NormalizeHEADmain

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 2672 deletions

diff --git a/old/60912.txt b/old/60912.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 614674f..0000000
--- a/old/60912.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,2672 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg eBook, On the Training of Parents, by Ernest Hamlin
-Abbott
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-
-Title: On the Training of Parents
-
-
-Author: Ernest Hamlin Abbott
-
-
-
-Release Date: December 13, 2019  [eBook #60912]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE TRAINING OF PARENTS***
-
-
-E-text prepared by MFR, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
-available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
-
-
-
-Note: Images of the original pages are available through
-      Internet Archive. See
-      https://archive.org/details/ontrainingofpare00abborich
-
-
-
-
-
-ON THE TRAINING OF PARENTS
-
-by
-
-ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT
-
-
-   "And they shall live with their children."
-
-
-[Illustration: Logo]
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Boston and New York
-Houghton Mifflin Company
-The Riverside Press Cambridge
-
-Copyright 1908 by Ernest Hamlin Abbott
-All Rights Reserved
-
-Published April 1908
-
-Tenth Impression
-
-
-
-
-     _No man has the right to dedicate to another what is not his own.
-     All that is mine in this little book is its infelicities. These
-     I dedicate to oblivion. The rest belongs to those two women from
-     whom I, as son and as husband, have learned all that I know of the
-     training of parents._
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-  I. SPASM AND HABIT                1
-
- II. THE WILL AND THE WAY          19
-
-III. BY RULE OF WIT                40
-
- IV. PEACE AT A PRICE              72
-
-  V. FOR 'TIS THEIR NATURE TO      93
-
- VI. THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM      114
-
-
-
-
-ON THE TRAINING OF PARENTS
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-SPASM AND HABIT
-
-
-A voice like a knife cut the still, warm air. "Now you just go right
-down and get that canned salmon." I turned my head and saw a little
-girl, in a fluffy dress with a skirt like a parachute, standing in the
-midst of the long grass. She was evidently frightened and hesitating.
-There was a whimper and a whining protest. A young woman in a wrapper,
-with a menacing switch in her hand, was advancing. Her voice grew
-sharper: "You do what I say, quick, or I'll whip you good!" The child
-beat a retreat toward me; then timidly stood her ground. "It's so
-far!" she wailed. The enemy again approached; but the little feet of
-the child were nimble enough to keep her at a safe distance. "If you
-don't hurry, I'll whip you anyway." Fear of the switch was evidently
-mastering the dislike of the task. The little girl burst out crying,
-turned down the dusty road, and disappeared in the direction of the
-village.
-
-That incident was the result of government by collision. If that mother
-had any principle at all, it might be expressed thus: Wait till the
-child does wrong, then collide with her. Of course none of us would
-deliberately collide in just this fashion. We should not be so vulgar.
-When we have an altercation with a child, we choose less publicity and
-have some regard for refinement of phrase. Perhaps, too, we ordinarily
-avoid altercation entirely except concerning some grave matter. We
-should prefer to do without canned salmon rather than exhibit our
-impotence and our temper before the neighbors. When, however, we have
-the child in seclusion at our mercy, are we deterred from trying the
-collision method by any considerations of principle? If not, we belong
-to the same school of parents as the young woman in a wrapper. The
-only difference is that we have not her courage of conviction--or of
-indolence.
-
-Now, those who believe in government by collision need read no further;
-for I shall assume that such government is only just better than
-no government at all, and that, if we fall into its methods, we do
-so by accident or because of the frailty of our temper; that every
-altercation with a child is a confession of weakness; and that our
-principal task is to train ourselves so that we may be able to govern
-a child without colliding with him. Of course, in the training of
-children, as in managing a railway, it may sometimes be necessary to
-occasion a disaster in order to avoid a great catastrophe. If a freight
-car is running wild down a grade, it is better to throw it off the
-track than to allow it to smash a loaded passenger train. So it may
-sometimes be better to let a child collide with you, rather than have
-him collide with the community. But in both cases it is better to have
-the collision well planned, to recognize it as a disaster, though the
-lesser of two possible ones, and, best of all, to prevent any occasion
-of resorting to destructive measures.
-
-The only alternative I know to government by collision is government by
-habit. To show what I mean, may I cite an instance in contrast to the
-episode of the switch and the canned salmon? That same summer a small
-boy, six years old, was playing with his blocks. His mother in the next
-room suddenly realized that she had not ordered the fruit that was
-needed for the household. "Max!" she called. Now Max is no prig, but
-he had learned that he was expected to come when called; so, with an
-injunction to his playmates not to disturb the bridge he was building,
-he appeared at the doorway. "What is it?" (He ought to have said, "Yes,
-mamma;" but, as I have remarked, Max is thoroughly human.) "I want
-you to do an errand for me--something you've never done before. I want
-you to go to the grocery and get six oranges." Max started off. "Wait
-a moment. You've never gone alone on such a long errand before. Do you
-believe you can do it quickly, and not dawdle?" Max thought he could,
-and in fact did the errand as promptly as could be expected. He had
-been accustomed to obedience; in addition, he had become accustomed to
-accepting some measure of responsibility. The mother controlled him,
-not by violence, but by habit. The occurrence was the result of a long
-process, and became in turn a cause of future occurrences of similar
-character. Reduced to its simplest terms, then, the process of training
-children is the process of forming habits.
-
-The earliest habits are physical. The whole duty of man during the
-first few weeks of his existence consists in feeding and sleeping
-regularly; and most of the rights of man during that period consist in
-being let alone. Listen to the eminent French psychologist, Th. Ribot:
-"The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed, diffluent
-brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in
-him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the sensory centres
-are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain isolated, for
-a long time after birth." Doesn't it make you shudder to think of
-dandling such a creature as that on a hard-gaited knee? Does not that
-"unformed, diffluent brain, composed largely of water," plead to be
-let alone? Yet the impulse of most parents when they encounter their
-new possession is to do something to it,--to take it up, to carry it
-about, and, as soon as its eyes are really open, to try and show it
-things, to evoke from it some kind of human expression. It seems as if
-we were all beset by a doubt that our offspring is really a creature
-of our own kind, and that we were bound to make it establish, by some
-proof, its right to a place at the top of creation. Now, the instincts
-of the infant are all in other directions. Yielding to these, the
-mite seems to be utterly indifferent to the honors of its station
-in animal life, and even to the attention it receives. It wants to
-cry occasionally, to feed periodically, and to sleep a great deal.
-And, in spite of our experience, we are wrong, and the diminutive
-thing, with a cortico-motor system only hinted at, with sensory
-centres undifferentiated, and with the extraordinary disadvantage of
-having completely isolated associational centres, is right. The first
-habits, therefore, which the parents have to form in the training of
-their child are their own; and the most important of these is the
-habit of non-interference, which is another name for the habit of
-self-restraint. Fortunately, we parents can at the outset devote our
-attention chiefly to this for several months. If we wish to avoid,
-in later years, the necessity for resorting to government by spasm,
-and to establish instead government by habit, we do not have to begin
-by experimenting on a helpless child; we can begin, fortunately, by
-experimenting on ourselves.
-
-It is during this period that we have the best chance of learning the
-difference between governing children and interfering with them; for
-though that midget will not thrive under interference, he will thrive
-under government. He does not need to be told what to do, but he does
-depend on us to teach him when to do it. While, therefore, we are
-forming in ourselves the habit of non-interference, we are also forming
-in him the habit of regularity. If we begin that way, we save both him
-and ourselves a great deal of trouble.
-
-One mother, for instance, when she hears her baby cry, runs to him,
-picks him up, dances him up and down, offers him food, dangles a bell
-in front of him, talks to him, takes him to the window, tries every
-imaginable device to quiet him. "It's wicked, I think," says she, "to
-try to stifle my maternal instincts. The poor little dear! how could
-I be so cruel as not to respond to his cry for me?" She is assuming
-several things. She assumes, first, that the baby is crying for her,
-whereas he is probably crying because he needs the exercise. That is
-the only way he can expand his lungs. When he cries because of pain,
-or anger, or nervous irritability, the cry will be unmistakable;
-and the response ought to be, not a wild series of spasms, but an
-intelligent treatment of the cause. She assumes, in the second place,
-that the impulse to rid herself of the annoyance of hearing the cry is
-a maternal instinct. If that were so, a lot of gruff old bachelors on
-railway trains are frequently moved by maternal instinct. The maternal
-instinct, in fact, is something quite different--it is the instinct of
-care, watchfulness, nurture, and it does not call for spasms. In the
-third place, she assumes that it would be cruel not to experiment with
-her child--at least so it appears; for what she does is to try in quick
-succession a series of experiments, no one of which is continued long
-enough to be of any value, and all of which, as she might easily learn,
-have been proved to be of no permanent value in producing placid,
-contented babies.
