American leaves

Front matter

AMERICAN LEAVES

By SAMUEL OSGOOD,

AUTHOR OF THE HEARTHSTONE," "STUDIES IN BIOGRAPHY," "STUDENT LIFE," ETC., ETC.

I. Little Children

LITTLE CHILDREN.

npHE arrival of a baby in a family is a not very unusual occurrence ; and without any very elaborate antiquarian investigation, we may safely believe that such events date back to the remotest ages, and are likely to continue for ages to come. Yet the coming of the little stranger is always a great circumstance ; and once in our lifetime, however quiet may be our temperament or small our ambition, we make a> sensation, and are the observed of all observers. The baby, who is usually awaited with anxiety, is welcomed with open arms ; and in spite of the present formidable aspect of the bread question, and the frequent reason for calculating the proportion between the size of the bread-basket and the number of mouths waiting to be fed, the new claimnant contrives to find a home with a hospitality perhaps quite as cordial in lowly as in stately households. Immediately the new-comer begins to show that marked characteristic of every new age, the revolutionary spirit; and the first shrill cry that announces his advent heralds his assault upon all the settled habitudes of the family. Every thing must yield not so much to his whims as to his dependence, and the whole family, from the old grandfather — if such venerahle head there be — down to the least pet of the nursery who has just graduated from babyhood, is enlisted by a resistless sympathy in the service of the little pensioner. The baby rules in the majesty of his weakness; and while other thrones are perhaps becoming a little shaky, this majesty keeps its seat and stands among the established institutions of our race.

We are writing perhaps somewhat pleasantly upon so grave a theme as childhood ; but we trust that our cheery tone, like the laugh of childhood itself, w T ill be found to win tenderness, as well as to express joy. "We confess to being lovers of little children, not only in the abstract but in the concrete ; and while well aware that the stern lessons of political economy may hint a certain limit of moderation in the philoprogenitive ambition, we know of no reasonable limit to the affection, and have no fears that good Jean Paul's creed will become too popular — that creed which all catechisms might admit, " I love God and little children." In fact, the affection that little children win from us interprets God's love to us. God loves us not because we can help Him, but because He helps us ; and the best that he asks of us is that we should be willing to let Him help us by his providence and grace. He is glorified not by rising above Himself — for the All-mighty and All-perfect can not rise above Himself — but by his condescension ; and the anthem " Glory to God in the highest," was heard on earth when the Eternal Being descended to our humanity and dwelt with the Holy Child at Bethlehem. As we in our poor way repeat that condescension, we have a nearer sense of God's love ; and as we befriend those whose helplessness claims our care, we rise to new wisdom and new joy. We may not, indeed, entertain any su^h philosophy of loving-kindness, yet may none the less have its fruits; and undoubtedly the new peace that comes into a family with the little child's coming is proof that the hearts that reach down in such tenderness to that little one are not only opened by parental affections, but also by filial faith, and the soul, like the seed-corn, as it presses its roots into the earth, opens its leaves toward heaven to drink in the rain and the sunshine of God. Whatever may be the reason, God's blessing goes with babies, and we do not care to say what kind of a world this would be without their presence. The monk and nun share in the benediction, and if nowhere else, they find something to pet even in the hour of their devotion, and there is to them something human as well as divine in the holy mother and child over the altar. The priest is no priest of God unless he leads little children to the good Shepherd ; and as to the celibates not under ghostly vows, the bachelors and maids among us, we can promise them little true peace unless they continue — as they generally do — to care for some brother or sister's children in the absence of any of their own.

We are the more ready to say our word for children because, in spite of the manifest tenderness of our American people toward their offspring, there are symptoms of a national conspiracy against childhood, and Herod is out- Heroded — not by any wholesale slaughter of innocents, for such an assassin would be torn into inch pieces by our mothers before he put his hand upon the second victim, but by the prevalent impatience of the slow march of nature, and the rage for crowding the early bud forward into premature flower and fruit. If many people could have their way there would cease to be any more little children, and the babies in long clothes would stride forth in pantaloons or petticoats to astonish beholders with precocious feats, as marvelous as the duties of the learned fleas, and quite as honorable to our humanity. We, of course, protest, as we have done before, against this whole forcing process in every stage of its development, and most of all in the early stage when the plant is so tender that fatal violence may be done to its delicate organism.

