGION


[Sidenote: Three Kinds of Parents.]

[Sidenote: A French Work on Children.]

Probably one of the earliest perplexities that presents itself to
a parent is the question of the child’s religion. And yet it is
doubtful whether in the generality of cases the matter is considered
early enough. There are, evidently, three kinds of parents taking
three separate views of the question. There are those who hold
distinctly materialistic opinions, and who therefore deliberately
decline to enter into the subject at all. They agree with the
sentiments expressed in a French work on children published some
quarter of a century ago in which the following passages occur:
“We may boldly assert that the sense of religion exists no more in
the intelligence of a little child than does the supernatural in
nature.” And again: “In our opinion parents are very much mistaken in
thinking it their duty to instruct their little ones in such things,
which have no real interest for them—as who made them, who created
the world, what is the soul, what is its present and future destiny,
and so forth.”

It is a happiness to believe that few English parents endorse these
views. The extraordinary stir made by an Education Bill, the chief
concern of which was to affect the religious teaching of children, is
evidence of a widespread belief in the necessity of such teaching.

[Sidenote: Careless Parents.]

But, in the second place, there are some parents who are simply
careless. They would be rather shocked at being told that they
themselves were irreligious, but, when they forget all about their
children’s religion, it cannot be supposed that their own is of much
real concern to them.

[Sidenote: Anxious Parents.]

[Sidenote: Early Impressions of Good and Evil.]

Thirdly, there are the parents who desire beyond all things that
their children shall lead religious lives, and are anxious to do
their utmost to start the little feet on the right path. It is this
class of parent who is often perplexed to know what is best. The
difficulties are certainly great. Children differ so widely that what
is good for one child may be harmful for another. But in almost all
cases the tendency is to put off religious teaching too long. The
mind of a very young child—one who would be commonly described as a
baby—has been proved again and again to be remarkably receptive of
evil as well as of good influences and impressions, and the earlier
a baby’s mind can be filled with the very simplest religious truths
the less room there will be for evil, and the greater the likelihood
of a firm belief in truths that have been absorbed almost with the
mother’s milk.

This leads to the question of how far a very young child has
any direct personal religion; any feeling, that is, of a direct
communication even of the most elementary kind between itself and its
GOD without the intervention of any human being.

[Sidenote: A Child’s Direct Personal Religion.]

[Sidenote: Religion through the Mother.]

It would probably be true to say that _at first_ this is impossible,
but that at a very early age the sense can be imparted. To quote the
words of a mother who has brought up a number of children in the fear
and love of GOD, personal religion in children “of course begins by
being mixed up with _Mother_, who, if she is a real mother, is to her
babies the representative of warmth, comfort, love, and everything
that they want.” When, in addition to this a child has depended for
months upon its mother for food, and has constantly slept in her
arms, the influence of that mother is so great that her religion
naturally becomes the religion of the child, who accepts every word
she says absolutely. Thus, the “GOD bless you” and the words of
loving prayer which come so often and so naturally to a mother’s lips
are absorbed by the child until its faith in some unconscious way
grows into its life and becomes a real thing between itself and its
GOD.

Thus, it will be seen that there is a certain truth underlying a
statement made by the French author quoted above when he says:
“Children’s reverence and love attaches itself to the human beings
who are kind to them, but to nothing which is invisible or distinct
from their species. Their instinct of finality is wholly objective
and utilitarian.” It is true that in the first instance a baby’s
reverence and love attaches itself to the mother, but to assert
that afterwards it rejects anything invisible or apart from its own
species is to deny the influence of a religious feeling flowing
through the mother to the child, and to limit the power of the Spirit
of GOD who can surely dwell in the heart of a very little child.

An example of the way in which children of very tender years can and
often do grasp the great truths of the religion which they inherit
from their parents has lately been told to the writer by the mother
of the child in question.

[Sidenote: Where She was Heavened.]

She was a little girl of three and a half years old, and was taken
one day by her father into the church in which she had been baptized.
Pointing to the font, he said, “Do you know what happened to you
there?” For a moment the child looked perplexed, and nestling up to
her father said, “_You_ tell me, daddy.” “No,” he replied, “I want
you to tell me.” There was another moment’s hesitation, and then she
looked up at him and very solemnly said, “I was _heavened_ there!”

Probably no answer that she could have made would have been so
comprehensive and so convincing of the real grasp of the truth as
this word her baby intelligence had coined.

Examples can easily be found to show at how early an age a child may
be influenced for good or evil. “I have seen,” says a parent, “a baby
trained to habits of cleanliness in six weeks of life,” and it is
doubtless true that the difference between good and evil first of all
means to a child what is allowed or what is forbidden. But together
with this it must always be remembered that there is the sense of
safety and of love which, originally connected with “Mother,” is (in
the case of a religious parent) speedily carried onwards and upwards
to the love and care of GOD.

[Sidenote: Olive Schreiner.]

In this connection a passage in Olive Schreiner’s “Story of an
African Farm” can hardly be omitted. It runs thus: “The souls of
little children are marvellously delicate and tender things, and
keep for ever the shadow that first falls on them, and that is the
mother’s, or, at best, a woman’s. There never was a great man who
had not a great mother: it is hardly an exaggeration. The first six
years of our life make us: all that is added later is veneer. And yet
some say, if a woman can cook a dinner or dress herself well, she has
culture enough.”

All that has been so far written in this chapter on Children’s
Religion is of necessity vague and rather difficult. To arrive at
_facts_ is almost impossible. The best that can be done is to speak
of probabilities in the light of that faith which has been handed
down. The religion of children of less tender years presents fewer
difficulties, and to the consideration of this it is proposed now to
turn.

But while the difficulties are fewer, they do not altogether
disappear. It is often, for instance, extraordinarily difficult to
determine in the case of a child of six or seven years how far his
or her religion has even at that age become directly personal, or
whether GOD is not often a Being to whom access is only possible
through someone else.

[Sidenote: Religion of Rather Older Children.]

[Sidenote: A Child’s Faith.]

The evidence obtainable on this point is most contradictory. A mother
writes, “Children’s faith soon becomes a real thing between them
and their GOD. My little boy of five is perfectly delightful in the
fulness of his faith. Only to-night when I had gone up, as I always
do, to tell him a Bible story or sing some hymns before he went off
to sleep, he suddenly said, ‘Mother, don’t you wish Jesus was on
earth now?’ When I said, ‘Why do you wish it?’ he answered without
the least hesitation, ‘Because I should go to Him and ask Him to make
me good for always.’ And then, a little time afterwards, he suddenly
started up, when I thought he was asleep, and said, ‘Oh! mother,
wouldn’t it be _dreadful_ if we had not got a GOD!’”

[Sidenote: A Doubting Thomas.]

Another mother tells of a little daughter who has been “a doubting
Thomas from her babyhood.” To her the personality of GOD was very
real, but she refused to accept anything at first through the medium
of another—even of her mother. A good many of her quaint sayings
have been preserved—and her mother still remembers how disconcerting
these often were in the course of a Bible lesson. She would suddenly
break in with “_Why_ was GOD so cruel? I hate Him. Can’t you explain?
I don’t think much of Him if He doesn’t let fathers and mothers
know everything!” At the same time she was seldom willing to accept
much on anyone’s judgment but her own. A little brother shared her
lessons, and often sighed with impatience at her interruptions.
“Oh, R——,” he would say, “I do wish you could get some trust!” When
learning the Catechism this little girl refused to say, “Yes, verily,
so I will.” “No,” she said, “I shan’t say that. I haven’t made up my
mind whether I want to be good or not, and I _certainly_ shan’t say
that.” So for about six months that question was never put to her,
and at last one day she remarked, “I could say that now if you like!”

[Sidenote: Relative Importance of Authorities.]

In both these instances there can be little doubt that no one came in
any way between the child and the Creator, but, on the other hand, a
good many parents consider that there is for some years a difficulty
in the minds of children as to the intervention of human beings
between them and GOD, arising either from their habit of connecting
their prayers and religious experiences mainly with their mother or
nurse, or from a curious inability to realise the supremacy of the
Almighty. An example of this latter difficulty may be given in the
words of a little child in Yorkshire who was overheard to say to a
companion, “Don’t do that or perhaps GOD will see you, and He’ll tell
the Vicar.”

[Sidenote: Children’s Prayers.]

Much has been written by others about children’s prayers, but it is
impossible to ignore what is to them the most real and important part
of their religion. A lady living in Cheltenham says: “I think that
children get a belief in prayer very early. My youngest girl the
other day looked tired, so I said that she had better not come to the
evening service. ‘Oh, but I must,’ she said, ‘I want to pray for Miss
Beale.’” This was at the beginning of that well-known lady’s fatal
illness.

[Sidenote: Implicit Faith in Prayer.]

Another example of belief in prayer on the part of a child was
brought to the notice of the present writer by a sister of the boy
of whom the story is told. When a very little chap his brothers and
sisters were all invited to a children’s party at a neighbouring
house, but he had not been included. Much to his grief it was decided
that he had better be put to bed when the others started for the
party. When saying his prayers he earnestly asked that even yet he
might go to the party. He had hardly been tucked up in bed before
a messenger came to say that the omission of his name had been an
accident and that it was hoped he might still come. He was hurriedly
dressed, and in a few minutes had joined the others in their
festivity. The impression made upon the boy’s mind was never erased.
From that day forward he never failed to pray about every smallest
event. If he went to a shop to buy a knife he would pray to be guided
in his choice. If he went out to dinner he would silently pray as he
took off his coat in the hall that the evening might be enjoyable.
Nothing ever again shook him in his belief in the power of prayer.

[Sidenote: Children’s Quaint Petitions.]

Some of the original petitions in children’s prayers are often
exceedingly quaint, but they go to prove their belief in their words
being heard, and it would be cruel to laugh at them or snub the
expression of their desires. Some friends of the writer when they
were little used to be very fond of interpolating their special
wishes into their prayers. One of them when a tiny girl kneeling
at her mother’s side after praying for her father and mother and
brothers and sisters, said, “And please GOD make mother less strict.”

Another child in the same family had been shown a coloured picture of
Noah’s sacrifice and the rainbow, which impressed her so much that
she added to her evening prayers, “And oh! GOD, please show me a
rainbow very soon!”

From the same source comes a charming story of a small boy who had
taken a dislike to a cousin of his own age called Malcolm. It so
happened that each of them had a baby brother, and the little boy
in question broke off in the middle of his prayers one evening to
ejaculate, “Please GOD make me and my baby brother stronger and
stronger, and Malcolm and his little brother weaker and weaker, so
that when we fight we may conquer!”

[Sidenote: Children’s Churchgoing.]

[Sidenote: Danger of Too Much.]

The next point to be noticed in dealing with the religion of children
is the vexed question as to the wisdom of enforcing attendance at
public worship. There can be no doubt at all that, if overdone,
compulsory churchgoing may lead to disastrous results. A man to
whom frequent attendance at services has all his life been irksome,
looks back to his childhood when he was expected to be present at
Sunday services, week-day services, Sunday School, choir practices,
missionary and other meetings, until he became weary of the very
name of such things. Rather nervous of blame, he never ventured to
express a wish to absent himself, and to those early days and their
discipline he ascribes his present reluctance.