-
-The other mother, when she hears the cry, listens. If it is a cry of
-pain, she knows it in an instant. It is amazing how quickly a mother
-learns that language. It is a mystery to most men, though even to
-them not unsearchable. Physicians, after experience in children's
-wards, understand it; and even a father, if he is patient, can
-acquire a moderate knowledge of it. But a mother, or even a nurse,
-if she is moved by a genuine maternal instinct and not by a selfish
-desire for her own comfort, is almost an adept at the start. At the
-cry of pain, that mother in a moment is looking for the misplaced
-pin, or rearranging the irritating bit of clothing, or remedying the
-uncomfortable position, or searching for a more hidden cause. If it
-is a cry of irritability, she blames herself for having rocked the
-child a few moments before, and steels herself against repeating the
-indulgence. If it is a cry of hunger, she looks at the clock to see
-if it is the hour for another feeding. If it is just "plain cry,"
-she smiles, for she knows that he is doing that in lieu of playing
-baseball or riding horseback. When it is meal-time, she, exercising the
-discretion which he is not always able to exercise for himself, gently
-withdraws the food supply when he has had all that is good for him. And
-when it is time for him to go to sleep, she arranges him comfortably in
-his crib, darkens the room, and leaves him. If then he emits another
-"plain cry," she is not disturbed. He has as much a right to cry as
-he has to sleep. If she lets him go to sleep in her arms, for the love
-of feeling him there, she will not complain later, when it is more
-inconvenient, if he remonstrates against going to sleep in any other
-way. She will know that in that respect, as in respect to his regular
-feeding, she has governed him by habit. Either she will have to pay the
-penalty of having established in her kingdom an inconvenient law, or
-else she will have to inflict upon him, as well as herself, the penalty
-of establishing later, and at greater cost, another and more convenient
-custom which might just as well have been established in the first
-place. This penalty may involve a collision--though possibly a mild
-one. Even in that case, however, in the very difficulty of supplanting
-an old custom by a new one, she will have evidence of the strength of
-her government by habit.
-
-There is no reason why regularity once established should not become
-for all future years a routine. We all know how hard it is to break up
-a bad habit. Happily, it is just as hard to break up a good one. The
-difference between the child who teases for every new variety of food
-on the table, pushes away the dishes that are set before him, whines
-when he is told it is bedtime, eats and goes to sleep only after much
-coaxing, and the child who accepts his food and his hours for sleep
-as a matter of course, as he accepts the house he lives in, is simply
-the difference between a bad habit and a good one. It is no easier to
-change the one habit than it is the other. After a child has learned
-to get his food and go to bed with whining and teasing, it is very
-difficult for him to learn to eat and sleep in any other fashion; it
-is equally difficult for a child who has learned to eat and enjoy food
-adapted to him, and to go to bed at a suitable hour, to understand
-why all sorts of strange decoctions should be offered to him, and
-why he should not get undressed when his bedtime comes. Of course
-the spirit of adventure, which is strong in most normal children,
-will lead them sometimes to sample some things that they see their
-elders--or, for that matter, the animals--eating; and to race about
-the halls, exploring the domain of the dark, after they are supposed
-to be asleep; but even this spirit of adventure, which sometimes
-brings discouragement to the mother, is a tribute to regular life; and
-it is denied to those children whose whole life consists in a series
-of parental experiments. The little lad who at a children's party
-declines the sweetmeats is no angel. Nor is his companion, who grabs
-the dainties an imp. They are both, like the rest of us, creatures
-of habit. The theory of total depravity, by which our forefathers
-explained the unpleasant doings of youngsters, is, I have concluded, a
-doctrine which parents devised in order to shift the burden of their
-own failures to the shoulders of their offspring.
-
-This practice of regularity in the physical care of children[1] will
-lay the foundation, not only of health and contentment, but also
-of moral discipline. When we have eliminated the opportunities for
-collision with our children at meal-times and bedtime, we are well
-on our way toward eliminating government by collision altogether.
-The quiet exercise of authority involved in carrying out a simple
-regimen of diet and of rest will almost automatically extend to other
-matters. The most difficult part of this exercise of authority will be
-overcome when the parent learns self-restraint. Not to run to a child
-every time he cries is the beginning of learning not to yield to a
-child every time he wants something. In many cases authority is thus
-exercised by doing nothing. The mother, for example, has left the baby
-creeping about alone in his nursery. She has left him a ball and two
-or three blocks with which he can experiment, and another ball hanging
-from a cord within his reach which he can swing to and fro. He is
-learning that the ball is soft and can roll, that the blocks are hard
-and cannot roll, and that the pendulum swings regularly. He is as well
-occupied in his work as the mother is in hers. Suddenly she hears a cry
-of vexation. If it continues, she steps to the door to see what has
-happened. He has raised himself up by the window and is trying to reach
-the tassel at the end of the cord on the window-shade, and finds it
-above his outstretched hands. She might go to the window, draw down the
-shade, and, holding it firm, let him play with the cord till he tires;
-but she knows that it would be inconvenient to have him continually
-playing with the window-shade in the house, and she does not want him
-to begin. She might then take him up and distract his attention till
-he forgets. But she knows that if she does this once, she will be
-called upon to do it again. So she shakes her head and says "No," which
-she has taught him to understand, and, after making sure that he is
-in no danger of a fall, leaves him and returns to her work. By doing
-nothing she has done what for the time being is the hardest thing. As
-she closes the door she hears another wail of vexation, but she does
-not interfere. She has exercised her authority simply by exercising
-self-restraint.
-
-It all depends on what we want our children to be whether we employ
-the method of spasm or the method of self-restraint. Of course those
-of us who think pertness in a child is a virtue, who regard a fit
-of teasing as "smart" or "cunning," who enjoy the exhilaration of
-encountering a child as an adversary and breaking down his opposition,
-can develop in children habitual pertness, teasing, and disobedience
-with the utmost ease. It requires, however, no especial genius to
-avoid these qualities. Other traits, it may be, require something like
-genius--something at least beyond persistence and self-restraint--to
-create; but to provide children with a contented acquiescence in a
-regular life and an habitual disposition to obedience requires of the
-parents no qualities of mind which are not common to all of us mortals.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[1] For directions in this matter I know of no book to compare with Dr.
-L. Emmett Holt's _The Care and Feeding of Children_, published by D.
-Appleton & Co. Intelligently followed by a mother, with due regard to
-the individual peculiarities of the children under her care, the system
-outlined in that volume will save the mother an enormous amount of
-energy and worry and the child a great deal of injustice. It ought to
-arrive in every household with the first-born baby, or, better, a few
-weeks in advance. The physician who sees that it does, in every family
-he attends, will win a wealth of gratitude and confidence. In my own
-household it came that way. As a supplement, not a substitute, I also
-recommend Dr. Emelyn L. Coolidge's _The Mother's Manual_ (A. S. Barnes
-& Co.)
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-THE WILL AND THE WAY
-
-
-Parents regard their children with all sorts of feelings, with love
-of course, with indulgence, with amusement, and even, so it is said,
-with self-complacency and admiration; but it sometimes seems as if very
-few regard them with respect. No one who respects another will lie to
-him, or visit him with empty threats, or make to him vain promises;
-yet fathers and mothers in all parts of the country are at this moment
-lying to their children, threatening them with punishments they do not
-mean to inflict, and making promises they do not intend to fulfill.
-The faith of a child ought to be proverbial. It is the only substance
-of things hoped for which many children ever get. I sometimes wonder
-if it is really just to lay the Fifth Commandment upon all American
-children. Somehow, there seems to be something reciprocal implied
-in it. If that commandment is of universal application, it can be
-considered so, I imagine, only on the ground that it states a duty
-owed ultimately not to the parents but to the Almighty. Certainly that
-parent who does not respect his children has no personal claim upon
-their honor.
-
-What I mean by respect for a child I can perhaps explain best by an
-instance. Marshall, aged seven, had yielded to temptation in the form
-of a preserved pear. Instead of putting the temptation behind him,
-he had put it within him; and he had been caught. The maternal court
-decided that a fair equivalent for this pear was a week of desserts.
