The American Child Part 3

Foreign visitors of distinction not infrequently have accused American children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated."

Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are children in America, as there are children in every land, who _are_ pert, and lacking in reverence, and sophisticated; but they are in the small minority, and they are not the children to whom foreigners refer when they make their sweeping arraignments.

The most gently reared, the most carefully nurtured, of our children are those usually seen by distinguished foreign visitors; for such foreigners are apt to be guests of the families to which these children belong. The spirit of frank _camaraderie_ displayed by the children they mistake for "pertness"; the trustful freedom of their att.i.tude toward their elders they interpret as "lack of reverence"; and their eager interest in subjects ostensibly beyond their years they misread as "sophistication."

It must be admitted that American small boys have not the quaint courtliness of French small boys; that American little girls are without the pretty shyness of English little girls. We are compelled to grant that in America between the nursery and the drawing-room there is no great gulf fixed. This condition of things has its real disadvantages and trials; but has it not also its ideal advantages and blessings?

Cooperative living together, in spite of individual differences, is one of these advantages; tender intimacy between persons of varying ages is one of these blessings.

A German woman on her first visit to America said to me, as we talked about children, that, with our National habit of treating them as what we Americans call "chums," she wondered how parents kept any authority over them, and especially maintained any government _of_ them, and _for_ them, without letting it lapse into a government _by_ them.

"I should think that the commandment 'Children, obey your parents' might be in danger of being overlooked or thrust aside," she said, "in a country in which children and parents are 'chums,' as Americans say."

That ancient commandment would seem to be too toweringly large to be overlooked, too firmly embedded in the world to be thrust aside. It is a very Rock of Gibraltar of a commandment.

American parents do not relinquish their authority over their children.

As for government--like other wise parents, they aim to help it to develop, as soon as it properly can, from a government of and for their children into a government by them. Self-government is the lesson of lessons they most earnestly desire to teach their children.

Methods of teaching it differ. Indeed, as to methods of teaching their children anything, American fathers and mothers have no fixed standard, no h.o.m.ogeneous ideal. More likely than not they follow in this important matter their custom in matters of lesser import--of employing a method directly opposed to the method of their own parents, and employing it simply because it is directly opposed. This is but too apt to be their interpretation of the phrase "modernity in child nurture." But the children learn the lesson. They learn the other great and fundamental lessons of life, too, and learn them well, from these American fathers and mothers who are so friendly and companionable and sympathetic with them.

Why should they not? There is no antagonism between love and law.

Parents are in a position of authority over their children; no risk of the strength of that position is involved in a friends.h.i.+p between parents and children anywhere. It is not remarkable that American parents should retain their authority over their children. What is noteworthy is that their children, less than any other children of the civilized world, rebel against it or chafe under it: they perceive so soon that their parents are governing them only because they are not wise enough to govern themselves; they realize so early that government, by some person or persons, is the estate in common of us all!

One day last summer at the seash.o.r.e I saw a tiny boy, starting from the bath-house of his family, laboriously drag a rather large piece of driftwood along the beach. Finally he carefully deposited it in the sand at a considerable distance from the bath-house.

"Why did you bring that big piece of wood all the way up here?" I inquired as he pa.s.sed me.

"My father told me to," the child replied.

"Why?" I found myself asking.

"Because I got it here; and it is against the law of this town to take anything from this beach, except sh.e.l.ls. Did you know that? I didn't; my father just 'splained it to me."

American fathers and mothers explain so many things to their children!

And American children explain quite as great a number of things to their parents. They can; because they are not only friends, but familiar friends. We have all read Continental autobiographies, of which the chapters under the general t.i.tle "Early Years" contained records of fears based upon images implanted in the mind and flouris.h.i.+ng there-- images arising from some childish misapprehension or misinterpretation of some ordinary and perfectly explainable circ.u.mstance. "I was afraid to pa.s.s a closed closet alone after dark," one of these says. "I had heard of 'skeletons in closets'; I knew there were none in our closets in the daytime, but I couldn't be sure that they did not come to sleep in them at night; and I was too shy to inquire of my parents. What terrors I suffered! I was half-grown before I understood what a 'skeleton in a closet' was."

An American child would have discovered what one was within five minutes after hearing it first mentioned, provided he had the slightest interest in knowing. No American child is too shy to inquire of his parents concerning anything he may wish to know. Shyness is a veil children wear before strangers; in the company of their intimates they lay it aside-- and forget it. In the autobiographies of Americans we shall not find many accounts of childish terrors arising from any reserve in the direction of asking questions. In American homes there are no closets whose doors children are afraid to pa.s.s, or to open, even after dark.