[Sidenote: Danger of Too Little.]

On the other hand, it is no doubt true that it is dangerous to use no
compulsion, and to allow the formation of a habit of staying away
from church on the smallest excuse. The real difficulty is to steer
a course between making Sunday the dull, cold, miserable day that it
too frequently became in the earlier part of the last century and
allowing it to be as secular as it so often is at present.

A lady who has been specially successful in bringing up her children
to love Sunday and its observances, says, “I make a point of extra
nice clothes and nice food on Sundays (it sounds horribly material!)
but I want to make _everything_ connected with goodness and religion
attractive, and, however much we may wish they were not so, our souls
and bodies affect each other in an extraordinary way. My youngest
child of five and a half, having begun Churchgoing regularly six
months ago, begs to stay on through the whole service, only saying
at the end, ‘What a lot of kneeling! But I like it; can I stay
again?’ Of course, there were two reasons for his wish: his love of
being near me, and the music which he also loves.”

[Sidenote: A Service Held by Children.]

Another instance may be quoted here, taken, as was the last, from
the family of lay people. Here again everything was done to make
Sundays bright and happy and to bring up the children to consider
Churchgoing a treat. So fond did they become of the services that
the two youngest—a girl of seven and a boy of five—were accustomed
to hold a special service of their own when with their mother in
the drawing-room after tea on Sundays. Their mother describes these
functions as follows, and, though they may seem to some people to
have a spice of “play acting,” yet the children were extremely in
earnest in all they did. Here is her account: “They used to put
on pinafores, the opening to come in front, and wore sashes for
stoles. My duty was to sit at the piano as organist. I had to play
a voluntary as they came in. They chose the hymns, and each chose a
chapter in the Bible to read. They stood on a chair to read their
chapters. One day I remember that the little boy, who could not yet
read very fluently, chose the one in St. Luke with seventy-two verses
and went straight on with it to the end! They took it in turns to
preach, again standing on the chair. The elder child always wrote
her sermon, but the little boy’s was extempore. After the sermon
the missionary box was handed round and we each put something in.
The service ended by their kneeling down side by side and singing
‘Jesu, tender Shepherd, hear me.’ One evening the younger child stood
up on his chair to preach, and began to get redder and redder and
looked very much worried, but I did not dare to move from my seat as
organist. At last his sister whispered, ‘What’s the matter, darling?’
on which he said, ‘Every word of the sermon has gone out of my head.’
So she promptly stood on her chair and said, ‘The congregation will
excuse the sermon this evening. Hymn No. 348.’ I have come across one
of the little girl’s written sermons, and give it here:—

“‘LITTLE CHILDREN LOVE ONE ANOTHER.’

[Sidenote: A Child’s Sermon.]

“‘You love your brother and sister very much indeed though you do
fight with them. Yes, that noutty, noutty Sayten gets inside us, and
then we can’t fight without Jesus’ help. Yes, if we ask Him to help
us I know He will. He is so kind. He will do almost anything you ask
Him to do for you, if it is not wrong. Yes, we all go wrong sometimes
and feel very cross with ourselfs. Little children sometimes think
that all big people are very good indeed, but they all go wrong, too,
as well as you or I might, but GOD knows all our ways and what we do
and sees and hears what we say. Oh! then, little children, love one
another, and so we must love Him.’”

[Sidenote: Simplicity in Speaking to Children.]

As to the number and kind of services to which children should be
taken it is impossible to lay down a general rule. Where “Children’s
Services” are held by a man who has the gift of attracting and
interesting children, the difficulty is partially solved. But these
are not much use when they are conducted by persons who cannot
sufficiently simplify their language, or by those who are so far out
of sympathy with their audience as to appear to be condescending or
in the smallest degree pompous—characteristics which are readily
observed and resented by all children.

But probably many people will agree that “Children’s Services” alone
cannot supply all that is required, in so far as they do not accustom
children to the ordinary Church services, as to which it is not too
much to say that a certain amount of familiarity breeds affection
rather than contempt.

[Sidenote: Differences in Children’s Temperament.]

But in considering the advisability of taking little children to
Church, due regard must be had to the individual child. As has
been said, it is absolutely impossible to lay down a general rule.
Even the members of the same family are frequently so different in
disposition as to make it unwise to treat them all alike. Some may be
so sensitive to the awe-inspiring atmosphere of religious services as
to cause a fear lest their mind should become morbid on the subject.
Very probably such children would express a strong wish to attend
on every possible occasion, but their pleasure is akin to that
which is sometimes felt by people of unhealthy mind who delight in
torturing themselves by picturing nameless horrors. Other children,
and these are the most frequently found, look upon Churchgoing as an
entertainment enjoyed by grown-up people and therefore much to be
desired, though they themselves soon grow weary of the whole thing.

[Sidenote: Two Children at Church.]

An example of what is meant came to the notice of the writer a short
time ago when staying in the same house with two little children,
a brother and sister, who were taken to an afternoon service for
almost the first time in their lives. The boy, a year or two the
elder, was a rather nervous, highly-strung little chap, and he spent
nearly the whole time in saying in a very low voice, “O GOD, help
me! I _will_ be good!” He seemed unable to think of anything but
the fact that he was in GOD’s house, and unable to get relief from
the overpowering sensation of awe. His little sister, on the other
hand—a fat, merry, matter-of-fact child—evidently considered the
whole thing to be a kind of social function interfered with by most
unnecessary restrictions. She turned herself about from side to side
and nodded and smiled at her numerous acquaintances, paying especial
attention to the seats occupied by the servants from the house where
she was staying. After a time she yawned audibly and gave obvious
signs of getting bored, finally nestling against her mother’s side
and falling sound asleep. It is obvious to everyone that two children
such as these would need very different treatment in the matter of
Churchgoing and religious education generally.

[Sidenote: Children’s Unintentional Irreverence.]

Such a child as the little girl described above may be said to
possess the normal feelings of her age. Most very young children are
entirely unable to grasp the greatness of GOD and the seriousness
of religion. If they appear to older people to be irreverent, it
must not be counted to them for a sin. It is simply caused by the
limitations of their understanding. Thus, a small child was heard
to call out during the baptism of a baby, “Why _doesn’t_ he use a
sponge?” No irreverence was meant, but the remark showed that the
child’s mind was further developed in practical than in spiritual
matters. So, again, the absurd questions so often put by little
children when told that GOD is everywhere. It is very common for them
at once to suggest all kinds of ridiculous places without meaning in
any way to be irreverent.

[Sidenote: Great Patience Necessary.]

Such things of course add to the difficulties of teaching religion to
those who are very young, but it is certain that great patience and
tenderness is necessary for those who attempt the task. Forgetfulness
of the point of view of the child often leads to expressions of
horror and even of anger at apparently profane remarks, but such
expressions are unjust and may not seldom give the child a permanent
dislike to what ought to be the happiest of all its lessons.

[Sidenote: Little Children have Long Ears.]

One other caution may be given here. It is a fatal mistake for those
who are bringing up little children to speak in their presence of
religious matters in a way which they do not desire the children to
absorb and do not fancy that they understand. A child may be building
a house of bricks in a far corner of the room and yet be listening
with all its ears to the talk going on between its elders. A very
little boy was once taken to Church when a sermon was preached
about the Will of GOD. No one thought it possible that he understood
a word of it, but at tea that afternoon he was, being slightly out
of sorts, allowed no jam, on which he promptly said, “Well, if it’s
GOD’s Will that I should have nothing but bread and butter, it’s no
good fighting against it!”—a practical and excellent comment upon the
morning’s sermon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lest anything that has been written in this chapter should seem to be
discouraging as to the religious training of children, two things may
be set down here as full of hope.

[Sidenote: Influence of Women.]

The first may be disposed of in a few words. There is little doubt
that women are naturally more religious than men, or at least that
they more easily give expression to their feelings and beliefs. What
a great matter it is, then, that the earliest training of children
is in the hands of women! It is quite possible that the reason for
the greater religious expression on the part of women lies to some
extent in the fact that girls remain so much longer under the direct
influence of their mother. But that is by the way; what is important
is that there are multitudes of truly religious women who may best of
all be trusted to impart their own faith to little children.

[Sidenote: Children’s Delight in the Unseen.]

The other matter for hopefulness lies in the fact that the very
things that often present difficulties to grown-up people are
specially attractive to children. Anything connected with the unseen
world, anything quite impossible according to the laws of nature as
we know them, interests and takes hold of children at once. This is
plain from the often-repeated request, “Do tell us a fairy story.”

[Sidenote: Impression made by Beauties of Nature.]

When to this is added the impression made on a child’s mind by the
vision of a gorgeous sunset, or of a great wide-spreading view, there
seems to be a good deal upon which it is possible to work. A man
friend of the writer has told him that his first real impressions
of the greatness and goodness of GOD came to him as a child when
contemplating beautiful scenery; and an aunt of the late Bishop
Walsham How used to say that when he was a very little boy, and was
looking from a window at the sunset, he was heard to say, “Oh! GOD!”

[Sidenote: The Higher Criticism.]

How easy it would be to kill these beginnings of faith! How easy for
a teacher who had studied the Higher Criticism to wither the growth
of a belief in the unseen and incomprehensible! Is it worth while to
risk this by scrupulously teaching that Elijah’s chariot of fire
and Jonah’s whale had better be taken as allegories? A teacher with
great experience of little children has said, and said most truly,
“Religion attracts greatly because of the mystery which surrounds the
unseen. Besides this, the beauty and the wonderful fitness of all
things in nature strengthen more than anything a child’s belief in a
Divine Creator.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps, as one last word, it may be said that that mother will
succeed best in the religious training of her children who feels that
it is the chief and highest work she has to do.




                              CHAPTER V

                       THE CHILD—ITS IMITATION


[Sidenote: Selection of those about the Path of a Child.]

No one who has to do with children can fail to be struck by their
almost universal habit of imitation. This begins at a very early age,
and, while some imitative expressions and gestures are partly the
result of heredity, others are obviously copied from the persons with
whom the child is most familiar. This makes it, of course, extremely
important that the servants and even the friends who are brought
most closely into contact with a child should be selected with the
greatest care.

[Sidenote: Meals in the Servants’ Hall.]