-For two days the culprit sat inactive at the close of dinner while his
-comrades ate with relish their portions of pudding. Then unexpectedly
-came an invitation to dinner from a friend. On the return homeward an
-aunt remarked, "I noticed that Marshall ate dessert with the others."
-"Yes," replied his mother, "I think he must have forgotten. I noticed
-it too, but I did not speak to him because there was no expectation of
-this treat when the punishment was determined upon. Besides, I do not
-think it would have been just to add to his punishment by humiliating
-him before the others."
-
-In this case respect for the youthful Marshall meant, first,
-attributing the failure to observe the rule to something besides
-deliberate intent; second, recognizing that he was to be treated not
-merely with severity, but also with justice; and, third, appreciating
-the individuality of the child, which included special sensitiveness
-to the attention and opinion of others. The very fact that Marshall
-was accustomed to regularity of discipline, to invariableness in
-punishment, and even to ridicule of vanity or silliness, made it
-possible for his mother to do something that smacked of irregularity
-and of variableness, and to save him from unnecessary abasement.
-Just because she had a rule which she habitually followed, she could
-break it. She could not have broken it if she had not had it. The
-effectiveness of this act of omission lay in the very fact that it was
-an exception. It was a case in which fairness to the boy depended upon
-inconsistency. This only illustrates the truth that in dealing with a
-child you may violate any principle so long as you keep your respect
-for the child inviolate. And the secret of respect for a child lies in
-regarding him as a human being.
-
-The limitation of the devotee of "child study," the scientific
-investigator of "child nature," the observer of "the child mind,"
-is that he cannot regard a child as a human being. In other words,
-his limitation consists in being too broad. He observes individuals
-only for the sake of disregarding their individuality. He is busy
-establishing some general laws of childhood. He must choose to know
-nothing of children that he may know the Child. As soon as he begins
-to respect an individual child he becomes personal and biased; and as
-soon as he becomes personal and biased he ceases to be scientific. A
-good mother, on the other hand, is good just because of her prejudices.
-She knows so much about her child that her testimony is scientifically
-worthless. In everything the child does she sees something he, and not
-another child has done before; and she makes her judgments accordingly.
-And it is just because her observations would be vicious in a table of
-statistics that they are the best possible basis for conduct. In other
-words, she is dealing, not with a subject, a cadaver, so to speak, that
-can be classified, but with a live being that for her purposes belongs
-in a class by himself. That is what I mean by respecting a child.
-
-It is here that the teacher and the parent are at odds. The teacher
-is dealing with childhood, the parent is dealing with Dick-hood or
-Mary-hood. The teacher is engaged chiefly in providing each child with
-the equipment that belongs by right to all civilized children; the
-parent, on the other hand, is bound to bring each child to his, and
-not another's, highest development. The teacher is responsible for the
-school or the class; the parent, for the boy or girl. The difference in
-point of view makes the difference in duty. It was from the parental
-point of view that the ancient sage wrote his proverb--"Train up a
-child in the way he should go." He was not thinking of the way of
-universal obligation, for what he really said was, "Train up a child
-in the way he [that particular individual] is to go;" in other words,
-prepare him for the kind of life for which he is fitted. In order
-to do this, one must have regard for that child's temperament, his
-distinctive traits.
-
-The severest test of our respect for a child comes when we find his
-will conflicting with ours. It is easy enough to overbear a child's
-will; it is difficult to educate it. The hardest task of a parent is
-to retain respect for a child while administering a spanking. It is
-easy to roll out the cant saying, "I spank you because I love you," but
-it is very difficult to bring one's self into that frame of mind in
-which it would be the mere truth to say, "I spank you because I respect
-you." Anybody, by simply being persistent, can thwart a child; and any
-one with the ordinary strength of an adult can beat him; but no one who
-is unwilling to do him the courtesy of regarding him as an individual
-can master and direct a child, or really punish him.
-
-Not long ago I was traveling in a day coach. In front of me were a
-man, a woman, and a small boy of about five years. The woman was the
-dominant member of the group. Her face, with its thin, compressed
-lips and its hard gray eyes, had a look of indolent selfishness with
-a suggestion of latent high temper. The man seemed rather dull, weak,
-and unhappy. The boy had the rotund, insensitive countenance of his
-father; but he had not yet lost interest in life. He was no more
-restless than a boy of his age ought to be. When his mother found
-his movements disturbing, she darted a rebuke at him. For the moment
-he sat still or moved out of the way. Finally he edged out into the
-aisle. The woman made a pretense of ordering him back into the seat.
-The boy, evidently realizing that his mother, since she was now put to
-no inconvenience by him, had no intention of enforcing her command,
-remained passively where he was. When his mother's attention was
-distracted, he made use of his freedom to get a little mild gymnastic
-exercise. The train as it drew up to a station jerkily stopped. The
-lurch of the car threw the boy backward on the floor. Stunned for but
-an instant, the little lad sent forth a wail. Some of the passengers
-turned around; others started forward to the child. The woman was
-obviously annoyed by the disturbance. Before the father had fairly
-picked him up, she seized the child, roughly brushed off his clothes,
-and set him violently down on the seat. "You're a bad boy." She spat
-the words out at him and shook him. She turned to her husband: "I told
-him not to stand there." The man was silenced before his dull wits
-allowed him the chance to speak. "Now," to the boy, "stop your crying."
-The youngster could not repress his sobs; he was still somewhat dazed.
-The man gently rubbed the back of the lad's head. The woman glanced at
-the spectators. She must have noticed that her method of avoiding a
-scene was not altogether successful. She leaned toward the boy. "Did
-you hurt yourself?" she asked, and took him into her lap. He let his
-head fall indifferently on the woman's shoulder. Her tardy and rather
-formal caresses aroused no response. She put him back on the seat, less
-ungently than before. "Now will you be good?"
-
-If any but the fool is ever tempted to doubt the existence of God,
-it is when he reflects that children are intrusted to the mercy of
-such women as this. None of us is of her breed. We do not like her
-coarseness. We should never allow ourselves to make the mistake she
-made--of being found out. She was too frank with her emotions. She had
-not the skill to conceal the springs of her conduct. What difference,
-at bottom, however, is there between her and us when we are governed,
-in disciplining a child, by the degree of our own displeasure? Every
-one of us has been, on occasions, at heart as incompetent as this
-vulgar female. We have all of us judged children, at one time and
-another, by their conformity to our will. A very good woman it was,
-of the straitest New England doctrines, who sent a boy supperless to
-bed because, while putting on his overcoat, he accidentally toppled
-over and smashed a prized vase. That boy is now a man gray with years
-and laden with honors; but to this day he has not forgotten the fact
-that he was made to suffer, not for his own fault, but for his aunt's
-disappointment.
-
-The only thing that will free us from the futile way of the ogreish
-woman on the railway car and the austere Puritan lady is an abiding
-respect for our children. This will save us from attributing to our
-children our own willfulness! To be authoritative with children
-is something else besides being opinionated. The opinionated may
-compel obedience; but only the authoritative secure it. And even the
-opinionated find obedience not easy of compulsion. When caprice assumes
-command, I have a sly conviction that disobedience becomes a virtue.
-Preliminary to teaching children how to obey is the process of learning
-how to command. When a child is intransigent, it is worth while to
-consider whether it is not he that is administering a rebuke.
-
-Sometimes resistance to even rightful authority is not as depraved as
-we, who do not fancy being resisted, delude ourselves into thinking.
-There comes the time when any child will exult at the discovery that
-he is a being apart. He naturally wants to measure his will, and his
-mother's or his father's will is the handiest standard of comparison.
-A test of that sort is sometimes disconcerting. A five-year-old, too
-much given to sliding down from his chair at meal-time, was warned
-by his father that whenever in the future he should leave his chair,
-he should not be allowed to return to the table. Soon afterwards the
-boy disappeared from his place. He had evidently renewed his slippery
-ways, and had made up his mind to lurk beneath the table and await
-results. Intent upon the enforcement of the decree, his father said
-sternly, "You may be excused." Forthwith a head of tousled hair was
-thrust above the level of the table. "But I didn't leave my chair."