"American children are all so different!" an Englishman complained to me not long ago; "as different as their several homes. One can make no statement about them that is conclusive."

But can one not? To be sure, they do vary, and their homes vary too; but in one great, significant, fundamental particular they are all alike. In American homes the parents not only love their children, and the children their parents; their "way of loving" is such that one may say of them, "Their souls do bear an equal yoke of love." They and their parents are "chums."

II

THE CHILD AT PLAY

Not long ago I happened to receive in the same mail three books on home games, written by three different American authors, and issued by three separate publis.h.i.+ng-houses. In most respects the books were dissimilar; but in one interesting particular they were all alike: the games in them were so designed that, though children alone could play them well, children and grown-ups together could play them better. No one of the several authors suggested that he had any such theory in mind when preparing his book; each one simply took it for granted that his "home games" would be played by the entire household. Would not any of us in America, writing a book of this description, proceed from precisely the same starting-point?

We all recollect the extreme amazement in the Castle of Dorincourt occasioned by the sight of the Earl playing a "home game" with Little Lord Fauntleroy. No American grandfather thus engaged would cause the least ripple of surprise. Little Lord Fauntleroy, we recall, had been born in America, and had lived the whole ten years of his life with Americans. He had acquired the habit, so characteristic of the children of our Nation, of including his elders in his games. Quite naturally, on his first day at the Castle, he said to the Earl, "My new game--wouldn't you like to play it with me, grandfather?" The Earl, we remember, was astonished. He had never been in America!

American grown-ups experience no astonishment when children invite them to partic.i.p.ate in their play. We are accustomed to such invitations. To our ready acceptance of them the children are no less used. "Will you play with us?" they ask with engaging confidence. "Of course we will!"

we find ourselves cordially responding.

I chanced, not a great while ago, to be ill in a hospital on Christmas Day. Toward the middle of the morning, during the "hours for visitors,"

I heard a faint knock at my door.

Before I could answer it the door opened, and a little girl, her arms full of toys, softly entered.

"Did you say 'Come in'?" she inquired.

Without waiting for a reply, she carefully deposited her toys on the nurse's cot near her. Then, closing the door, she came and stood beside my bed, and gazed at me in friendly silence.

"Merry Christmas!" I said.

"Oh, Merry Christmas!" she returned, formally, dropping a courtesy.

She was a st.u.r.dy, rosy-cheeked child, and, though wearing a fluffy white dress and slippers, she looked as children only look after a walk in a frosty wind. Clearly, she was not a patient.

"Whose little girl are you?" I asked.

"Papa's and mamma's," she said promptly.

"Where are they?" I next interrogated.

"In papa's room--down the hall, around the corner. Papa is sick; only, he's better now, and will be all well soon. And mamma and I came to see him, with what Santa Claus brought us."

"I see," I commented. "And these are the things Santa Claus brought you?" I added, indicating the toys on the cot. "You have come, now, to show them to me?"

Her face fell a bit. "I came to play at them with you," she said. "Your nurse thought maybe you'd like to, for a while. Are you too sick to play?" she continued, anxiously; "or too tired, or too busy?"

How seldom are any of us too sick to play; or too tired, or too busy! "I am not," I a.s.sured my small caller. "I should enjoy playing. What shall we begin with?" I supplemented, glancing again toward the toy-bestrewn cot.

"Oh, there are ever so many things!" the little girl said. "But," she went on hesitatingly, "_your_ things--perhaps you'd like--might I look at them first?"

Most evident among these things of mine was a small tree, bedizened, after the German fas.h.i.+on, with gilded nuts, fantastically shaped candies, and numerous tiny boxes, gayly tied with tinsel ribbons.

"What's in the boxes--presents or jokes?" the little girl questioned.

"Have you looked?"

"I hadn't got that far, when you came," I told her; "but I rather _think_--jokes."

"_I'd_ want to _know_" she suggested.

When I bade her examine them for me, she said: "Let's play I am Santa Claus and you are a little girl. I'll hand you the boxes, and you open them."

We did this, with much mutual enjoyment. The boxes, to my amus.e.m.e.nt and her delight, contained miniature pewter dogs and cats and dolls and dishes. "Why," my little companion exclaimed, "they aren't _jokes_; they are _real presents_! They will be _just_ right to have when _little_ children come to see you!"