How often a bad accent or “twang” is picked up as soon as a
child begins to speak, and with what difficulty it is eradicated
afterwards! The habit, too, which obtains with some parents (who do
not want to be bothered with their children) of letting them have
their meals with the servants is greatly to be deprecated. It saves
the trouble of a special nursery dinner, and it often happens that
the servants in a house are fonder of the company of the children
than are their parents, but for all that the tendency to imitate is
so strong that habits are pretty sure to be learnt which it will be
very troublesome to get rid of afterwards. Here is an example:

A little girl, whom circumstances had relegated to the entire charge
of servants, was taken out to a children’s tea-party, when she was
scarcely four years old. It was a splendid tea, and she was a fine
healthy little girl with an equally fine healthy appetite. Bread and
butter, cake, jam sandwiches, and buns all disappeared with equal
ease, and there came a time when the rest had finished and she had
just one mouthful left.... There was a slight pause in the general
chatter, and at that unlucky moment the little girl in question gave
an unmistakable hiccough. Many of the children there would have
blushed with distress at such an incident, but this little maiden,
accustomed to the manners of the servants’ hall, looked round with an
ingratiating smile and merely remarked—“Copplyments!”

[Sidenote: Swear Words.]

Everyone has heard of children who have occasionally used “swear
words” in imitation of their elders, and some may possibly have heard
the true story of a little girl who was given a cup of tea to hand to
a visitor. As she crossed the short space with careful footsteps and
eyes fixed anxiously on her burden she was heard to mutter to herself
“By George, baby, you must be ’teady!”

Examples such as these show the readiness with which children pick
up the phraseology of their seniors, and it is a mistake to suppose
that, because a child does not exactly understand what is said,
therefore no impression is made upon its mind.

[Sidenote: Desire to be Like Father.]

The greater the admiration of a child for an older person the greater
the desire to imitate it. A small boy usually considers his father
the most wonderful man he knows, and consequently spends a good deal
of time and effort in trying to be like him. A little chap of four
or five years old will throw himself into a chair and cross his legs
in absurd imitation of his father, and nothing seems too small for
children to notice and copy. The manner of carrying a stick, the
attitude of standing on the hearthrug, the little trick of clearing
the throat, will all be reproduced to the life, and it has sometimes
been a matter of surprise to an onlooker that the mimicry of some
small but absurd trick has not been the means of breaking the older
person of the habit.

An excellent example of the desire of a little boy to become like his
father was brought to the writer’s notice a year or two ago. A small
girl, the daughter of very “horsey” parents, was trying to entertain
a boy cousin a little younger than herself. After taking him into
the stables and showing him the horses, she turned to him and said,
“I daresay, if you are _very_ good, you might be a groom some day.”
To which came the reply, “No, I shan’t! When I grows up I shall be
exactly like father—skin showing through my hair and all!”

[Sidenote: Individuality to be Encouraged.]

There will often be a great desire on the part of one parent that
a child shall imitate and resemble the other. If this natural wish
be carried too far there is a danger lest the individuality of the
child be interfered with. It must never be forgotten that no two
people can be or were meant to be exactly alike, and that in every
child that is born there are seeds of good qualities and faculties
belonging specially to that child. A slavish copy of anyone else,
however worthy, will assuredly tend to choke the growth of these.
It would be impossible to compute how many artists with the seeds
of greatness within them have been condemned to mediocrity by a
life-long endeavour to reproduce the master from whom they have
learned, instead of making an endeavour to work out their own
salvation.

[Sidenote: An Affected Child.]

So it is with children. Nothing is more sad than to see a child, at
an age when his or her natural freshness and simplicity should be
most clearly in evidence, already cramped and artificial through
an effort to copy some older person. A gentleman once took shelter
in a house during a heavy storm. The master and mistress were both
out, but their little daughter was summoned from her A B C to talk
to the unexpected guest. He told her he was sorry to have brought
her downstairs, to which came the simpering reply, “Oh! pray don’t
mention it!” _Imitatio ad nauseam!_

[Sidenote: Dressing Up.]

[Sidenote: Dumb Crambo.]

One way in which the love of imitation comes out is in the delight
all children take in “dressing up,” and in any form of charades
or dumb crambo. This is probably a very useful way of developing
originality and of setting children’s wits to work. Where it is not
coupled with the putting on of gorgeous raiment, and is not merely
an excuse for “showing off,” the very variety of character assumed
ensures its being a wholesome exercise. Dumb crambo is especially
helpful, for in that pastime there is practically no opportunity
for self-glorification, while it tends directly to stimulate the
children’s ingenuity and to kill their self-consciousness.

[Sidenote: Tricks of Posturing.]

All observers of child life have noticed in some little ones an
unhealthy trick of making faces, posturing, or otherwise trying to
attract attention. This is unnatural and should be carefully watched
and eradicated. But it should be remembered that in most cases of
that kind the _cause_ is physical—generally a weakness in the nervous
system—and the child must be dealt with most tenderly though firmly.

On the other hand, many people can recall instances where what may
be described as a true theatrical tendency has shown itself in a
perfectly healthy and charming manner in very young children. No
better example of this can be found than is contained in a little
paper lying under the writer’s hand. To transpose it would be to
spoil the vividness of the story, so it is given here just in its
original form.

[Sidenote: Tea at the Vicarage.]

“I was more or less of a newcomer in our village when I one day
received a pressing invitation to tea at the Vicarage. When I arrived
I found my hostess, a charming white-haired and white-shawled old
lady, in her usual arm-chair by the drawing-room fire, and, seeing
the chair on the other side of the hearth empty, I dropped into it
with a delicious feeling of comfort after my walk through the chill
and gloom of a foggy evening. I had not been many minutes installed
when tea was brought in, and the hot cakes which my soul loved were
deposited on the little brass stand inside the fender at my feet.

“Following fast on the arrival of the tea came the two daughters of
the house, who had been busy in various parts of the parish, and
were eager to compare notes and exchange the gossip they had gleaned
between the gulps of hot tea with which they refreshed the inner
woman.

“Meantime, I confess to wondering why I had been honoured with an
invitation which was almost as pressing as a three-line whip. My
curiosity was quickened by the fact that no sooner had we finished
our meal than the tea-table was carried off to a distant part of
the room, and a smile and look of enquiry went round, followed by a
nod on the part of my hostess, the signal for one of the daughters
to run away for a minute or two from the room. There was just that
little silence which precedes an ‘event,’ and then she returned to be
greeted by ‘Well?’ ‘All right,’ she replied, and silence fell on us
again, to be broken almost immediately by a tap at the door, a tap
that would never have been heard had it not been for our stillness
of expectation. The elder and more impetuous of the daughters made a
rush from her chair but was called back, and then in a moment I knew
why I had been asked. From behind the high screen just inside the
door there peeped a baby face! And such a baby face! Roguishness,
bashfulness, mirth, and indecision were mingled in the little
dimpling face and twinkling blue eyes.

[Sidenote: The Entry of Baby.]

“There was a shake of golden curls—no, not quite curls, and yet
nothing else expresses the tangle of light that formed a background
to that beauty of two summers—and then the vision disappeared.
Shyness had won a momentary victory, but was routed on a friendly
hand being held out round the screen to encourage the merry mischief
that was never far to seek in her to assert itself.

“A little shriek of pleasure, and she had run into the middle of the
room towards granny’s chair, but stopped short just where the circle
of light from a reading lamp fell upon her. I shall not soon forget
the picture. I had never seen her before, and, coming upon me in this
unexpected way with her brightness and her beauty and her marvellous
expression, she made an impression out of all proportion to her years.

“It was, I fear, the sight of me that caused her to stop so suddenly
in her run to the loving arms that were stretched out for her.

“Neither she nor I had been prepared for the sight of the other, and
a strange and bearded man may well alarm a little lady of two.

[Sidenote: A Baby Actress.]

“There _was_, no doubt, at first a distinct look of alarm, but she
rose to the occasion. It might no doubt be possible to overawe this
new and ferocious-looking being: at all events it would be well to
try, or he might perhaps be open to a joke and be propitiated in that
way! Some such thoughts were evidently in her mind, for first of all
she stared at me with a frown, then made a deliciously dignified bow
towards me, and then, almost before the bow was finished, stooped
down, and drew her frock round her feet, saying, ‘Baby dot no legs!’
going off into a fit of decidedly forced laughter by way of carrying
off her joke, should I prove too dense to see it.

“Well, it served her purpose: it was a kind of introduction, and it
enabled her to get over the awkward moments of her first shyness
and to reach the haven of granny’s chair. We were soon firm friends
after that. I happened to have a watch ‘like daddy’s,’ which was an
assurance of my respectability, and I openly and fervently admired
a certain pair of little red shoes, and what lady can resist a
well-timed compliment on her turn-out?

“After a short time spent in such polite conversation, it suddenly
occurred to the little fairy that she was not doing her proper share
towards entertaining the company. A little wriggle freed her from
any restraining hands or inconvenient people, and she ran to the far
end of the room. From this vantage ground she ran forward from time
to time into the better-lit part at our end with all the anxiety
to be well received of a born actress. The first ‘act’ consisted
in her picking up her tiny skirts and walking on her toes, saying
‘Muddy, muddy! Baby’s feet wet!’ Then with a shriek of delight she
rushed off, to come back the next minute waving her hands over her
head and gazing solemnly upwards, saying, ‘Wind b’owing! Clouds and
wind! Baby’s f’ightened!’ But this only lasted for a minute before
she dashed off and returned declaring that she was another child, a
little girl she had not seen more than once or twice, but whom she
evidently desired to imitate.

“It is impossible to describe the effect produced upon me by this
extraordinary performance by so young a child. Her rapid change of
mood bewildered me: the mischievous laughter of one moment was so
quickly followed by a look of wonder or terror or sadness, to be
succeeded in its turn by a sudden scream of delight, that I felt as
if I were watching something not altogether canny. It was really
almost a relief when at last she buried her face in a friendly lap
and cried for bed and ‘nanna.’

[Sidenote: Baby’s Exit.]

“Even then the rapid change of mood was not all over, for in the
midst of her tears she was gathered into nurse’s comfortable arms,
and as she left the room a decidedly pert little voice was heard to
say, ‘Baby _did_ c’y!’

“So I found out why my friends at the Vicarage, who knew my weakness
for children, had asked me to tea, but I have never been able to
analyse the exact impression left on my mind beyond that of a lovely
and excited baby.”




                             CHAPTER VI

                       THE CHILD—ITS PLEASURES


[Sidenote: Love and Happiness.]

What a happiness it is that in the memories of most people the joys
of childhood so far exceed its griefs. Two of the most powerful
agents for good in the life of a child are love and happiness, and it
may be confidently assumed that where there is an abundance of the
former the existence of the latter is assured.

It may happily be asserted that it has been the sad lot of few of
those who read these lines to have known an unloved childhood. To
this may be ascribed the happy recollections of most who look back
upon their earliest years.

But in this chapter some attempt will be made to examine certain
special pleasures rather than to generalise as to the atmosphere of
happiness in which alone a child will really thrive.

[Sidenote: No Stereotyped Rule.]

While happiness is necessary for all children, those who have most
closely studied child life will agree that the old saying “_Quot
homines tot sententiæ_” may well be applied to the great variety of
ways in which this happiness is sought. It is impossible to treat all
children alike, or to lay down any general rule. A little girl will
find her chief delight in dogs and horses, while her brother steals
away to play with dolls. Two small boys will go out into the garden,
and, while one is keen to learn any sort of manly game, the other
stands about cold and listless, bored to death by the mere sight of
bat or ball.