-Sure enough, there he lay prone across the seat, like a bag of meal
-on an ass's back. His father had to find what scant refuge he could in
-the permissive form of his sentence of dismissal. The lad's wits had
-won a victory for his will. Those who enter such an engagement without
-reconnoitring must accept the risk, and, if they wish to preserve the
-advantage of a commanding position, must abide by the results of any
-such skirmish. To turn it into a battle of wills is to commit the
-blunder of underestimating their opponent's strength. A child's will is
-not a fragile thing. It is not "broken" when it is overcome by another
-will reinforced by physical strength. An old lady of Maine, now gone to
-her own place,--which I venture to say is not far from that of Luther
-and Knox and Jonathan Edwards,--once told me how, when a small girl,
-she had had her will broken; she recounted the passionate resistance,
-the screaming protestation, the convulsive and futile rage exhausted
-only by hours of kicking and pounding the floor, and her final
-capitulation, announced by her picking up the toy which, in defiance
-of her father's order, she had at first refused to touch. She gloried
-in this Spartan training, and deplored the lack of it in the present
-degenerate generation. It was this same old lady, with the "broken"
-will, who, rejecting all advances, stanchly maintained her side in a
-family feud to, I believe, her dying day. Her will, it is plain, had
-not even been cracked; it showed not so much as a suture; neither had
-it been trained. The only treatment it had received had been one of
-contumely. The old lady was not exactly to blame for the outcome.
-
-If we respect a child's will, we shall give it a chance to operate. We
-do not thereby surrender a pea's weight of authority. A certain young
-mother, let us say, believes that there is a sort of unselfishness
-that has no part in love: she will not relieve her children of effort
-and responsibility. One of her brood, a lad of seven, with a touch
-of dreaminess in his mobile face, with impatience of the material
-restraints of time and space, with a will of his own that is the harder
-to direct because it is seldom aggressive, is engaged in propelling a
-vast tow of block barges along the river that winds across the nursery
-floor. Of his companions, one is umpiring a game of football between
-teams of leaden soldiers, and the other is constructing a fearsome
-dungeon ten blocks deep. At the door appears Authority. "It is now four
-o'clock," she announces. "At a quarter past four I want to have all the
-blocks and toys put away." The football umpire and the dungeon-builder,
-sniffing a prospective treat, bring their operations to an abrupt
-close. The lad of dreams listens abstractedly, and then turns with
-great puffing and snorting to his labors of navigation. Inattention?
-Partly; but partly, too, a deliberate choice of present pleasure and
-a willful rejection of the words of authority. Ten, eleven, twelve
-minutes pass. Again sounds the authoritative voice. "In three minutes
-it will be a quarter past four. I shall want you then to begin to wash
-and dress for a drive. Eric, I am afraid you won't be able to go with
-us; your blocks are not put away." She might, of course, justly tell
-him then and there that he will not be allowed to go; she chooses,
-however, the better way, and lets him wrestle with the situation.
-"You had better not stop to cry," she warns him; "there is no time to
-waste." In fractious misery he hurriedly begins his belated task. His
-will, so far from being broken or weakened, is actually stiffened; but
-it is now enlisted on the side of authority. The others--not a whit
-more virtuous, by the way, but only more sagacious--are half dressed
-before he has put his blocks in order. If he fails to overtake them, he
-will stand disconsolate, abject, perhaps tempestuous, and watch them
-depart. He has had his way, but he has won no victory; he has simply
-learned the cost of willfulness. If he succeeds in overtaking them, he
-will not have lost his lesson. His mother, it is true, will not exactly
-have had her way; but she reckons that no loss, as her way was not her
-end; she will have enlisted his will. The victory which the boy will
-have won is not over her. The only antagonist he has had is himself.
-Because of her respect for him, he will now have a new respect for
-himself and for her. He is on the road to acquiring the will to obey.
-
-If it had been one of the other two who had disobeyed, her course
-might have been different. A sullen, recalcitrant will, open-eyed,
-calculating, defiant, might easily suggest a different treatment. "You
-have chosen your leaden soldiers; now leaden soldiers it shall be.
-Since you did not make your duty your choice, then I shall arrange
-matters so that your choice shall be your duty. Nothing but leaden
-soldiers till we return." Such a variation in the treatment of
-children smacks not in the least of partiality. It simply means that
-respect for the child has involved respect for his individuality. The
-maxim, Let the punishment fit the crime, may express a principle of
-action useful for the government of a State or of a school; but for
-the purposes of the home it should be altered so as to read, Let the
-punishment fit the child.
-
-This ought to be the answer whenever that question arises that still
-serves the purpose of discussion in the correspondence columns of the
-newspapers, Is corporal punishment defensible? The conventional answer
-nowadays is, No. This is supposed to betoken the benignant mind. Any
-other answer nowadays classifies one as an autocratic brute. It seems
-to be assumed that corporal punishment must necessarily be administered
-in the jaunty spirit of the Chinese proverb which runs: "A cloudy
-day--leisure to beat the children." Real tenderness of heart, so
-runs the accepted modern doctrine, forbids the infliction of physical
-pain. In all these discussions, however, one consideration seems to be
-ignored--a decent respect for children. To one who is governed by this
-consideration, there is only one answer to the question, Do you believe
-in spanking a child? That answer is comprised in another question, What
-child? It is not necessary to go as far as Menander, who declared, "He
-who is not flogged is not educated," to be convinced that a good many
-children have been deprived of their rights because they have never
-been spanked.
-
-There was once a little girl who could never forget the indignity
-she suffered in a spanking she had received. She grew up with her
-mind resolutely set against all corporal punishment. In the course of
-time she was married and had two children. With one of them she had
-no problems of discipline; but with the other, a daughter, she had
-problems that taxed her wits to the utmost. At times the little girl
-seemed verily possessed. At last, in desperation, this harassed mother,
-driven into recreancy to her own principle, resorted to the form of
-chastisement she had forsworn. The effect was instantaneous. The child
-was relieved, as it were, from herself. With some temperaments in some
-moods the rod is like the wand of a magician. The childish petulance,
-the outburst of temper, the streak of almost malicious perversity, is
-but the child's way of expressing his quarrel with himself; and when
-the sharp physical pain comes, it seems to announce the subjugation of
-an enemy. In a household there are three children. One, sensitive to
-physical pain, shrivels and warps at the very prospect of it; a second
-is deterred from no act by the fear of it, and is altered not a whit by
-the memory of it; the third seems to find in it the comforting sense
-of being mastered at those times when he is out of sorts with himself,
-and responds to it with renewed affection and restored sweetness of
-temper. For the mother of that trio academic discussions on corporal
-punishment are not only uninteresting--they are positively irritating.
-She has paid her children the decent respect of considering their
-temperaments.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-BY RULE OF WIT
-
-
-At a dinner-table one evening, a man who was interested in his own
-children stated a rule by which he made sure that no child of his would
-disobey him. The rule is infallible. He remarked to his companion:--
-
-"I never give a command to my children."
-
-"What do you do?" he was asked.
-
-"I tell them stories."
-
-That expresses a perfectly intelligible policy: Abdicate, and you will
-never have a disobedient child. You will also never have an obedient
-one. The fact that the man who made this statement was an Anarchist
-explains his theory. He regarded obedience not as a virtue, but as
-a defect. He was altogether consistent. A disbeliever in government
-for society, he declined to establish any government for his family.
-In place of government, however, he at least took pains to establish
-something else. This was a systematic appeal to the child's imagination.
-
-If one had to choose between government and influence over
-children through the imagination, there might be some reason for
-discarding government. As a matter of fact, however, the use of the
-imagination, so far from being antagonistic to effective government,
-is indispensable to it. The reason why we parents so often fail in
-securing obedience, and, what is more important still, in developing
-in our children the spirit of obedience, is that we are deficient in
-imagination--or at least that what imagination we have is untrained.
-
-In this faculty in which we are weak, children are strong. A little
-four-year-old I know, in making letters for his own amusement,
-frequently attaches arms and legs to them; it is his way of
-pictorially representing the animation he ascribes to them. Indeed,
-he sometimes goes so far as to transfer in mind these limbs to the
-object which the letters spell. Thus, he laboriously prints the letters
-P-I-G, adds to each letter a lively pair of legs, and exclaims: "See,
-the pig is running!" Mental processes like that, complicated though it
-is, are common with children. A child left alone in the nursery with
-his blocks will find them transformed into trains, steamboats, people,
-trees, animals, whatever he wills. In this picturesque form imagination
-may be called fancy; but it has many other phases. Imagination is an
-element in memory. Ability to recall a sound requires imagination.
-When, for instance, a child repeats a word he has heard some one use,
-his imagination has enabled him to summon up the sound of that word.
-Imagination is an element in emulation. When a child is trying to outdo
-another, or outdo his own past performances, he has to picture to his
-mind what he or his competitor has done and what the desirable outcome
-of the struggle would be. Imagination is an element even in fear and
-hope. When a child dreads a punishment or eagerly awaits a reward, it
-is his imagination that gives him the power to anticipate.