We say then, first of all, let us secure to our little children their proper naturalness, or their just place and development under that system of natural law to which in their physical constitution they belong. Their own mother's bosom should be the first guaranty of this natural right, and we are quite willing to be voted very stupid and old-fashioned in insisting that every mother should nurse her own child if she possibly can. We have no words to express our condemnation of the idea, becoming in quarters of somewhat equivocal fashion not uncommon, that the mother's natural office should be made over to some hireling, and that it is better to trust the hope of the family to some strange breast — perhaps to some half ogress with blood tainted with rum or what is worse — than break the mother's rest, or keep her from midnight routs, by care of her child. If a mother is stinted by nature in the fountains of aliment, she must submit to her privation and do the best in her power to supply her loss by other aid, but even then she ought not to think her care abated, but rather increased, by the transfer ; and no wealth nor service can dismiss the mother's eye from its providential watch over her offspring. We believe in refinement, and are lovers of elegance; but we hold the refinement and elegance to be empty pretension that undertake to slight honest human instincts, and try to be wiser than God and nature. We are not, indeed, ambitious of playing the physiologist, and entering into the particulars of the nursery, diet, bathing, clothing, and exercise of children. It is clear that immense errors prevail in each of these respects; and the bills of mortality, that show so large a portion of our race to be cut off in infancy, prove that all the mistakes are not to be charged to the doctors, and that so costly and precious a product as human life is most lavishly and recklessly squandered. The old system of overdosing has been matched by the new system of overpetting or overtraining ; and perhaps as many children have been destroyed by being daintily kept from the fresh air and free muscular activity as of old were destroyed by the laudanum bottle and its attendant abominations. We can not rejoice too much in the comparative emancipation of the nursery from the apothecary's shop, and are quite sure* that the regular medical practice is not surrendering all the honors of this emancipation to the votaries of infinitesimals, but is disposed to give even less medicine to children than anxious parents often desire. Let this negative reform be carried out into a more positive policy, and all the blessed agencies of light, air, and water, and motion will win new honors in the field so long occupied by drugs, and often make grassy play-grounds a better herbarium than gardens of balm and poppies, saffron and senna and rhubarb.

We are well aware that the idea of entire naturalness may be carried so far as to be run into the ground ; and some of our own champions of nature so glorify instinct at the expense of discipline as to remind us of what Voltaire said of some of the extravagances of poor Rousseau — they made him feel like getting down and going on all fours. Yet it will be found that they are poor students of Nature who find any follies in her teachings; and the freest physical development will be helped instead of being harmed by due regard to the superior moral and intellectual laws. Thus the proper check upon indolence and the sensual passions is found in the just development of the higher muscular and nervous faculties, and the child who is physically well educated is by this very fact raised above the merely animal life by being made physically as well as morally a truly human creature. That we too often miss the due method of physical discipline appears not only from the frequent sickness of children, but from the stiffness and want of ease that seem to possess them as soon as they come under our training hand, and to present them to the world as the only young creatures that are not free and graceful in their movements. We have made some improvements in the dress of boys and girls, that give nature fairer play; yet much remains to be done to complete the emancipation, by putting off all cramping encumbrances and allowing every limb and muscle full sweep. Instead of leaving the fashions of dress to a set of modistes, we would submit them to a council of artists and physicians, and so strike a brave blow at once for beauty and health in the nursery, with the hope that the offspring of God's noblest creature might not always surrender the palm of grace and freedom to kittens and lambs.

The question of the intellectual discipline of children is closely connected with their physical training, and many are the victims of the book and the school-room. The old method was to consider the school as a kind of prisonhouse for the scions of our perverse humanity, where learning was to be forced down reluctant throats by terror, in the absence of any intrinsic charms in the medicinal draught. The staple of study was in the main the work of the memory, and improvement was measured, like bricklaying, by the foot, the quantity laid being final proof of the work done. Rules of grammar and arithmetic that had no sort of lodgment in the juvenile understanding were laboriously committed to memory, and verses of Scripture and poetry were learned without stint. This old-fashioned system is exploded, to the infinite relief of millions of otherwise cramped muscles and aching heads. It will be well if the new system does not fall into another kind of narrowness by dismissing the memory from its rightful office, and forcing little children to be philosophers before their time. Childhood loves variety, and the alternation of activities that is so essential to the comfort and energy of us all is imperiously necessary to the development and even to the sanity of children. They soon weary of one thing, and judicious training will seek to study the laws of mental alternation so as to secure unity in variety, and by the interchange of exercises lead out the faculties in due order and force.