[Sidenote: Failure of Compulsory Pleasures.]

Nothing is less likely to produce happiness than to attempt to
_force_ little children to amuse themselves in any set way. How many
people have been disappointed by their efforts in this direction!
A “recreation” ground has perhaps been provided by some charitable
person at great expense. Ten to one it will be deserted by the little
ones for whom it was primarily intended and given over to the tender
mercies of lads and lasses in their “teens.” The _small_ children
find nothing left to their imagination, and infinitely prefer some
dirty, and, to adult eyes, disadvantageous corner.

There was just such a case in a large northern town. The recreation
ground was opened with pomp, and was elaborately fitted with swings,
parallel bars, etc. For a week or two a few children made efforts to
amuse themselves there, but it was quickly deserted. In the immediate
neighbourhood were sundry patches of ground where no houses had as
yet been built, and on which lay fascinating heaps of brick bats
and refuse. Needless to say these offered far greater attractions
than the new and orderly playground. Small children do not care to
play “to order.” They have enough of that during school hours. When
they get a bit older they will be willing enough to join in games on
specified grounds and governed by codes of rules, but while they are
little they like to find their own playgrounds and invent their own
games.

[Sidenote: A Game in a Stackyard.]

Memory brings a vision of two children, one a little girl with soft
dark hair and big black eyes, who is dressed in a blue and white
cotton frock, and a big white straw hat; the other a sturdy, but
commonplace boy, in grey knickerbockers, a holland blouse, with a
broad black leather belt, and a flannel cap. They are about the
same age, neither of them being yet seven, and they are playing in
a stack-yard. It is not the stacks that are the attraction, for
just now there are none there, but for all that it is a glorious
playground. In the first place, it is well out of the way of the
grown-up people, and in the next place, though there are no stacks,
there are the stone supports on which they once stood. What excellent
tables they make, these old grey upright blocks, of which the flat
round tops project like real tables, and are practically useful in
preventing rats and mice from climbing up. But there is something
else which has drawn the children to that spot, for all about in the
yard there is to be found a tall plant with a quantity of red seed,
which must, I fancy, be some kind of sorrel. It is delicious to draw
your hand up the stalk and bring it away full of this seed, and that
is what these children are busy doing.

Next they put it in a heap on a slate which they have discovered, and
then search for pieces of brick and flat stone, which are piled on
the top. In this way a certain quantity of the seed is compressed,
and called a cheese, which is deposited with ceremony upon one of the
stone tables.

The little girl has been the leader throughout; she has decided which
plants were ripe enough to be stripped, how much seed was necessary
to form a cheese, and upon which of the stones the feast should be
spread. The boy has been her obedient servant, a position of things
which reaches its climax when the little lady suddenly states that
she doesn’t like cheese, and orders him to eat it all up!

This is a vision that has come from time to time for more than forty
years, and few playgrounds have seemed so attractive.

[Sidenote: The Old Tree in the Garden.]

Then there is the old tree of the garden. Who does not love the
memory of the games played beneath it, and the seats it afforded
among its boughs? Maybe it was a mulberry, or merely an ancient
laurel. Playgrounds may be found in and under both. In another case
it was a mighty yew, noted in the annals of the county. A few feet up
upon its massive stem, the children had special seats, and woe betide
intruders caught trespassing! Beneath it was a long bench, of which
the supports were obviously at one time a part of one of the great
boughs, while the seat had in the distant ages been green.

[Sidenote: Playing at Shop.]

What feasts were spread upon this seat—what shops were kept with this
for the counter! There is a dust that forms beneath old yews, and
consists of the dead and crumbled petals. What splendid stuff it is
to play with! It can be sold as snuff, or almost anything, and it
pours out of a teapot as easily as water. But there is no need to say
more; everyone can remember the invented games, and the best-loved
haunts of their childhood.

[Sidenote: A Whitby Playground.]

One more playground of a thoroughly unconventional character may well
be mentioned here. It is just where the base of one of the Whitby
piers starts from the end of a narrow street or passage. The huge
stones worn and rounded at their edge make a couple of steps down to
the water’s edge, but steps so big that, if you are still a small
boy, they compel you to sit down and slide and scramble, holding on
as best you may, till you have reached the bottom. It is great fun
to watch the children descending by their various methods. Big boys
(and girls too) manage it easily, laughing and shouting as they bump
their way down. But with the little ones it is different. A girl
arrives, with a baby wrapped up in a shawl; this requires management:
baby is set down on the top step, and told to stay quite still, then
away slides the small nurse on to the intermediate resting-place some
three or four feet below; then a pair of arms are stretched up, and
baby struggles into them with a chuckle of satisfaction, and is once
more deposited, while the elder sister springs down on to the soft
wet sand, and next minute baby, too, is safe in the desired corner.
This is what it practically is, this desirable playground, just a
corner in the harbour laid bare at low tide, and having the pier on
its one side, and the walls of the old town on the other. How lovely
those old walls were! Looking right up one sees the ends projecting
above the gables of red-tiled roofs, while below are the grey
walls—no, not grey, though many seem so at first sight, but yellow,
blue, red, green—every colour, in fact, that stones will take, when
long exposed to sea and weather. Then at the bottom just above the
sand runs a long wide course of stones that are covered by every
tide, and have in consequence become clothed with a fringe of brown
and green and golden seaweed.

There are small windows here and there, high up in the walls, and
now and again a sheet or a towel is hung out to dry, a picturesque
object enough against a mass of building; and from above the wall of
a yard a number of poles, leaning in the corner, project and break
the monotony of the surface.

It lies right inside the harbour, and every time the tide goes down
it leaves a certain quantity of semi-decomposed objects to scent the
atmosphere of this special spot.

Then again, what is far worse, there are small square openings here
and there in the wall and from these there trickle continuously the
contents of many washtubs and slop-pails. Yet here it is that a
group of children come whenever the tide allows, to play their quiet
games—quiet, for they never run about or make much noise, but seem
happiest crawling on hands and knees, or squatting in a circle and
playing with the garbage and refuse which has stranded there.

[Sidenote: Treasure Trove.]

This is doubtless the attraction; the beauties of the scene evidently
never occur to them at all, the evil smells affect them not. But
there are new playthings there continually. As the water recedes
fresh treasures day by day are left upon the shiny floor—half sand,
half mud—of their playground. What opportunities for their invention
and imagination! Yesterday there were two small dead crabs, a broken
saucer, and an empty sardine box; to-day’s chief items are the wicker
end of a worn-out lobster-pot, a bit of rope, and a whole quantity
of mussel shells which have been thrown away after the baiting of a
long line. What endless games are played with these materials! First
of all the shells are pushed into the sand squares, making little
gardens, which are duly furnished with bits of green seaweed. To
them comes a small market woman carrying the fragment of wicker-work
in which she places the green stuff she purchases and pays for with
pebbles, the bit of rope being used to sling the laden basket on her
bent back, as she walks off to market under the heavy load.

[Sidenote: Another Game of Shop.]

Then the shells are hurriedly gathered up, and baby is established
with her back against the wall, and in front of her the total
accumulation of odds and ends is arranged in lots, each one marked
off by a line drawn in the sand, and then the children come to buy
at baby’s shop—a matter of huge delight to the shopkeeper, who
distributes her goods rashly and impulsively, and is evidently bored
at being made to receive payment!

But an end comes at last: a voice is heard shouting, baby is lifted
up on to the first step again, and all the little bare legs and
ruddy feet go scampering off to tea!

[Sidenote: Playing at Being Grown Up.]

It would be easy enough to give many more examples than these two or
three, but they will be sufficient to illustrate the preference of
little children of all and every class for unconventional playgrounds
and games proceeding from their own vivid imaginations. Imagination
supplies the keynote to so many of the pleasures of children. How
greatly, for instance, they delight in playing at being grown up!
Nothing gives them keener pleasure than being treated like their
elders. It is partly the importance of it, but largely also the
exercise of imagination and an appreciation (duly suppressed) of the
fun of the situation.

A few years ago it fell to the lot of the writer to witness the joys
of two very small people who came by themselves (oh! the importance
of it) upon a regular visit.

[Sidenote: A Visit from Two Children.]

They were some six and seven years old, and a most reserved and
old-fashioned little couple in their ways. The elder, Reggie, was
singularly quiet and thoughtful. His face, of considerable beauty
of feature, with large grey eyes, wore ordinarily an expression of
solemnity, if not of melancholy, and it required an intimacy of some
considerable standing to obtain more than monosyllabic replies in his
high but very gentle voice.

His companion was a little sister properly called Marjorie, but who
had hardly yet outgrown “Baby.” Such an upright, delicate dimpled,
flower of a child, with the same big eyes and curling lashes as her
brother, but with a reserve far more easily overcome, and a much
greater readiness to break into smiles or even indulge in romps. She
completely “mothered” Reggie, and her anxiety that he should do the
right thing, and her little quick orders to him, were most amusing.

Their hostess met them a few days before their visit, and their
excitement about it all was intense.

“What luggage shall you bring?”

“Oh! just a hat-box or two!”

“It’s all arranged about our visit to you. I do so love arranging
things. Couldn’t we have some more arrangements?”

This, of course, Baby. So every conceivable thing was “arranged,” and
every minute of the two days planned out. Their hostess told them she
should expect them to bring lots of things in their luggage.

“Oh!” said Baby, “I shall bring my tea-gown. And what shall _you_
wear?”

The day arrived, and they were met at the station.

“Well, what luggage have you brought?”

“Twelve hat-boxes,” promptly replied Reggie with a flicker of humour
just lighting up his face. One turned up, and was found to contain
the entire clothing, etc., of the pair. This vast piece of luggage
was put in Baby’s room, and then came the request that they might be
allowed to unpack for themselves. Reggie was quickly hurried into his
own room with his tiny pile of belongings, and then Baby began to
unpack hers. She was shown a large wardrobe, as well as a good-sized
chest of drawers, and evidently felt that it would be _infra dig._
not to use them both, so, after putting one wee garment in one drawer
and one in another till each held something, she gravely took the
little bag which held her shoes and hung it up in solitary grandeur
in the wardrobe!

The extreme politeness and consideration of these little visitors
were continually coming out. Baby was asked whether she would like a
room to herself or a sofa in her hostess’s room.

“You see, Aunt E., I don’t know what to say,” was the reply. On being
pressed further, she said, “Well, I was thinking about the beds! It
seems a good deal of trouble just for us. You see, they are big beds.”

Reggie, too, was just as anxious to consider others. “If it isn’t too
much trouble,” he said, on being asked whether something should be
brought him. “I’m afraid when we are gone you will say ‘bother those
troublesome children’!”

He was just as attentive, too, to his sister, buttoning her little
petticoat for her and anything she couldn’t manage for herself.

The whole of the proceedings described so far were practically part
of a charade or play. The children were for these two days grown-up
people, and being endowed with an extra allowance of imagination,
played their part in every detail.