-
-Like every other instinct, imagination needs training. We all carry
-about with us a menagerie of instincts. Some of them have been
-ill-treated. In what a pitiable shape is the dyspeptic's food instinct!
-It has died of over-indulgence, and its corpse mocks him at every
-meal. The instinct of fighting has been given a bad name, and in many
-a well-conducted menagerie is kept chained; but it has been known to
-survive the most rigorous repression, and to spring out with most
-abounding vitality in the midst of a meeting on behalf of peace. We
-have learned to avoid those people whose instinct of curiosity is
-not bridle-wise; and we all have recourse at times to those who
-have nourished, groomed, and trained their play instinct. The fact
-is, that the process of education consists largely in transforming
-these instincts of ours, which in their original state are wild and
-unmanageable, into domesticated and useful habits.
-
-Now, imagination is a vigorous beast. Its youthful antics are very
-picturesque and amusing; it is sometimes whimsical and troublesome; but
-it can be made of the greatest service. Indeed, for all kinds of work,
-I know of no species of instinct which I would more highly recommend.
-As a draught animal it is indefatigable; and nothing else can take its
-place for pleasure-driving. Yet I have heard of a private school for
-young women from which all fairy books are excluded, on the ground
-that a girl's imagination needs repression. Like some other instincts,
-imagination cannot be altogether repressed, though it can be tamed and
-guided. If it is left boxed up and wild, it is apt to break out and
-take a canter through dangerous regions. Since, then, we cannot take a
-child's imagination from him, and we run into peril if we neglect it,
-the profitable course is to show him how to break it to harness and
-make it serve him.
-
-We cannot do this, however, unless we have paid some attention to the
-training of our own imagination. As a wild young colt will trot about
-beside its dam, so a child's imagination will readily follow that of an
-older person. But the two must be at least in the same lot. If we are
-going to appeal to a child's imagination in teaching him how to obey,
-we must exercise some imagination in giving commands. We thus come
-upon that recurrent principle that the chief task in the training of
-children is the training of ourselves.
-
-That imagination may be used in maintaining strictness of discipline
-seems to some to be almost a contradiction in terms. It seems like
-invoking an imp of dreams to assist in adding up a column of figures.
-In many minds imagination suggests dreaminess, wool-gathering,
-waywardness, irresponsibility. That is one reason why we parents who
-like to be obeyed, who are inclined to believe that it is a virtue
-to be dictatorial, and who sometimes confuse our own will with the
-immutable principles of righteousness, so often fall into error.
-To a child there is nothing more serious, nothing more real and
-regular, than the products of his imagination, and nothing more vague,
-whimsical, irregular, than the unexplained orders which he receives
-from grown people. If we wish to impress a child with the seriousness
-and reality of our authority, we had better put our imagination into
-condition.
-
-There were two small boys in a town of the Middle West. Active,
-spirited, mischievous, and in other respects healthy, these two
-tads--the younger about four years old, I believe--gave their father
-and mother much concern. One day an old drill-sergeant established
-in the neighborhood a class for boys, and in a short time received
-these two as pupils. The transformation was sudden. The boys were
-soldiers. Happily, their mother was imaginative. They were therefore
-soldiers not merely in the class, but also at home. The standards of
-conduct put before them, the punishments dealt out to them, and the
-rewards bestowed upon them were such as befitted defenders of the
-home. Obedience, promptness, chivalry, order, courage, regularity,
-honor, truthfulness, were not unreasonable qualities to expect from
-such as they. When one of these warriors was absent without leave
-for the greater part of a day--in other words, ran away--it was not
-inappropriate that he should be kept in solitary confinement on
-short rations. The discipline meted out to those youngsters was,
-from any point of view, severe. Even corporal punishment, which, as
-ordinarily applied, is crudely devoid of the imaginative element,
-became measurably glorified; it was a part of the hardship which they
-were called upon to endure as good soldiers. Of course this regime
-was accompanied with plenty of instruction in military traditions
-and practices. A constant visitor to that household has found in the
-manliness and good breeding of these children a source of amazed
-gratification. In another family, who had no access to a drill-sergeant
-with a streak of poetry, a somewhat different method has been in vogue.
-The boys in that family do not belong, as it were, to the regular
-army, but rather to the militia. They are not always under a military
-regime, but are liable to a summons at any time. When they hear the
-command, "Fall in," they know they are expected to stand in line and
-await orders. In the absence of their parents, they know that the older
-person left in charge is their commanding officer; and upon their
-parents' return they know that they will be called upon to fall into
-line, salute, and report to their father. Each is supposed to report
-any infraction of discipline which he himself--not his comrades--has
-committed. No punishment is administered as a result of such report,
-except for deliberate concealment. Each also reports some especial
-pleasure he has had. A good report is followed by formal and official
-congratulation. A reminder in the form of a sign, marked "Remember
-the Report," and placed in a conspicuous position in the nursery, has
-helped to train and direct their imagination. Since the report includes
-a record of enjoyments as well as of offenses, this reminder is not so
-threatening as to many people it would seem. Indeed, the proposal that
-such a sign be used met with instant approval from the young militiamen.
-
-Those who object to tin soldiers as toys will have little patience with
-this metamorphosis of real children into creatures of militarism.
-Very well, let them be monks instead, or members of a labor union, or
-railway employees, or idealized legislators, or even honest policemen,
-anything that will not put too great a strain on the imagination--of
-the adults. The point is simply that the exercise of the strictest
-authority over children is compatible with the most lavish use of the
-imagination.
-
-There is nothing necessarily soft or flabby about the imaginative life.
-There is no special reason why little children should be afflicted
-with continual talk about the dear little birdies or the sweet little
-flowers. Indeed, the natural taste of children seems to be attracted in
-the opposite direction. One small boy, when he inquired about a bloody
-Bible picture, and was put off with the explanation that it was not a
-pleasant story, expressed the views of many of his age when, looking up
-angelically, he exclaimed with ecstasy, "I like to hear about horrid
-things."
-
-Even the rod can, as I have suggested, be used imaginatively. A small
-boy who is well acquainted with the story of the Israelites in Egypt
-has invoked its aid. He is not overburdened with a sense of moral
-responsibility. One day, when he was dawdling over his task of changing
-his shoes and stockings, it was suggested that his father be an
-Egyptian and he be an Israelitish slave. He joyfully acquiesced. His
-father took the tip of a bamboo fishing-rod as badge of authority and
-stood by. In a few moments the boy was dawdling. A slight rap over the
-shins recalled him to his duty. There was no complaint; for he knew it
-was the business of the overseer to keep the slave at his task. His
-shoes and stockings were changed in a very much shorter time than was
-customary; and he contemplated his finished work with satisfaction. A
-few days later, when he had a similar task to perform, he proposed of
-his own accord a repetition of the performance; and carried out his
-part with spirit. When we adults remember how much we rely upon some
-outside stimulus to keep us at our work--the need of money, the esteem
-of our neighbors, the fear of disease, the mandate of the law--we
-ought to be able to understand the reason why such an appeal to the
-imagination as this acted as a reinforcement of the boy's will, and
-therefore, by very reason of its disciplinary character, was actually
-welcomed.
-
-Two other boys similarly acquainted with the experiences of Israel in
-Egypt contrived an application of one of those experiences to their
-own case. They had several times been thrilled by the account of the
-exciting race between the Israelites and the Egyptians to the Red Sea,
-and had repeatedly found relief in the safe arrival of the Israelites
-on the other side and the literally overwhelming defeat of the cruel
-army of Pharaoh. One evening their mother was engaged in washing
-the supper dishes, and they were engaged, as usual, in helping her
-by wiping the silver. On several occasions they had been so little
-intent on their work that their mother had finished all the washing
-and had wiped the china and glassware before they had wiped and put
-away the silver. This evening one of them suddenly became seized with
-a fancy. His mother was the Egyptian army and he and his comrade were
-the host of Israel. When the last fork had rattled into its place and
-the silver-drawer was shut, what a shout of joy arose! The Egyptians
-had been outdistanced; the Israelites were safe. After that, when there
-were signs of inattention, the warning cry, "The Egyptians are coming!"
-would rouse them into instant and happy action. Now those children
-usually do this work rapidly. They have formed in themselves a valuable
-habit.
-
-That was not a device. It was the exemplification of a principle. A
-habit, I suppose, can be beaten into a child; but it is more lasting
-as well as more wholesome if it has been created, in part at least, by
-the child's own will; and it is the imagination, charged as it is with
-feeling, which can most surely summon the will into activity.