Nothing is clearer than that little children are soon tired of one attitude of body, and a careful observer will note the same weariness of one attitude of the mind. The little fellow who has been sitting an hour aches to stand or walk or run ; and so, too, when he has been receiving impressions from his book or teacher, he aches to change his mental attitude, and give exj:>ression to his feelings or ideas by some positive act. If we scrutinize this necessity of change, we shall find a remarkable illustration of it in the senses most essential to education, which are created as if it were in couples, as if to relieve guard with each other. The nerves of sensibility exchange labors with the nerves of motion, so that when we receive a sensation we long to make some coiTesj^onding muscular movement, and our condition is intolerable when our nerves are constantly excited and our muscles are kept in rest. The ear and the eye, each in its way, illustrate this law by alternating with their natural allies the voice and the hand. When we have listened, we long to speak; and when we have seen, we long to touch. So, on the other hand, when we have spoken we are ready to listen, and when we have touched we are the more ready to see. The same interchange of functions may be traced throughout all the faculties of the mind, and it will be a new day in the education both of young and old when the vast significance of this law is discerned, and by a wisely-adjusted alternation of exercises variety and unity of culture may be secured, and monotony and fickleness may be alike set aside. It will be then found that the just discipline of children is not the dull, unwholesome thing which it is often supposed to be, and that the work of the school-room may gain not a little life and force from the sports of the play-ground. We do not, indeed, propose to do away with all hard work in school ; for if there were no hard work there could be none of the happy feeling of relief when it is done, and play would lose its zest if all the hours were pastime. What we ask is that study should be in accordance with and not against the nature of the mind, and so the terrible habit be shunned that makes study so false and spectral, and shuts the world of books out of the free air and bright sunshine of nature and of God. The very tones which children, even bright children, often fall into the moment they open a book tell the whole story; and the transition from the free, ringing voice of the play-ground to that formal drawl or whine, proves that the mistake of separating words from things has begun thus early, and the blight of pedantry has fallen upon these fresh and opening buds of our hope and joy.

We suppose that the root of most mistakes in the education of little children comes from overlooking the important distinction between the lessons that are to be put into them and the mental life that is to bo brought out of them; or, iu other words, from forgetting that the mind is not a sheet of blank paper to be written upon, but a leaf whose vital organism is to be developed. Children are thus not only to be taught, but they are to be animated ; and the proof of their proficiency is not so much in what they know as in what they are. Sometimes the contrast between the child's own mind and his learning is most striking; and if frequently the lesson is in advance of the little student's thought, the thought is not seldom in ad-, vance of the lesson — as in the case of those startling questions and marvelous fancies with which the pets of the nursery sometimes confound the wiseacres of the parlor and library. Probably these questions and fancies take the child quite as much by surprise as they do the parent, andthey come not from any theory or purpose, but from some spontaneous impulse, which shows that, in childhood as in maturity, the mind within us, God's generous and mysterious gift, is greater and more fruitful than our own will or calculation. Whether we think of it or not, a large part of the archness of little children which so delights us comes from this contrast between their mind and their acquirements. There is a charm in the lisp of their words, as in the stumbling of their steps, that presents to us in playful contrast their great aspirations and their small achievements.