Not that they could keep it up quite all the time! There were games
at hide-and-seek that entirely dispelled illusion for a while. Then
there were visits to the poultry yard and animals, when it was
impossible to put such restraint upon one’s feelings of surprise and
delight as to appear properly blasé and grown up. For instance, when
Baby suddenly discovered a large field-spider, there was a scream of
astonishment as she exclaimed, “Oh, Aunt E., here’s a thing with a
lot of legs and a dot in the miggle!” And again, in the poultry yard,
it was scarcely in keeping with the part of a lady who had arrived at
years of discretion to say, “How I should like to lay in those nice
lickle nests!”

[Sidenote: The Children Leave.]

But on the whole these two little people carried out their intention
of paying a real grown-up visit with perfect success up to the
very moment when they were once more in the train by themselves on
their return journey of some six miles, each one grasping firmly
their half-ticket, and the last glimpse we had was of Reggie gravely
lifting his little straw hat, as the train steamed out of the
station. There is all the difference in the world between this sort
of playing at being grown up, and the assumption of airs and graces
which some children display. The one is real pleasure, the other the
merest mockery. Children who are no sooner out of the nursery than
they ape their elders in an insatiable desire for a succession of
smart clothes and evening parties are seldom happy children. Those
who care for their little ones and want to fill their early years
with real pleasures will take care to avoid the causes which produce
children such as these.

It may perhaps be said that the main factors are two.

[Sidenote: Modern Defiance of Authority.]

If children be allowed to absorb the spirit that is pervading the
world at the present day—the spirit of revolt against all authority,
the notion, that is, that everyone is to do exactly as he or she
chooses—that will of itself bring about a state of mind which is
destructive of real happiness. Notions such as these are quickly
picked up, and parents who themselves set all rules and authority at
defiance cannot expect their children to submit to control.

[Sidenote: Self-Conscious Jealous Children.]

Then there is a second cause which is too often at work, and which
does a great deal towards turning some children into disagreeable
and discontented young folk. When people are continually trying to
emulate if not excel their neighbours in appearance and in the
entertainments they provide, children are quick enough to take their
cue from what they see and overhear, with the result that they are
miserable if they think their frocks are less fashionable than their
neighbours’, and are rude and discontented if at one party they do
not get as handsome presents as at some other.

This is all wrong, and distinctly diminishes the pleasure that these
children might otherwise enjoy.

[Sidenote: Desirability of Simpler Children’s Parties.]

It would without doubt add enormously to the real happiness of
children if a league could be formed of all parents who should be
bound to limit children’s parties within certain specified bounds of
simplicity and within certain reasonably early hours.

But this is by the way. It is pleasanter to turn for another minute
or two to speak of the pleasures childlike children find in the
simple joys that lie around their path.

[Sidenote: Natural Pleasures the Most Enjoyed.]

There can be no doubt that the more natural the employment or
amusement the greater the pleasure. A little girl is given a tiny
dustpan and allowed to sweep the carpet, or she has a drawer full of
odds and ends and is asked to sort and arrange them. She will spend
an entire morning in such an occupation with the keenest pleasure,
and if anyone who has watched her should also see her when dressed up
at some “smart” party that same evening there would be no doubt in
the mind of the onlooker as to which brought most real happiness to
the child.

[Sidenote: Story-telling.]

One of the greatest delights that can be afforded to children must
come in for a word of mention. Who does not remember the story-teller
of his or her childhood? Perhaps it was “father,” who when he came
in at tea time would let the whole family swarm on and about his
arm-chair, and would tell another bit of the thrilling tale which
he always broke off each evening at the very most exciting point.
Or sometimes it would be one of the bigger children, gifted with an
extraordinary power of calling up robbers and demons, who enthralled
an audience by the narration of horrors which stimulated their
imagination and made them feel deliciously “creepy.” No such things
as “chestnuts” exist for children. The oftener the story has been
told the better they like it, and never hesitate to choose an old
favourite before a brand new tale.

But this chapter is already becoming too long. It would be easy to
enumerate numberless simple amusements which bring real pleasure to
children. But the same moral can be drawn in every case. The simpler
and more natural the occupation the greater the pleasure. Do not
all children revel in playing with the earth and water that lie
about their feet? Whether they are the lucky ones who can build sand
castles and let the sea-water fill the moats, or whether they can
only play in the gutter by their door, they are ten times happier
in such pleasures as these than in any grander or more elaborate
amusements. To the recognition of this fact those who plan children’s
pleasures will owe their chief success.




                             CHAPTER VII

                        THE CHILD—ITS PATHOS


Just as there is no summer without its cool grey days, so among the
sunny crowd of children about our path there is here and there a
child who seems to live beneath a shadow.

[Sidenote: Quiet Children.]

Just, too, as the tender colouring of the grey landscape has a
special charm which only needs the seeking, so these quiet little
ones amply repay the observation of those who do not let them steal
away and escape notice as they always wish to do.

No one who cares for children can have failed to have come in contact
with some who are silent when their comrades shout, grave when the
rest are laughing, and look wistfully on when games are in progress.

They are, possibly, well enough liked by the rest, but somehow they
are _different_, and because of this difference go their own way to
which the others have become accustomed.

[Sidenote: Reasons for the Difference.]

[Sidenote: Lonely Children.]

There are, of course, sometimes obvious reasons. In the greater
number of cases the child’s health—or want of health—accounts for the
separateness of its life and pursuits. Sometimes, it may be feared
that harsh surroundings in its home have crushed the spirit out of
it and made it timid and suspicious. But sometimes it is a mere
question of temperament. The child has, perhaps, inherited some queer
strain of sentimental self-consciousness, or some nervous dread of
publicity, which causes it to be like the famous parrot which said
little but thought a lot—a condition of things exactly the reverse
of what may usually be found in a thoroughly healthy-minded child.
But, whatever the cause, it is for the most part true that it is
well worth while to lay siege to the affections of such a child, and
try to establish confidential relations. The result of a habit of
thoughtfulness and of a life a little lonelier than that of others
will generally tend to the laying up a store of quaint fancies and
imaginings about the objects of everyday life, as well as often
developing a sympathy which the lonely child has no wish and few
chances to exhibit. These things are well worth bringing to the light
by anyone who is sufficiently persevering to win the affection and
confidence of the little one.

Such children are not averse to _all_ companionship, but are terribly
afraid of anyone who does not understand. They have often enough been
laughed at, and they keep their thoughts and interests carefully
hidden from all who cannot be absolutely trusted, and it is so very
few indeed whom they discover to belong to this category. Once,
however, they are perfectly sure of anyone, they will lead them to
their secret haunts in field or garden, will confide to them their
dread of certain places and people, and finally will allow their most
cherished wishes to escape them. In almost all cases the great desire
of such children is for something to love, or for somebody in whose
affections they may be first.

[Sidenote: Early Natural Bents.]

[Sidenote: Not a Mother Yet!]

In this connection it is curious to notice how early the natural
bent of a child will show itself. This is especially the case with
girls whose mothering propensity comes out at a very tender age. A
wistful little maiden who always seemed to want something more than
satisfied her more boisterous companions had slid her hand into that
of a grown-up friend in whom she had learnt to confide, and who was
trying to amuse her by telling her about a litter of puppies which
had been born to a retriever called Topsy. Looking down, the lady saw
that the child’s face had grown serious even to sadness, which was
accounted for by the conversation that followed. “How old is Topsy?”
said the little girl. “I think she is four,” was the answer. At once
the child’s eyes filled with tears as she sighed, “And I am six and
I’m not a mother yet!”

[Sidenote: A Boy’s Secrets.]

[Sidenote: The Toad.]

With boys it will generally be found that, if they have taken
to solitary ways, and belong to the class of children who are
pathetically different to the rest, they have some bent, some special
interest, which they keep carefully to themselves until a really
sympathetic friend wins their secret from them. Not infrequently it
is a hiding-place inside a bush or in some corner of the garden where
rubbish has been thrown and where the small boy has made himself a
“house” with pieces of an old packing case and any other oddments
that have come to hand. Sometimes it is an animal of which he has
found the home and with which he spends most of his spare time. A
toad in a hole in a wall was for a long time the secret joy of a very
small boy until his little sister confided to him that she had got a
toad in a hole close by, which on examination proved to be the same
animal which had two outlets to its abode! The boy’s secret being
thus discovered all his pleasure was gone, and he at once deserted
his pet.

[Sidenote: The Very Dead Frogs!]

The present writer happened once to pay a visit to some friends who
had a little son of about three or four years old. This little fellow
used often to disappear in the garden, and was evidently in enjoyment
of some secret which he was too shy to impart to anyone. After a few
days his confidence was gained, and he led off his new friend to a
spot where there was a muddy little pool about two feet in diameter.
On the edge of this were two frogs which he had found dead, and had
brought here hoping that they would revive. They had been dead for
some time and were anything but sweet, but he stroked them and looked
up in the most wistful way to see whether his pets were properly
appreciated. It was really pathetic to see his eyes fill with tears
when he was told that they were quite, _quite_ dead, and must be
buried without further delay.

Sometimes, of course, the pathos in a child is accounted for by some
physical infirmity which separates him or her from the rest. Here is
an instance.

[Sidenote: Children and the Painter Man.]

A painter had one day set up his umbrella and easel close to a little
hamlet, and when school was over there was the usual rush of the
children to look at “the man” and see what he was doing. Hating
solitude and delighting in children, he faced quickly round upon his
stool and gave them a nod of welcome. “Come to see what sort of a
picture I’m making, eh?” was his greeting. “Yezzur,” was the reply in
the broad dialect of the district. “Well, now, what do you think of
it?” he asked, as he held it up for them to see. At first there is
only much drawing in of breath and many an “Oh!” as they look at what
seems to them at first sight a meaningless kaleidoscope of colours.
At last one makes out one thing and one another in the unfinished
drawing. “There’s the tree, look!” “See the blue sky!” “I can see
William Timms’s house, _I_ can!” And so on for some minutes until
almost every part of the picture had been properly identified. Just
then a shout from one or two women proclaimed the fact that those who
wanted any dinner had better make haste and get it while they had a
chance. This gave “the man” a few quiet minutes during which he ate
his own sandwiches, but before he had swallowed the last mouthful the
troop of children was back again to see all that might be seen before
the school bell rang.

[Sidenote: Jacob.]

It was during these last few minutes that the painter noticed a
boy whom he had not seen among the others before. He was a little
chap—not more than six or seven years old—with soft fair hair and a
pink and white complexion. Two things attracted his attention to the
boy. One was the extreme neatness and cleanness of his dress. His
clothes were not of better material than those of the other boys,
but they were so very _tidy_. His collar, too, was spotlessly white,
and his hair glossy and unruffled. The other thing about him which
seemed peculiar was the amount of deference and consideration that
was shown him by the rest. He was given a good place close behind
“the man’s” elbow, and once or twice, when there was some pushing,
one of the children called out, “Now, then, keep quiet, can’t you?
Don’t you see you’re shovin’ against Jacob Joyce?”