-
-The difference between ignoring this principle and recognizing it may
-be illustrated by contrasting two concrete instances. In the one case
-the mother appears at the nursery door.
-
-"Look at this room!" she exclaims; "it is very untidy." She thus puts
-the brand of disapproval upon disorder. "All the blocks and toys must
-be put away and you must be all washed for supper by six o'clock; and
-you have so much to do, you must begin at once."
-
-"But I want to build this house."
-
-"No; you must begin now." This is for the purpose, the mother explains
-to herself, of preparing the child to meet the harsh demands of an
-unfeeling world.
-
-She notes that the child begins listlessly to pick up some of the
-scattered blocks, one by one, and drop them into the box where they
-are kept. After an absence of several minutes she returns. She sees
-but little change, although the child is hastily putting some toys
-away. She is aware, however, that this activity started only when her
-footfall sounded in the hall.
-
-"If those things are not all in their places on time, I shall have to
-punish you."
-
-The mother is vexed, the child is unhappy and rebellious. A daily
-experience of this sort may result finally in some kind of habit in
-the child; but only at great cost of effort to the mother, and at the
-sacrifice of much of the normal relationship between the two.
-
-Another mother appears at the door of the nursery.
-
-"In five minutes it will be time to begin to put away the blocks
-and toys," she announces, thus giving some time for the builder to
-complete operations. Then she asks, "What are you going to be this
-evening?"
-
-"I think I'll be Michael bringing the wood to the wood-box for the
-fire."
-
-In five minutes she calls: "Michael, I want all the wood put into the
-wood-box."
-
-The builder is now transformed for the time being into Michael. He has
-seen the lusty Irishman carry great armfuls of wood, and his own frail
-arms assume new dignity. He gathers the blocks by the dozen, and as he
-lets them fall, kerplunk, into the box, he sees great logs falling into
-place. In a few moments his mother reappears.
-
-"You have been working hard, Michael, haven't you? I think you will
-have the wood in its place in plenty of time. How much better the room
-looks without those logs of wood lying all about! You can carry a good
-many logs at once, can't you?"
-
-Repeated every day, this process will inevitably develop into a habit
-of orderliness. The regularity of the process is not in the least
-impaired by the fact that one evening it assumes the form of stacking
-up firewood, another evening of bringing in bags of coal to the cellar,
-another evening of loading merchandise on to a vessel. It is the same
-will that directs Michael, and the coal man, and the stevedore, and it
-is the same brain that receives the repeated impression of promptness
-and good order. In each case, whether it is Michael, or the coal man,
-or the stevedore, the workman is doing his task under orders; he is
-subject to authority. And if Michael, or the coal man, or the stevedore
-fails to do his duty, it is not inappropriate that he should suffer
-a penalty. Of course it will be more effective if the penalty can be
-made suitable to the character. Whether it is made suitable or not
-will depend largely upon the imagination of the person in authority.
-As a rule, however, the spirit of such a process as that which I have
-illustrated is less that of discipline than of instruction, or perhaps
-more accurately, the spirit of discipline through instruction. It
-is, in fact, just because instruction plays so large a part in the
-government of children that those in authority need to have constant
-recourse to their imagination.
-
-Deficiency in imagination is exhibited by parents not merely in their
-relation to their children, but quite as frequently in the relation
-between husband and wife. Criticism of the one by the other in the
-presence of the children can be accounted for, as a rule, only by a
-defective imagination. If the critic could be put for a moment in
-the place of the child who has heard the reproof, he would be amazed
-at discovering how he had weakened not only the mother's authority,
-but also his own. In a certain household, let us say, the mother is
-strongly of the opinion that it is injurious for the children to eat
-anything between meals; the father, however, scouts the idea, and
-actually keeps, in his pocket, sweetmeats for which he invites the
-children to search. If he had imagination enough to look into his
-own children's minds, he would be mortified at what he would see.
-Parents at cross-purposes are simply exhibiting their own stupidity.
-Without imagination, therefore, there can be only the most ineffective
-government in the family.
-
-It is surprising, on the other hand, how the exercise of the
-imagination will clear away many perplexing difficulties in discipline;
-for in the light of the imagination many of these difficulties are seen
-to be problems in moral instruction. Let me illustrate.
-
-The boys whom I have already described as militiamen were left by their
-parents, for a day, in charge of a competent nurse. When they were
-called upon to report in the customary military fashion concerning
-their behavior, they all confessed to certain offenses involving the
-marring of property.
-
-"Would you have done that if mamma or I had been there?" their father
-asked.
-
-"No," was the reply.
-
-"Then you sneaked on us."
-
-That word "sneaked" was apparently new to them; it upset their gravity.
-The entire company, including the commander, was soon convulsed. What
-could be done? The case could not be allowed to end thus. Finally,
-after some degree of order was restored, the commander proposed that
-they all take turns in sneaking on one another. The plan which was
-accepted with enthusiasm was this: Two of the boys were to leave the
-room; then the third, in their absence, was to find some precious
-possession of each of the two and destroy it. No sooner, however,
-were the victims in another room than they raised a vigorous protest.
-As this was to be not a punishment but an experiment, the protest
-was heeded. The tables were turned; one of the victims was appointed
-executioner, and the executioner took the place of victim. After
-several trials it was proved that nobody wished to have his property
-destroyed. They thus learned that, however much fun it was to sneak
-on some one else, they did not wish any one else to sneak on them.
-Although they agreed, too, that if each had a turn there would be
-nothing unfair, they were all unwilling to lose precious possessions
-even for the fun of playing an underhand trick. By this time one of the
-boys had decided that all sneaking "was bad." It was then proposed to
-the other two that their father go out, and that they should sneak on
-him. This seemed to be a solution. They would have the fun and suffer
-none of the loss. When they had committed themselves to this opinion,
-their father called their attention to the fact that he had already
-had his turn at being victim, and that now it was only fair that he
-should have his turn at being executioner. There was no escape. At the
-very moment when they were looking for all the gain and none of the
-loss, they were confronted with the prospect of suffering, perfectly
-justly, all of the loss and having none of the gain. By that time the
-word "sneak" conveyed an idea that was quite the opposite of humorous,
-and they were in position to appreciate their father's repudiation of
-any intention to act as a sneak. It was necessary for them to travel
-a long and roundabout way before they reached the point at which they
-could genuinely disapprove what they themselves had done. In the frame
-of mind in which at first they had been, punishment would have been
-meaningless; it would have signified nothing more than that an older
-person was vexed at something, and that they had to bear the ill
-effects of the vexation. What they needed primarily was not discipline
-but instruction. Incidentally, it may be added, they had a good deal
-of discipline in the process.
-
-We are likely to forget that moral distinctions are not instinctive,
-but are the product of experience. The capacity to distinguish between
-the good and the evil is, we may all agree, inherent; but ability in
-deciding what acts belong in the category of the good and what in
-the category of the evil is acquired. There is no magic voice within
-a little child informing him what a lie is and warning him that it
-is evil. It is not enough, moreover, to tell a child over and over
-again that lying is wrong; it is equally necessary to instruct him
-so that he will recognize a lie when he encounters it. The knack of
-recognizing the difference between truth and falsehood is like the
-knack of recognizing the difference between edible and poisonous
-mushrooms. It comes only after careful instruction and long practice,
-and it is not as easy as it seems. Is "Alice in Wonderland" falsehood?
-Are the statements in Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses" true? I
-believe I could set an examination in the subject, asking for reasons
-for the answers, which a good many parents could not satisfactorily
-pass. A child who habitually lies may be consciously doing wrong; but
-it is also possible that he has been simply ill-taught, or is not old
-enough to be taught at all in this subject. In order to reach a child's
-mind for the purpose of enabling him to see the difference between a
-lie and the truth, we must have imagination enough to put ourselves
-in the child's place sufficiently to find out what his conception of
-the truth is. It is easy to assume that a child is lying when he is
-merely experimenting with language, or is desiring to please, or is
-playing with his fancies. If we want children to understand us, we
-must exercise enough imagination to understand them. After we have
-established some basis of mutual understanding, we can feel free to
-proceed with rigorous discipline.
-
-I hope I shall not be misunderstood. It is not necessary that a child
-should understand the reason for a command before he obeys. Obedience
-first and reasons afterwards is a good rule, and one that may even
-prevent disasters. It is necessary, however, that a child should
-understand what it is he is commanded to do or not to do. It requires
-some imagination to ascertain whether the child understands this or not.
