Dickens As an Educator Part 42

d.i.c.kens makes a strong contrast between the condition of the mental and spiritual apperceptive centres in the city boy as compared with the country boy, in a conversation between Phil Squod and Mr. George.

"And so, Phil," says George of the Shooting Gallery, after several turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?"

Phil, by the bye, said as much, in a tone of surprise, as he scrambled out of bed.

"Yes, guv'ner."

"What was it like?"

"I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said Phil, considering.

"How did you know it was the country?"

"On account of the gra.s.s, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil, after further consideration.

"What were the swans doing on the gra.s.s?"

"They was a-eating of it, I expect," says Phil.

"The country," says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"

"I see the marshes once," said Phil, contentedly eating his breakfast.

"What marshes?"

"_The_ marshes, commander," returns Phil.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner.

They was flat. And miste."

Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference, and applicable to n.o.body but Mr.

George.

"I was born in the country, Phil."

"Was you, indeed, commander?"

"Yes. And bred there."

Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring at him.

"There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George. "Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many a tree that I couldn't climb yet, if I was put to it. I was a real country boy once. My good mother lived in the country. Do you want to see the country, Phil?"

"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular."

"The town's enough for you, eh?"

"Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too old to take to novelties."

"How old are you, Phil?"

Phil's answer is intended to indicate the lack of even mathematical power in those who, like Phil, never had any training of the imagination, nor any other training to define their apperceptive centres of number beyond ten.

"I'm something with a eight in it. It can't be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em somewheres. I was just eight, agreeable to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day came round again I says to myself, 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' April Fool Day after that I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' In course of time I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high it got the upper hand of me; but this is how I always know there's a eight in it."

The folly of trying to make a man moral by precept alone; the fact that character is developed by what we do, by true living, by what goes out in action, not by what comes in in maxims or theories, is shown in Martin Chuzzlewit.

It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man. So he was.

Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff, especially in his conversation and correspondence. It was once said of him by a homely admirer that he had a Fortunatus's purse of gold sentiments in his inside. In this particular he was like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they were not actual diamonds which fell from his lips, they were the very brightest paste and shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book. Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.

The best of architects and land surveyors kept a horse, in whom the enemies already mentioned more than once in these pages pretended to detect a fanciful resemblance to his master. Not in his outward person, for he was a raw-boned, haggard horse, always on a much shorter allowance of corn than Mr. Pecksniff; but in his moral character, wherein, said they, he was full of promise, but of no performance. He was always, in a manner, going to go, and never going.

One of the worst results that can follow a system of training is to make a man a hypocrite. It is nearly as bad to store a mind with good thoughts or fill a heart with good feelings without giving the character the tendency by practical experience to carry into effect so far as possible its good feelings and high purposes. Mr. Pecksniff was a moral monstrosity. We should create no more Pecksniffs. A different ideal is taught in the remark made by Martin Chuzzlewit to Mary, "Endeavouring to be anything that's good, and being it, is, with you, all one."

Executive training is emphasized in Nicholas Nickleby. Old Ralph Nickleby said of Nicholas: "The old story--always thinking, and never doing." The same thought is expressed very clearly in the pregnant sentence written about Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities: "Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise." The saddest sight in the world is a man or woman using power for evil. It is nearly as sad to see a man or woman with power, but without power to use it wisely.

In A Tale of Two Cities he caricatures admirably the cla.s.s who cling to old customs and conventions, and decline even to discuss changes or improvements, in his description of Tellson's Bank.

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fas.h.i.+oned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the house were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no pa.s.sive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbowroom, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might: but Tellson's, thank heaven!

Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the house was much on a par with the country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.

Every child should get into his consciousness by experience, not by theory, the idea that he is expected to do his share in the improvement of his environment. The worst conception he can get is that "whatever is is right"; that things can not be improved. Every child should be encouraged to make suggestions for the improvement of his own environment and conditions in the schoolroom, in the yard, in the details of cla.s.s management, or in anything else that he thinks he can improve.

The closing sentence of Our School should ring always in the minds of teachers, especially the last clause: "And will do far better yet."

d.i.c.kens had implicit faith in even weak humanity, and taught the hopeful truth, that every man and every child may be improved, if the men and women most directly a.s.sociated with them are wise and loving. Harriet Carker said to Mr. Morfin:

"Oh, sir, after what I have seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place of power, and are ever wronged, never for any wrong inflict punishment that can not be recalled; while there is a G.o.d above us to work changes in the hearts he made."

The Goblin of the Bell said to Toby Veck in The Chimes:

"Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good, grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below, does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity."

The influence of Nature on the awakening mind of the child was outlined in A Child's Dream of a Star.

These children used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of G.o.d who made the lovely world.

Nature is the great centre of interest to the child, and it may be the child's first true revealer of G.o.d, if adulthood does not impiously come between the child and G.o.d by trying to give him a word G.o.d for his intellect too soon to take the place of the true G.o.d of his imagination.

d.i.c.kens's best characters loved Nature. Esther, when recovering from her illness, said:

I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of gra.s.s, and every pa.s.sing cloud, and everything in Nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight to me!

The deep, spiritual influences of Nature are revealed in the effects of life in the growing country on Oliver Twist.

Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft tranquility, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air, and among the green hills and rich woods of an inland village! Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness deep into their jaded hearts! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil, and who have never wished for change; men, to whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face; and, carried from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pa.s.s at once into a new state of being. Crawling forth from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the sight of sky, and hill, and plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs as peacefully as the sun, whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before, faded from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes call up are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we love--may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it.