Now and then, too, there would be a curious sort of appeal to the
little fellow: someone would say, “Isn’t it lovely, Jacob? There’s
red and blue and all manner of colours?” And Jacob would solemnly
answer “I likes yed!” Then a whisper would go round, “Hearken to him;
he likes red, Jacob does.”

And all the while to the painter as he worked away there seemed
something odd about the boy, and something unusual if not uncanny in
the way in which the others treated him.

At last the school bell rang, and all but three of the children
rushed off helter skelter to their lessons. The three who stayed
behind were a big girl of twelve who was looking after a baby sister,
and Jacob Joyce.

The picture was nearing completion. That most absorbing half-hour
had arrived when just a little deepening of a shadow here, and the
wiping out of a curl of smoke there, made all the difference, and the
painter was wrapped up in his work, and scarcely noticed the three
children.

[Sidenote: Jacob Sings.]

The elder girl was busy plaiting grasses, and the baby had crawled
nearer and nearer to the easel until a paint brush suddenly shaken
out sprinkled her little face and she set up a dismal cry. In vain
the sister hushed and rocked her. Nothing seemed of any use until the
girl said, “Shall Jacob sing to baby?” Then the sobs were instantly
quieted, and from close behind him the painter heard a strangely
sweet voice begin clear and true “Once in ’oyal David’s City.” Right
through the dear old children’s hymn the singer went, and long before
the end each of the three listeners were enthralled by the melody.

Leaning a little backwards the big grown man, whose thoughts had gone
back to the days when he, too, sang carols, stretched out a hand to
caress the little singer who edged himself along the grass till he
was able to rest his head against the painter’s knee. So they stayed
quietly for a time, a detail being now and then added to the picture,
while a little hand crept up every few minutes to touch the coat or
stroke the knee of the boy’s new-found friend.

[Sidenote: Jacob was Blind.]

So the other children found them when they came back from school. Now
the picture was more easily understood and far more to their liking,
but in all their anxiety to see, no one pushed in front of little
Jacob. “Bootiful picture,” he said, and all of them echoed his words.
“I can’t do a picture,” he added, and the other children said not a
word. “No,” said the painter, “but Jacob can make beautiful music,”
and stooping down he lifted the little fellow on to his knee. Then
for the first time he understood. Jacob Joyce was blind.

[Sidenote: A Child’s Perception of Sorrow.]

Although children frequently fail to realise the great shadows which
from time to time darken the lives of their elders, yet sometimes
a perception of a great sorrow will force its way to the mind of
a child, and nothing more pathetic can be witnessed than the dumb
perplexity with which a child faces such trouble. There is something
in it that reminds one of the wistful expression in the face of a
favourite dog when it is restlessly wandering about a house watching
the preparations for its master’s departure, or has incurred a
measure of chastisement for an offence that it does not understand.

[Sidenote: Two Little Boys Blue.]

Two little boys lived at a small farmhouse on the outskirts of a
Cotswold village. One evening the grey homestead with its deep
stone-slatted roof was all aglow in the sunset, the latticed
windows blazing like so many separate suns, while beneath them
chrysanthemums—yellow, red, and white—added their brilliance to the
picture. Close by an immense elm tree shone in the golden glory of
its autumn robe. Beneath it on an old dry wall the two little boys
were perched just where some of the stones had been knocked away. One
was sitting astride, the other faced the road with his two little
brown legs dangling side by side.

The boys seemed much the same age, and to the eyes of a lady who was
passing by very much alike, but this was no doubt owing to the fact
that they were each dressed in a blue blouse and each had a little
blue flannel cap on the top of a cluster of fair curls.

It was not long before the lady had made friends with the little
chaps, and she always kept an eye on the watch for the blue blouses
when she was walking in the fields or lanes near the farm. It was
soon obvious that one was not only decidedly the elder of the two,
but leader, protector, champion, and hero of his little brother.
The devotion of the younger child was touching. If he were asked
a question he mutely referred it to the other. If he were given
anything he never failed to see whether it would be acceptable in the
eyes of the superior being whom he worshipped. The two little boys
blue were inseparable, and were bound by the best of all ties in
which each needs something that the other has to give.

[Sidenote: Where is Willie?]

There came a day when the lady, who had taken the pair of them into
her affections, went away from home. She did not return for several
weeks, and when she did so she determined to walk the mile and a half
from the station to the village to enjoy the freshness of the country
air after that of a stuffy railway carriage. Her shortest way was by
a footpath which led through the fields at the back of the farmhouse.
Near the stack-yard was a bit of grass ground, once an orchard,
where a few old apple trees were still standing. Here the clothes
lines were accustomed to be stretched between two or three sloping
posts. Here she had often noticed the bit of colour against the greys
of the house and the old tree stems when the two blue blouses had
undergone the necessary wash, and were hanging out to dry.... On this
particular afternoon the lady was hurrying home, delighting in every
well-known sight and sound. She heard the geese in the yard, and saw
the smoke curling up against the great elm-tree. Then she reached
the orchard wall and looked across. The patch of blue caught her eye
at once: but there was something wrong: never before had she seen
only _one_ blouse on the line, just as she had never seen one of the
boys alone. What did it mean? In another moment she caught sight of
the younger child. “Why, where is Willie?” was the quick question.
But there was no answer. For a moment the boy looked at her with big
wondering eyes, then turned and was gone in an instant. She lost
sight of him behind the laurel bush near the farmhouse door.

So long as she lived that lady will never forget the dumb pathos of
the child’s expression. Its explanation was one more little grave in
the children’s corner of the churchyard.

       *       *       *       *       *

These examples that have been given are of cases where the cause of
the pathos discerned in children can be easily traced. It is not
infrequently the case that something unhappy—something appealing—is
noticed in a child, but that nothing can be discovered to account for
it. The observer feels sure that there is something wrong, but all
efforts to bring it to light or to be of any help are baffled.

[Sidenote: The Deserted Cottage.]

It was not so long ago that a man for whom children had a special
interest found himself compelled to pass along the same country lane
for many days in succession. At one point there stood a cottage which
presented a blank end to the road, its windows and door facing a
small garden and being in full view of passers-by for some distance.
It had at first a most melancholy appearance owing to its having been
for a long time unoccupied. The windows looked gloomy and black, the
scrap of garden was overgrown and bedraggled, the old pear tree on
the front had been blown loose and one branch hung in a dissipated
manner over the porch, while on the path lay a couple of broken stone
tiles which had fallen from the roof.

[Sidenote: The Yellow Curtains.]

One day, however, the passer-by noticed a great change. Evident signs
of habitation made their appearance, and signs of a most unusual kind
in a primitive country-place, for in every window in the house there
appeared bright fresh yellow muslin curtains.

Needless to say, conjecture was rife as to the newcomers but no one
seemed to know who they were or whence they came.

At last one day the above-mentioned pedestrian passed a child whom
he had not seen before, and by that time he knew the face of every
child who lived within a mile or two.

She was about nine years old, and better dressed than most of the
cottage children. Her white pinafore was spotlessly clean, and of
fine material, and there was something dainty about the white linen
hat which shaded her from the June sunshine. But the most striking
things about her were her hair and her complexion. The former was of
a particularly beautiful shade of red, and fell thick and curling
beneath the white brim of her hat. The latter was pink and white,
and, though perfectly healthy, a strong contrast to the browns
and reds of the villagers’ bairns. She was pushing a perambulator
containing a thoroughly well-appointed baby, and seemed so absorbed
in the task that she gave no sort of response to the man’s greeting
as he passed by.

[Sidenote: The Mysterious Child.]

After this they met on most days, and more than once he saw her
entering or leaving the house with the yellow curtains. She never
seemed to speak to anybody, and never had anything to do with other
children who were playing in the lane.

Do what he would the man could never get so much as an answering
smile from the child’s full and sensitive-looking lips. There was
a curious air of mystery about her, and a reserve and habitual
melancholy of expression that went to his heart. Added to this there
was an appearance of loneliness about her life, for no other member
of the family ever seemed to come to the door when she went or came,
and for all that could be seen she and the baby might have been
living all alone.

To a child-lover this daily vision of an unnaturally solitary and
probably unhappy life was insupportable. He was continually on the
look out for a chance of breaking through the girl’s reserve, and
trying to brighten her life.

At last one day it seemed as if the opportunity had come.

[Sidenote: On the Low Stone Bridge.]

A mile or so beyond the cottage the lane crossed a stream by a low
stone bridge. It was a cheerless spot in the dusk of evening, for
the water ran dark and stealthily between old grey willow-trees, but
here it was that he found her, by herself and leaning over the low
stone parapet. He went straight up to her and said “Good evening,”
before he noticed that she was crying quietly, as those people do
whose tears are frequent. Putting his hand over hers as it lay on
the wall he asked her what was amiss. For one second she looked up
in his face, and he made sure that he would learn her secret. The
next instant a look of terror passed over her, and she snatched her
hand away. Before he could say a word or recover from his surprise
she was gone. He saw the white flutter of her pinafore as she ran
homewards down the murky lane, and he never saw her again. By the
next evening the house was unoccupied once more, and he had nothing
but the memory of a child’s pathos which could never be explained.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: A Slighted Child.]

There is just one other bit of pathos which crops up now and again in
children’s lives. It happens sometimes that their devotion to someone
who has shown them kindness or taken notice of them is accidentally
overlooked, and the consequent feeling of desertion is most pathetic.
Girls are more liable to this experience than boys, and when it is
borne in upon a small child for the first time that she is less
attractive than her fellows and must in consequence expect to receive
less notice even from those upon whom she has poured out her chief
store of affection, the suffering entailed is frequently acute.

In selecting a teacher or companion for children it would be no bad
plan to observe those who on an occasion when many little ones are
gathered together take notice of the ugly children. They are the true
child-lovers.

An example of the kind of pathos referred to came to the notice of
the writer some years ago at a children’s party, and he set down the
sensations of the little girl in question in some lines which she is
supposed to speak.


          “MY BISSOP.”

  I went to the Bissop’s party
    In my vi’let velveteen:
  The others went last year, you know,
    But I hadn’t never been.

  I was only four; and mother said
    It was really _much_ too late!
  But now I’m five—though all a year
    Was a _’mendous_ time to wait!

  I knew the Bissop very well,
    For didn’t I sit on his knee
  When he came for Confummation,
    And stopped at our house for tea?

  He’s a dear old man—our Bissop—
    And he’ll hardly ever miss
  Stroking the hair of a little girl
    And giving her a kiss.

  So I _did_ look forward to going,
    (And I whispered it all to my doll)—
  Though Tom said he didn’t see the good
    Of taking a mealy-faced Moll.

  But I didn’t know I was ugly,
    And nothing about being shy,
  So I couldn’t sit still with ’citement
    All the whole way in the fly!

  We got there at last: there was numbers
    Of boys and girls at their teas,
  And oh!—in the corner—the Bissop!—
    With two little girls on his knees.

  I knew they was much more pretty
    Than me; but I thought perhaps
  Their turn would be over bye and bye
    And he’ld take _me_ up on his laps!