-
-Instruction in manners, like instruction in morals, requires the use of
-the imagination. The adult who is receiving his first lesson in golf
-ought to be able to understand why a child has difficulty in properly
-holding his spoon; the difference between a niblick and a stymie is not
-nearly so hard to learn as the difference between "Please" and "Thank
-you." Manners are more arbitrary than the technical terms of a game
-or a calling. Why it should be wrong but not naughty to eat with your
-knife or to sing at the table, children do not readily see.
-
-As with regard to morals and manners, so with regard to all that a
-child has to learn, instruction is best coupled with imagination. A
-generation ago my grandfather wrote a book. Its tide seems to attach it
-to a long bygone age. It is called "Gentle Measures in the Management
-and Training of the Young."[2] I know of no book which in spirit or in
-principles is more modern. I do not think its substance will ever be
-antiquated. It was through no fault or merit of mine that the author of
-this book was my grandfather; so I can see no reason why I should not
-be as free as any one else might be in expressing the wish that every
-parent who has some interest in the training of children might not only
-possess a copy, but also read it studiously. His words, with their
-touch of quaintness, concerning the use of imagination in the teaching
-of children were but the transcript of the principles which he had
-established by use and found practicable.
-
-Are the children restive or boisterous? Do they talk incessantly
-and nonsensically? A little imagination will suggest what should be
-done with them. They are steam engines under full head of steam. If
-you do not wish to starve them into lassitude, set their activity to
-work in some direction that will not be troublesome. Has one of the
-children pinched his hand in the door or bumped his head? Summon up
-your imagination. He is a man who has met with an accident; call the
-ambulance, which comes in the form of a two-legged creature, to carry
-him to the hospital, which to grown-up eyes looks amazingly like the
-couch in the sewing-room; give him some medicine out of a bottle,
-which has the appearance of a shoe-horn. Is there an altercation in
-the nursery? Let there be a court established, and the issue heard and
-decided in due form. No retinue of servants can work such wonders as a
-moderately alert imagination.
-
-If we parents have allowed our own imaginations to become atrophied
-through disuse, so that we are incapacitated from sharing in the
-most vivid part of our children's world, there is at least one thing
-we can do; we can restrain our natural impulse to interfere with
-our children's imagination. For a generous portion of every day we
-can leave our children alone. We are, of course, useful to them in
-emergencies, but ordinarily we prosy folk are in their way. What a
-nuisance we are when we impose upon an imaginative child that horror
-known as a mechanical toy! The nodding mandarin is so insistently a
-mandarin that no child with a healthy imagination can respect it.
-Off with its head! it then can conceivably be the pillar of a house,
-or a chimney for a steamboat. Large flat wooden dolls that come in a
-game-set have been known to serve admirably as roofs for block houses.
-Shall we allow the children to abuse their toys in this wise? exclaims
-the prosaic adult. The children might well reply, Must we be forced
-to lose our real world and to live in a commonplace, unreal world like
-yours? Elaborate dolls, complicated mechanisms, elegant playthings,
-may gratify the vanity of an adult, and even whet the curiosity of
-the growing boy and girl, but will not take the place of real toys
-like blocks of wood and spools and marbles. If we must nag him at
-other times, at least in his play let us leave the child alone with
-his imagination and the materials which his imagination can best use.
-If we are nonplussed by the enjoyment which a child finds in such
-simple things, it is because we have not the imagination to perceive
-that these very same simple things are the most capable of varied
-transformation.
-
-Like those complicated toys which are made merely because the adults,
-who have the money, buy them, some kindergartens are engines of
-destruction. The play instinct, which psychologists kindly explain is
-simply the instinct for self-directed activity, is in mortal peril from
-people who are always for supervising children's games. Controlling
-the play of children is really attempting the impossible. As soon as
-it is controlled from the outside, play ceases to be play. If some one
-else directs the child, he ceases to be self-directed. Play is not
-mere recreation; it is sometimes very serious business. What makes
-it play is that it is not done under orders. And real play requires
-imagination. We parents can spoil our children by confining them to
-the artificial things we enjoy in lieu of our own minds. If we wish
-to amuse ourselves, we can do so for a time by spoiling our children.
-But if we wish them to enjoy life, as well as to grow strong in body
-and mind and character, we will not tempt them by the spices, the
-mechanisms, the artifices of our world, but will leave them as much
-as possible to wander and play and work unmolested in the world of
-simple things. Simple food, simple occupations, simple toys, simple
-surroundings--at least such we call them; in fact, there are no riches
-like them to the child--or the adult for that matter--who has not
-been robbed of his imagination. If we have lost ours, and must go
-about our task of instruction and discipline in the unreal way of the
-dry-as-dust, we can at least leave the child his. That is possible for
-the dullest of us.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[2] By Jacob Abbott. (Harper and Brothers.)
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-PEACE AT A PRICE
-
-
-Advice to wives usually begins with this sort of exhortation: When your
-husband returns from the office, greet him smilingly; exile from your
-face the traitorous lines of care, imprison in the silences of your
-mind the petty vexing trials of the day, dismiss to their own quarters
-the evidences of housework. Your husband's home is his castle; when
-he takes refuge there in flight from his enemies, the cares of his
-vocation, do not confront him with your own. We are all familiar with
-this strain. It sounds well. But, after all, the lord's castle is his
-lady's battlefield. If she is a very fine lady indeed, she may not have
-engaged in any personal encounters. If her resources and disposition
-permit, she may hire mercenaries to do her fighting for her. In that
-case her battles have been sham battles, and she has no relic of
-carnage to hide. If, however, she is not one of those who regard one
-child as a nuisance and two as an intolerable burden, and therefore
-prefers to conduct the campaign of their training herself, she can
-hardly be sure of turning nightly the battlefield of that home into the
-semblance of an impregnable castle. The fact is, any woman who regards
-motherhood as a vocation quite as worthy of respect as yelling on the
-Stock Exchange (and that I believe is a very, very respectable vocation
-indeed) will find it a serious drain on her physical and nervous
-resources.
-
-However much a woman may court martyrdom, I never heard of one who
-deliberately invited vexation of spirit. She may find a genuine
-happiness in the weariness she has incurred for the sake of some great
-object; but she finds no happiness in the annoyances she encounters
-purposelessly. Now, it is just these vexations, these annoyances,
-which it is a part of her vocation to avoid. So far from being an
-incident of motherhood, they are an impediment.
-
-Most of these annoyances, these vexations, with which a mother has
-to contend, come from a maladjustment between her children and their
-environment. Quarrels among themselves, irritability and disobedience
-toward her, impositions upon the servants, pertness with their elders,
-insubordination toward their teachers, altercations with their
-playmates, and friction with the neighbors--it is affairs of these
-sorts that fray a woman's nerves and wrack her mind. No woman can
-long endure these things. There are not many courses open to her. She
-can die, or she can rid herself of her children by consigning them to
-servants who are paid for accepting her responsibility. In either case
-she no longer concerns us. Let us suppose, however, that she remains a
-mother. Then the only course that she can pursue is to attempt some
-mode of adjustment.
-
-There are two ways in which she can act. She can undertake either
-to adjust her children to their environment, or to adjust their
-environment to them. Almost every mother adopts either one way or the
-other within the first two months of her first baby's life. The young
-lord of creation puts the problem squarely before her: Am I to begin my
-reign now--and I warn you it will be a case of whimsical autocracy--or
-must I take my place in the order of this household? If his mother
-is a washerwoman, he gets no answer; she goes about her washing and
-he finds his place without much remonstrance. The children of the
-poor are blessed with mothers who have this problem settled for them
-by the gaunt hand of necessity. If, however, this lordling has been
-born in the purple, even of very light shade, he has a good chance of
-seizing the sceptre at the very first grasp. He certainly will seize
-it and wield it relentlessly, if his mother decides to do the easiest
-thing. At the beginning and for some time it is easier to conform the
-household to the baby than the baby to the household. It is easier
-because strictly at the beginning it is necessary. Even the household
-of the washerwoman is swerved for a few days out of its regular course;
-but when the wash comes in again, the household is swerved back. The
-trouble comes in those families where the mother's will has to take the
-place of somebody else's wash. Of course there are cases which cannot
-be considered normal. The newcomer is puny and needs the constant
-attention that every invalid requires; or the mother's strength has
-been sapped, and she must, for everybody's sake, do the easiest thing.