There is something in them very young, and something very old, and the jumble of bright intuitions and funny mistakes in their expressions reminds us of the odd figure which some urchin of the nursery cuts when he buries his head under his father's ponderous hat, or nestles in Lis grandfather's roomy arm-chair, with spectacles gravely mounted upon the minature nose. The old element in children comes from the rational principle which is not the creature of the schools but the gift of God; and it is the flashes from this true light that so often startle us with signs of intelligence in children quite as incongruous with their years as father's hat or grandfather's arm-chair. It is important that this distinction should be carefully noted both in school education and at home ; for ill fares the training that counts the mind as naught but a passive tablet, and the lesson as the only vital power. Even the faculty that holds the humblest place in the scale, and is usually thought to be the mere drudge or baggage-master of the intellect — the memory — is not a passive tablet, but a vital force, and holds no truth firmly without taking it as a truth to be assimilated with some measure of vital sense, instead of a dead tradition to be buried. A little child's memory is surely a living force, and any thoughtful observer who watches its spontaneous play, as it produces and reproduces its vivid impressions of scenes and characters in such marvelous round, will not wonder that the ancients called Mnemosyne the Mother of the Muses, since the fancies of the nursery, as well as the inventions of the drama and the epic, come from the mysterious power that receives all impressions of nature and life, and recombines or remembers them in such vivid and novel combinations. We who have children of our own know well that the degrading theory of the materialist as to the native powers of our children is far less reasonable than the poet's beautiful picture of the exuberance of these jjowers in their spontaneous play, and that the faculty of memory thus presented by Wordsworth deserves more respect, and claims more inspiration, than dull pedants believe :

" Behold the child among his new-born blisses — A six years' darling of a pigmy size ! See where, 'mid work of his own hand, he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes ! See at his feet some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art ,

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral !

'* And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song :

Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife ;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside.

And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part, Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage' With all the persons down to palsied age That life brings with her in her equipage ;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation."

Happy will it be for us when such true and cheerful philosophy is carried out in our schools and households; and, while all wholesome instruction is given and firm discipline is applied, all care shall be used to quicken the intellectual faculties without cramming them with crude verbiage, and, to bring out the active will without breaking its buoyant spring under arbitary appliances. There is something in the free and healthful development of a child's mind that acts upon his whole future, and justifies us in applying to it one of the sacred words of religion, or in calling the child mentally regenerate who is thus newly and well born into the atmosphere of truth and resolution. Too many of us bear the marks of the cramping process from our childhood, as of an imperfect birth ; and it is not only in crooked spines and round shoulders that we have reason to remember the twists and stoop that set their mark upon us in our tender years.

What we have said of physical and intellectual training applies with equal force to the heart, or to the whole range of our affections and desires. It is by the heart that little children mainly rule us, and by this that we should rule them. In fact it is impossible to separate their affections from their senses and thoughts, or to run through their mental processes any thing like the sharp line of demarcation which metaphysicians run between ideas and emotions. Even the bodily senses of a bright child are full of affection, and a red apple or a downy peach is grasped and devoured, not in gluttonous sensualism, but in rapturous enthusiasm, as if the palate were connected with the highest sensibilities, and a sweet taste, like a delicious fragrance, could waft

B the fancy into the land of the blessed. We profess to know children pretty well, and we have seen too much of the old Adam in their moods and freaks to allow us to call them angels ; yet we do sacredly recognize in them a wealth of ready affection which it is treason against God and humanity to deny or to neglect. Their veiy weakness is ready to open into a precious grace if we will only guide it wisely, and the child's natural dependence soon rises into a filial faith. This trusting temper in them is a great comfort to us, by rewarding our protection, and when wisely guided it is a great blessing to them, by leading them to the true rock of reliance. There is something in the perfect trust in which a little child comes to our arms that opens all the springs of loving-kindness ; and if the lion passions within us are ever near the golden age when they are to lie down with lamb-like gentleness, it is when a little child leads them. This ready confidence goes naturally with a spontaneous good-will, and nothing pleases the little one more than to be employed in some affectionate service, so that often the best cure for a freak of petulance is a call to some small mission of love. A bright boy of one of our friends took on bitterly and would not be comforted when he heard that his father was going to Europe, but immediately dried his tears when told by his father that he was expected to look after the family, and especially to look after mother's comfort. Although just out of his petticoats he was delighted with the idea of doing some thing, and so proved the wisdom of that philosophy which prescribes active kindness to others as the medicine for our own complaints.