  So I went quite close, till Susie
    Told me I mustn’t stare—
  But I don’t b’lieve it mattered,
    _He_ didn’t know I was there!

  Then the rest of the children got dancing,
    And I was knocked down on the floor,
  So I w’iggled my way to a corner,
    And sat just close to the door.

  For I thought _he_’ld pass and see me,
    And once he did really stand
  Quite close to me—_my_ Bissop!—
    And I touched his coat with my hand.

  But oh! he never noticed;
    He didn’t seem to see:
  And when he was kissing anyone
    They was other children than me.

  I fink I _must_ be ugly.
    It wasn’t the velveteen,
  ’Cause when she had it on last year
    Susie looked like a queen!

  Yes; I had some toys and a bootiful tea,
    And my cracker had got a ring!
  And I _fink_ I enjoyed the party
    ’Cept p’raps for only one fing!

  And when I got home to dolly,
    And she was in bed by my side,
  I _twied_ to tell her about it—
    But she was asleep—and I _cwied_.




                            CHAPTER VIII

                          WAYSIDE CHILDREN


The study of some particular child is of great interest. If the child
be one with whom one is brought into daily contact the study may
become most exhaustive and may prove the means of imparting a new and
helpful knowledge of childhood generally.

[Sidenote: The Study of Flowers and Children.]

A noted botanist has devoted years to the study of the chickweed. He
has added to his own and to the general knowledge of botany a vast
store of information by his temporarily exclusive attention to this
one plant. But he would be the last to deny the charm of a stroll
through lanes or fields where multitudes of flowers claim passing
attention and admiration. To pause every few minutes to observe a
cluster of primroses, a bank of mercury, or even a pink-tipped
daisy—to halt suddenly as a whiff of sweet perfume tells us of a
hidden nest of violets—to gather two or three of the cowslips that
spangle the meadows—all this may belong to the lightest side of the
study of botany. But it has a charm that few can resist, and thus far
at least the veriest beginner can follow.

So it is with the study of childhood. Almost everywhere we go on our
daily road of life there are children to be found, children differing
one from another as widely as the primrose from the violet, but each
one worth our notice and possessed of a special charm.

[Sidenote: The Loss to those who Fail to Notice Children.]

It is extraordinary to find on talking to one and another how few
people realise the pleasure that they lose by failing to observe the
little wayside children. There are many persons capable of passing
by without seeing the loveliest of wayside flowers, but there are
more who take no heed at all of our wayside children. And yet, if
the loss to the former is great, the loss to the latter is greater
far. A flower can charm the eye or delight the sense of smell: it can
interest the scientific observer who notes its construction and mode
of growth; but that is all. There is no reflected light, no joy felt
by the flower and flashed back in happy answering glance, be its eye
never so bright. For most people there is no increase of knowledge
from day to day, and certainly there is none of that increase of
understanding between observer and observed which lends such charm to
the chance meetings with the children who are about our path.

[Sidenote: Self-important People.]

Some people are too busy and rush along in too great a hurry. Some
people are too self-important. They are grown up, and fancy that the
fact that they are older has so greatly increased their value that
it would be lowering themselves to take notice of children. They will
assert that they cannot be bored with them. They will brush them
impatiently aside if they are too closely approached by children when
other people are present. There is a certain amount of insincerity in
all this, for when such people fancy that they are unobserved they
not infrequently yield to the natural temptation of noticing and even
playing with little children.

[Sidenote: Keeping the Proper Balance.]

Some people, again, fancy that to let children know that they are
observed is bad for their character, and, of course, it is possible
to make them self-conscious and conceited by taking too much notice
of them. On the other hand, there is a danger of children becoming
morbid, nervous, and secret if they find themselves ignored and
unappreciated. A child’s nature is essentially responsive. It
opens out and expands to a show of affection just as a flower to
the sunshine, and, as a bud will become withered and diseased when
continuously exposed to grey skies and rain, so the character of a
child will suffer irretrievable damage from a prolonged course of
neglect and cold looks.

Taking it, then, for granted that nothing but good is likely to
follow from a habit of noticing the children whom we meet, it is
interesting to remember how greatly our days have been brightened and
our own enjoyment increased by this very thing.

[Sidenote: The Children Under the Wall.]

There is a long grey wall leading towards the centre of the village.
It is what is called a “dry” wall, that is to say, it is built
without mortar. There is, therefore, no great interest in it nor
any special beauty except where the tints of the little lichens
catch the eye of the close observer. The monotony is broken here and
there by a bulge in the stonework where an elm-tree in the field has
gradually pushed its roots against the foundations.

[Sidenote: Two Nests of Children.]

But the path beside the wall is seldom lacking in attractions. It
is the daily playground of the children from the cottages which lie
back from the road between where the wall ends and the big barn juts
out endways on to the footpath. These cottages are but two in number
and have all the picturesqueness of old gables and steep stone-slab
roofs. Hoary and bent and lined with the passage of years they seem
to speak of old age in every feature. But they echo to-day with the
sound of children’s voices, and their old stone flags speak from
morning to night with the patter of little footsteps. From these two
houses come the troop of children who play beneath the long grey
wall. As a matter of fact there are ten of them altogether—six from
one cottage, four from the other. Of these the two eldest boys of the
six are just getting too old to play, and are generally doing jobs
for mother, or even sometimes for the farmer for whom their father
works, on the days when they are free from school. Then there is in
each house a baby too small to be trusted anywhere except in its cot
or in its mother’s arms. This leaves six children for the wayside,
when the two little girls who are old enough to go to school have
returned to superintend the amusements of the rest, or four who may
be found there at any hour of the day when the weather is at all
propitious.

[Sidenote: Good Marnin’.]

What bits of sunshine they make! Let the day be as dull and the road
as monotonous as possible it cannot be altogether cheerless when a
couple of little chaps with sunny tousled hair and ruddy cheeks
stop pulling their soap box full of mud and stones to laugh up in
your face and say “Good marnin’, Sir,” though it be four o’clock in
the afternoon. Whereby hangs a tale. These two urchins are somewhere
between two and four years old, and it had been their habit to greet
a friend with a friendly pat and a shout of “Hey!” Thereupon one day,
the friend, thinking that their manners might now be taken in hand
and it being then shortly after breakfast, said “You must say ‘Good
morning, Sir,’” which after one or two tries they very creditably
did, and have continued at all hours from that day forward.

[Sidenote: Friendly Children.]

But further down the wall is a little group of three. One, a still
smaller boy, evidently the next in order of the fair-haired family.
He cannot yet keep up with his brothers, and so is taken in hand by
the two dark-haired little girls who look up shyly and smilingly from
beneath long-fringed lashes. The younger, “Nellie,” has been ill and
is a queer little figure pinned up in a shawl which reaches to the
ground; the elder is a fat roundabout lady of nearly four, with dark
beady eyes, and a trick of sliding a grubby little hand into that of
her special friends when they stop for a minute’s chat. She is full
of character and thoroughly appreciates the importance of being in
charge of the other two, looking up with an absurd apologetic smile
when the little invalid thrusts forward a few bits of dusty grass and
a much-mauled daisy as an offering to the powers that be.

But, meantime, school has come out, and the number of wayside
children is rapidly increasing. A girl of ten or so is quietly
knitting as she strolls homewards, her busy fingers hardly stopping
as she smiles and curtseys, turning as an afterthought to ask
whether she may bring some water-cresses to the house.

[Sidenote: Over the Garden Wall.]

Leaning over a garden wall is a delightful little person. She has a
very short way to go home and knows that tea will not be ready yet.
So she stops as soon as she is inside the wicket to indulge in a
further look at the “busy world,” of the lane in which she lives,
and to seize any chance there may be of a gossip. The garden ground
inside the wall is considerably above the level of the road—a most
convenient thing for this sturdy little lady of five, for it enables
her to lean her arms upon the wall and her face upon her arms, and so
to survey the world in much comfort.

Should any one approach whom she wishes to avoid, nothing is simpler
than to crouch down and hide until the undesirable passer-by is out
of sight. Should, however, a friend appear who is welcome, but whose
presence causes a sudden fit of shyness, the rosy cheeks are quickly
hidden in the dimpled arms and a cloud of dark curls tossed over all
until a finger judiciously inserted somewhere where the crease of the
fat little neck may be supposed to be causes a chuckle of delight,
and a crimson face and two great blue eyes are momentarily lifted to
be buried again in an instant beneath the mass of soft dark hair.
But this is a regulation bit of by-play which never lasts long.
Confidences are soon exchanged and news imparted about the sort of
day it has been in school and the health of a doll which fell to her
lot at the last treat. Then sometimes—when she is in her tenderest
humour—a pair of bright red lips are put up for a kiss, and she trots
off down the path to where mother is waiting under the porch of
clematis.

And so it would be possible to go on for long enough.

[Sidenote: In the Country.]

By the roadside, in the field ways, by the pathway near the brook, at
many a cottage doorway, by many a wicket-gate, our country children,
in the beauty of healthfulness and youth, add a hundredfold to the
happiness of those who passing by have eyes to see and hearts to
understand.

[Sidenote: And in the Town.]

But there are others. It is impossible to pass along the side streets
of our many towns without finding the little wayside children. They
are mostly those who are of that specially attractive age which makes
them just too young to go to school and just too old to be kept in
the house, so they get somewhere between the two places, and are
generally playing in the gutter.

They have not often the same beauty as the country children, and they
have not the same readiness to accept the approaches of “grown-ups.”
Their surroundings almost from their birth make them suspicious and
on their guard against possible dangers. But they are children for
all that. They will notice and respond to a friendly smile. It is
wonderful how a sharp and anxious little face is beautified by the
smile that after a moment of doubt will come in answer.

Go down a long street of mean houses, each one the counterpart of
every other, and see if there be anything to brighten the way that
can compare with the laughter and the play of the wayside children.
It is more difficult perhaps to appreciate these little ones, but it
should be remembered that a friendly greeting is worth more to them
than to a country child who gets a dozen such on its way from school.
The reflected light, the responsive happiness is not so evident at
first sight as in the case of country children, but it is even more
real when once confidence has been established.

[Sidenote: How a Child’s Friendship was Won.]

A man whose daily walk led him down a certain dingy street saw a tiny
boy with grimy face and badly developed limbs playing with a banana
skin in the gutter. The man nodded to him—the boy shrank away in
terror. Next day the man nodded again. The boy had decided there was
nothing to be afraid of, and spat at the man. Next day the boy only
stared. The day after he shouted “Hi!” as the man went on. In time
the little fellow smiled back at the greeting which he now began to
expect. Finally the triumph was complete when the boy—a tiny chap—was
waiting at the corner and seized the man’s fingers in his dirty
little fist. It was a dismal street, but it became one of the very
brightest spots in all that man’s walk through life.




                             CHAPTER IX

                         CHILDREN’S MEETINGS


In these days, when the teaching of any virtue necessitates a special
Society, and when no Society is complete without its Children’s
Branch, children’s meetings are matters of almost everyday occurrence.

To say that these meetings are for the most part successful would
be scarcely accurate. They are too numerous, and speakers to whom
children will listen are too few.

[Sidenote: To Whom will Children Listen?]

To whom, then, _will_ they give a hearing? That is a difficult
question, almost as difficult to answer as if it were asked “Who
can whistle a tune?” At all events it is quite as difficult to tell
people how to gain the attention of children as it is to tell them
how to whistle a tune. If they can, they can; and if they can’t, it
isn’t much use telling them. However, it is just possible that anyone
who has looked through the pages of this little book may have been
stirred to think about children, and to try to understand them. In
that case a step has been taken on the road to being one of those
lucky people to whom children will listen.

[Sidenote: Children Know their Friends.]

Small boys and girls, like dogs, know by intuition the people who are
fond of them, and unless the would-be speaker belongs to this class
he need not hope to get their attention. Grown-up people listen to
someone whom they do not like on the chance of finding something to
criticize or ridicule. Children simply do not listen at all.

[Sidenote: Children must be Understood.]

But a love for children is not enough. There must be the effort to
understand them. Unless there be at least some comprehension of their
characters, there is bound to be a lack of that sympathy which is
the essential requisite. Somehow or other, children seem to feel at
once whether or not there exists that subtle link between themselves
and the speaker, and if they cannot discover it they will not—perhaps
even cannot—listen.

[Sidenote: A Difficult Art.]

The mistake so often made is to imagine that it is easy to understand
children. The exact opposite is the fact. It is far easier for anyone
to understand grown-up people whose minds work much in the same way
as his own than to comprehend and sympathise with the curiously
complex thoughts and reasonings of children.

[Sidenote: An Honest Saleswoman.]

It has been seen how strangely imaginative all children are, but at
the same time they are often most literal. There is a well-known
story of a little girl selling artificial flowers at a bazaar who
was so anxious that there should be no mistake on the part of the
purchasers that she said to each, “They are not _real_, you know;
they are _stuffed_!” No doubt this same child would have treated
these same flowers as absolutely real if she had had them to play
with, and would have let her imagination run riot with them.

Again, children are often so tender-hearted that they cannot bear to
hear of the sufferings of other children, but will inflict intense
pain on some insect with complete callousness, the reason being that
the one comes within their comprehension while the other does not.

These simple matters are mentioned here merely to show the complicity
of children’s characters, and to try to induce those who wish
to teach them to abandon the idea that it is perfectly easy to
understand children.

[Sidenote: Infection Spreads Rapidly.]

The next necessity for anyone who wants to gain the attention of a
group of little ones is to remember that they are extraordinarily
liable to infection.

Just as chicken-pox introduced into a children’s party by one child
will spread to most of the others, so if one person at a meeting be
thoroughly interested and keen, the rest will be sure to catch the
infection. That person must, of course, be the speaker.

[Sidenote: Platitudes Useless.]

[Sidenote: Simplicity Essential.]

It is no sort of use talking to children because the speaker has
got to say something. It is essential that he should have something
to say. Further, it is no use his having something to say unless
he is himself enthusiastically interested. Anyone who has tried to
speak to children will know how their attention is gone in a moment
so soon as he says half-a-dozen words of mere platitude. All this
points to the need of careful preparation and thorough knowledge
of what he has to say. Then he must say it simply. Children do not
understand long words, and cannot follow involved sentences. It is
not unusual to hear the chairman of a children’s meeting begin by
saying, “My dear young friends,—if I may be allowed so to designate
some whose acquaintance I have hitherto not been so fortunate as to
cultivate—the admirable society to which, as I understand, you have
given your adherence inculcates those principles of self-abnegation
which have long been designated as the true foundations of all
existence at once joyous and altruistic.” Can anything be more
hopeless? The succeeding speakers must be uncommonly vivacious
and interesting if the children are to recover from such a fatal
beginning.

[Sidenote: A Sermon in Monosyllables.]

It is no bad thing to try to speak in words of one syllable. If that
is thought hopeless it may be mentioned that the Bishop of Bristol
not long ago published a whole sermon in monosyllables, just to show
what can be done.

[Sidenote: Children Resent Feeble Talk.]

But, on the other hand, it is a serious mistake to talk down to
children. That is to say, the stuff must be good though the language
be simple. Children resent having washy sentiments served up to them
in baby language. They can understand great thoughts if properly
presented.

It has been suggested that when very young indeed they dislike the
nonsensical manner in which they are addressed by many adoring
women. This has been given as one reason why a baby on being first
introduced to a strange man and a strange woman will generally prefer
to go to the man. The supposition is that the baby thinks he will
stand more chance of hearing rational language. It is certain that
most people have heard ladies speak to little children in a babble
which they would not use to a self-respecting dog for fear he should
bite them!

[Sidenote: The Ingredients of a Speech to Children.]

But to speak more seriously: yet another matter to bear in mind
is that monotony must at all costs be avoided. A speech which,
however good in other ways, is entirely pathetic, will fail to keep
children’s attention, while a speech that is entirely funny will
fail to rouse their interest in the object of the meeting. There may
be tears—a few—there must be laughter—now and then. There must be
stories and there must be morals: the art is to make the one almost
as interesting as the other.

[Sidenote: Position of Speaker Important.]

It may perhaps be allowed to insert here one or two practical hints.
For instance, it is absolutely essential that the children should
be able to see the face of the speaker clearly. It is well that he,
too, should be able to see the faces of his audience. But the former
is the more important. If a room, then, has windows so placed that
either the speaker or the children must face them, it is better that
the speaker should do so. Children find it almost impossible to
listen to anyone whom they cannot see, a fact which points to the
value of a sustained effort on the part of the speaker to catch the
eye of first one and then another of his audience.

[Sidenote: Meetings as Informal as Possible.]

That leads on to the desirability of getting rid so far as possible
of _formality_. There should be no barriers between the speaker and
the children. A high platform is fatal. It is even more fatal when
there is also a table and a water bottle. The speaker should be as
close to the children as he can, consistently with being able to see
and be seen.

[Sidenote: A Successful Meeting.]

Here is a description of a thoroughly successful children’s meeting.
A large low room with old oak beams and a dark polished floor. The
only light a blazing fire of logs. In the darker corners a few groups
of mothers and other “grown ups.” Near the centre of the floor, two
or three large Indian mats, and in front of them a big low easy chair
facing the fire light. In this chair is the speaker, and on his knees
and on the arms of the chair cluster three or four of the smallest
children. The rest are sitting just anyhow upon the coloured mats.
They are all perfectly quiet and well inclined for a rest, for they
have just had a succession of games—blind man’s buff and “Jacob,
where art thou?” the favourites. For half-an-hour or so they sit and
listen to the story of other children less happy than themselves, and
learn how best to help them. Then comes “Good-night,” and they go
away with impressions still vivid, and with new and brave resolutions.

[Sidenote: Garden Meetings.]

Some such happy informal talks as this may often be held in summer on
the grass beneath the trees, but the many distractions of the open
air—a butterfly may turn away all thoughts—make such meetings more
difficult than those held indoors.

The hints given in these few pages seem utterly inadequate, and to
include only such matters as must occur to all. They have been set
down here as some reply to the frequent question “How can children’s
meetings be made successful?”

There is but one more word to be said. Grown-up people are so greatly
distracted by the cares and occupations of their daily life that it
needs special preparation before they can understand little children.
To anyone who wishes to influence their simple yet imaginative minds
the task is almost hopeless unless he will try to fulfil that most
difficult command and himself “become as a little child.”




                              Appendix


It is of considerable interest, and may be in some cases of practical
value to those interested in the well-being of children to notice in
order some of the principal Acts of Parliament which have been passed
during the last twenty-five years on behalf of children:—

  1883. 46 & 47 Vic., c. 53. Employment of Children in Factories and
    Workshops.

  1885. 48 & 49 Vic., c. 69. Criminal Law Amendment Act, relating to
    criminal assaults on children and to the finding of children in
    disorderly houses.

  1887. 50 & 51 Vic., c. 58. Employment in Coal Mines.

  1889. 52 & 53 Vic., c. 44. The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act.
    This was the first of the three Acts, the others being passed in
    1894 and 1904 respectively. Sometimes called “The Children’s
    Charter.” It is very wide in application, making it an offence to
    assault, illtreat, neglect, abandon, or expose a child under sixteen
    years of age in a manner likely to cause such child unnecessary
    suffering or injury to its health.

  1891. 54 & 55 Vic., c. 3. The Custody of Children Act, dealing with
    the power of the Court to decline to issue a writ for the production
    of a child to an unfit parent, and with the power of the Court to
    order repayment of costs of bringing up a child.

  1891. 54 & 55 Vic., c. 75 & 76. Further enactments concerning
    employment in Factories and Workshops.

  1892. 55 & 56 Vic., c. 4. Betting Act, whereby it became a
    misdemeanour for anyone for the purpose of earning commission to
    send circulars, etc., to invite an infant to make any bet or wager.

  1893. 56 & 57 Vic., c. 48. Reformatory Schools Act, giving power to
    a Court to remand a youthful offender to a prison or to any other
    place, which has in practice always been assumed to be a workhouse.

  1894. 57 & 58 Vic., c. 33. Industrial Schools Act. Education.

  1897. 60 & 61 Vic., c. 57. Infant Life Protection Act, concerning
    persons receiving infants for hire for the purpose of maintenance.
    An Act for the abolition of illicit baby-farming.

  1899. 62 & 63 Vic., c. 37. Poor Law Act, concerning the control of
    guardians over orphans and children of persons unfit to have control
    of them.

  1901. 1 Ed. VII, c. 20. Youthful Offenders Act, providing for (1) the
    removal of disqualifications attaching to felony, (2) the liability
    of parent or guardian in the case of youthful offenders, (3) the
    remand of youthful offenders to other places than prisons, (4) the
    recovery of expenses of maintenance from parent or person legally
    liable, etc., etc.

  1901. 1 Ed. VII, c. 27. Intoxicating Liquors (Sale to Children) Act,
    forbidding the sale or delivery save at the residence or working
    place of the purchaser of any description of intoxicating liquor
    to any person under the age of fourteen years, except in corked and
    sealed vessels, in quantities not less than one reputed pint. It
    should be noticed that the Licensing Act of 1872 prohibited the sale
    of any description of spirits to any person apparently under the age
    of sixteen years.

  1903. 3 Ed. VII, c. 45. The Employment of Children Act, containing
    restrictions on the hours of employment, age of employees, nature of
    employment, etc., etc.

There have also been several Education Acts either passed or
proposed, but it is doubtful whether these have not usually had their
origin in the exigencies of party politics rather than in a _bonâ
fide_ desire for the welfare of children. An honourable exception is
the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of
1899.


          _Printed by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., Bath._




  Transcriber’s Notes

  pg 10 Changed The helpless ness to: helplessness
  pg 58 Changed my finishing he to: the
  pg 126 Added period after: our visit to you

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