The young heart that so easily trusts and loves has quite as ready a spring of joy, and it is marvelous upon how small a capital unspoiled children can be happy. Too soon we allow them to unlearn this blessed alchemy, and, instead of turning all things into gold by the sunshine of their native glee, they are perversely led to wish to turn gold into all things by the dazzling glare and feverish heat of false fashions. Any one may see the two methods at a glance who will take an exact account of what a healthy child in the country needs to set him up in the full play of his joy, and compare it with the huge and never-ending inventory of novelties and dainties which are essential, we will not say to the happiness, but to the decent quiet of one of the pet specimens of our too artificial city manners. A half dollar will buy the marbles, top, and hoop that will insure the delight that is rarely won by the uncounted gold that is lavished on costly toys and trashy confectionary. It is well to keep this native fountain of joy open and flowing, for whether wealth or limitation be the lot of our children, they can have from us no better heritage than the habit of enjoying single pleasures, and thriving on " human nature's daily food" — the common gifts of good Providence. A child in the family with this spirit is a well-spring of comfort that refreshes the whole house with living water; and the care-wom father, as he comes home from his business and takes such a little piece of blessedness to his heart, needs no metaphysics of optimism to make him believe that God is good, nor any brandy or billiard table to give his spirits a reaction from the yoke of labor.

How to secure a child's heart in its proper trust, affection and joy, is, of course, a great question, and we do not aim to have any new theory of moral and religious training. Of one thing, however, we are quite sure — the superiority of practical example over all speculative teaching. A child may have morality and religion, yet can not easily be a theoretical moralist or theologian, and must learn of God and humanity in the school of actual life and genuine experience. The true way to teach little children moral and spiritual realities is by presenting these as realities, and allowing the facts to precede and suggest the interpretation, just as, in the study of nature, the things go before the definitions, and the flowers and the stars are seen with the eye before botany and astronomy are read with the understanding. On this principle a true and genial home-life is better discipline for the child than any lectures on domestic economy, and a broad and earnest church-life is far better than bodies of divinity or libraries of ecclesiastical history. In this conviction thoughtful and practical persons of all religious creeds seem to be agreeing ; and there is something quite emphatic and encouraging in the universality and warmth of the desire to open the fold of the Good Shepherd to the young lambs, and nurture children in the faith 'that the Christian Church is their true home, and they go from their own Providential mother in renouncing or slighting her watch and care. Nothing is more marked in the religious history of our own country than the growing disposition to secure to childhood its spiritual birthright, and to confirm a holy faith by the charms of early association, as well as by the light of timely instruction. If the strength of our national attachment to Christianity were to be put to the test, it would be found to have quite as strong a hold upon us by its little tendrils as its stout branches, and that many a strong will is fastened to the Rock of Ages by the loving faith of little children, those tendrils of the human vine.

We could write on to any length upon a topic so winning; but we must not indulge our own humor at the expense of the reader's patience, nor forget that little children are not in every home, and that time, that pushes them on toward maturity, as well as death, which so often cuts them down in their blossom, is calling them away. Yet they never do go away; and childhood, whether it ripens into manhood or is stricken by death, lives transfigured, not blighted, in every loving heart. This view of the subject should not be slighted ; and it is important to have an eye upon the future influence of this spring time, when it becomes a cherished remembrance or may become a disheartening regret. We do not believe indeed in keeping such anxious watch for the future as to forget the present, nor in thinking so much of our way of living as to lose the zest of life itself. We can be happy, however, in our own or our children's early years without any premature care or precocious ingenuity. The method that best serves the present need best secures the future heritage, and the young life that opens most genially and healthfully under vernal'skies and breezes has best hope of summer blooms and autumn fruits. It will be found that the most pleasing amusements, like spring buds, have a prospective utility, and the memory of a truly happy childhood is a treasure of manly strength and joy. It would be well if parents and kindred would bear in mind this charm of early association in their holiday gifts and festivities, and thus lay up for the little ones a store of enduring memorials and satisfactions, instead of wasting so much time and money upon flashy trifles that last but for a day or a month, and have no prospective worth or meaning. We need all such ministries to keep our own hearts fresh and young by the remembrance of our early days; that time, instead of being the sepulchre, may be the garden of our youth, where the seeds of our young joys may spring up and bear blossom and fruit an hundred fold ; making us thus younger in feeling as we are older in years, and bidding us, in the words of the blessed Master, "enter the kingdom of heaven like a little child."