-In such cases there is no choice. Ordinarily, however, the issue is not
-long postponed. The trained nurse, if there is one, can have a good
-deal to do in deciding it. Probably it will be most distinctly raised
-over a question of feeding. The foundation of absolute monarchy within
-many a plain American home has been laid by allowing the diminutive
-heir apparent to engage in midnight feasting when every consideration
-of orderliness commanded sleep. It is on such an occasion that a man,
-if he has any chivalry in him, will sustain his wife's good resolution.
-If he chooses to be anything more to his household than a purveyor, he
-will not have to wait long to make good his determination.
-
-The difference between a household adjusted to a child and a child
-adjusted to a household is the difference between unstable and stable
-equilibrium. Quietness, peace, and an aspect of repose may be found in
-both cases; but in the one case every new movement threatens an upset.
-
-There are two kinds of households, the adjustable and the unadjustable.
-A child, let us say, wakes in the morning. If he is accustomed to an
-adjustable household, there is an end of sleep for those who have the
-care of him. For the sake of peace to the others some one has to keep
-him quietly amused until the time of rising. That some one, we all
-can guess, is the mother. At breakfast it is the child that is first
-served, and when he is finished with eating it is his new demands that
-interrupt the meal. The mother does her household tasks under the
-child's supervision. In order to avoid the necessity of leaving them
-to rush upon every demand to the nursery, she manages to have him in
-the room with her. Tethering him to the leg of a table, barricading
-him behind chairs, occupying his mind now with one bauble, now with
-another, she succeeds, with the exercise of an acquired versatility,
-in securing for him safety from harm, for the furniture measurable
-immunity from damage, and for herself a comparatively noiseless
-morning. When the time for his nap arrives, she, as the available
-member of the household, leaves everything else and puts him to
-sleep. After he wakes and is dressed, a caller arrives. For an instant
-forgetful, she starts to leave the young ruler. A wail recalls her.
-A gurgle of satisfaction rewards her for taking him in her arms. The
-visitor is now a part of the household and must be properly adjusted.
-At the sight of the caller the baby makes violent protest. Then comes
-the period of coaxing, unsatisfactory to the child, troublesome to the
-mother, and disconcerting to the guest. Irreconcilable, the youngster
-is handed over to some one for the nonce, and the visitor concludes the
-call and departs to the accompaniment of mourning. The despot is easily
-restored to good humor as soon as he sees again his favorite subject.
-The one annoying episode of the day is easily set down against the
-account, not of the child, not of his mother, but of the caller. "That
-black gown she wore" many a time does duty as an explanation for what
-is really the product of an adjustable household. Aside from the more
-immediate and obvious disadvantages of the adjustable household, there
-is this: that it hardly fits the child for living in an unadjustable
-world.
-
-The child who greets the morning in an unadjustable household finds
-at hand enough to amuse him until it is time for his bath. His mother
-has not led him to expect anything else. I remember a little fellow
-whom I used to see a few years ago. Of delicate organism, decidedly
-high-strung, very sensitive to sound and motion, he needed as much
-attention as any well baby ever did. Regularly every morning, after
-giving him his breakfast and getting him ready for the day, his mother
-took him to the nursery, left him on the padded floor, gave him his few
-blocks, and left him to his devices. She was free to go downstairs then
-about her work. She was not beyond earshot. When the sun was high, she
-wrapped him up well, put him in his carriage, and, wheeling him out
-on the porch, left him again alone. In the afternoon the process was
-reversed: first the sunny porch, then the quiet nursery. Times for play
-with him came to an end according to her judgment, not his. Because she
-loved him and understood her vocation as mother, she established in
-this nervous child the habit of encountering the world with placidity.
-This is the way of the mother who determines that her household shall
-be unadjustable.
-
-There are those who regard childhood as a period when the individual
-becomes, to use Stevenson's phrase, "well armored for this world." It
-is this conception of childhood as a preparation for after-life that
-underlies Huxley's essay on liberal education. There are others who
-would say, with a recent writer, that childhood is not to be regarded
-as a preparation for youth that in turn becomes a preparation for
-manhood, but rather is to be made "beautiful and glorious in and for
-itself, not a vestibule to a vestibule to a vestibule." Whichever of
-these two views we take, we shall find, I think, that the only way of
-escape from disorder and confusion is not by adjusting the child's
-environment to him, but by adjusting him to his environment.
-
-The one unescapable part of our children's environment is--ourselves.
-Over them we are always impending. At inconvenient times we rise
-in their way and impede their most absorbing occupations. On their
-excursions into the wilds of fancy it is we who obtrude and with
-philistine complacency drive them back into the gross world of
-wash-basins and table manners. Three small boys are busy blasting. One
-is a workman; a second is the fuse; the third is the hole, and is about
-to explode for the sixth time. Who interrupts with some trivial but
-insistent remark about less noise or clean clothes? One of us. And the
-worst of it is that we who are so troublesomely recurrent, and who
-are their source of supplies, seem to be incapable of appreciating the
-delights of becoming at will a trolley-car, an alligator, a goblin,
-or a hole in the ground. That is the sort of environment we are; and
-if we are going to adjust our children to it, we ought to understand
-how knurly it is. When we understand that, we shall perhaps see the
-importance of giving our children a chance to explode without being
-flung repeatedly against our prosy protuberances. Sometimes we can
-manage that by simply giving them room for their own Arcady. (And it is
-not our business to insist that their Arcady be our sort.) Sometimes
-it will be necessary to manage this otherwise. We may, for instance,
-live in a flat. In that case we may actually have to exercise some
-imagination and suggest to them an occupation which will keep them from
-a too rasping contact with us. The first requisite, then, for peace is
-a reasonable degree of non-interference.
-
-Interference, however, we cannot always avoid. Then the question
-becomes one of interfering without friction. Any one can give commands
-to a child, or instruct him after a fashion, or punish him; but to
-exercise authority over a child and at the same time keep on good terms
-with him, that is an art in which we are not all equally adept. But it
-is an art we must master if we are to be free of unnecessary annoyance
-and a great deal of fruitless pother. We cannot be on good terms with
-a healthy child except on the basis of justice. That is one reason why
-an altercation with a child is a sign of failure in discipline: it is
-not sportsmanlike. It lacks the prime element of justice, an equal
-chance for each opponent. When we take a child for an antagonist, we
-do not enter a square fight; we have him at an unfair advantage. He
-knows it as well as we, and that is why, even if we win--as win we
-ought with size and strength and wit on our side--our victory is an
-inglorious failure. When he succumbs in the struggle, he has learned
-only one thing--that he must enlarge his resources. A small boy leaves
-his sled in the front hall. He is ordered to remove it and he refuses.
-Then comes the tussle. Rather than go to bed, he finally complies. The
-next time he awaits the approach of a visitor. This time he leaves his
-sled in the front hall and flees. He has learned his lesson--to pick
-the place and moment for battle when the enemy is at a disadvantage.
-The visitor, serenely unconscious of the fact, has diverted the enemy.
-The sled is whisked out of sight. No penalty now inflicted on the boy
-can be to him other than the manifestation of resentment and chagrin on
-the part of an outwitted adversary. In such a case what does justice
-suggest? There is the voice of one in authority.
-
-"Your sled is in the front hall; put it away."
-
-"But I don't want to. I'm playing."
-
-The affair seems to be at an end. There is no insistence; there are no
-threats.
-
-A day later. "Mamma! Mamma! Where's my sled?"
-
-"Did you look in its place?"
-
-"Yes, and it isn't there."
-
-"Where did you leave it?"
-
-"I don't know."
-
-"Think."
-
-(With shamed face) "I guess in the front hall."
-
-"You had better look in the front hall, then."
-
-"It isn't there."
-
-"Did you expect to find it there?"
-
-"No-o."
-
-There is no ground for altercation here. Perhaps there may be need
-for explanation. The loss of a day's coasting in this case may be
-actually a severer punishment than the threatened hours in bed in the
-other case, but it comes in the course of justice, and the boy knows
-it. Nobody has won a victory, because there has been no struggle; but
-somebody has learned a lesson. And through it all the boy remains on
-good terms with his environment.
-
-Of course it would never do for a child to live in too just a world;
-his awakening upon entrance into the world that we grown folks have
-made for ourselves would be cruelly rude. He must have ample chance to
-learn how to meet injustice. Happily, such chance will frequently come
-his way without any solicitude on our part. One can discern something
-almost purposeful in the fact that the sense of justice is no part
-of the parental instinct. Indeed, it seems as if it had been made
-especially difficult for grown people to deal justly with children. For
-one thing, in order to be just with a child one must be prepared to
-believe anything, no matter how preposterous. Once on a time a little
-girl was going downstairs. In her arms she held a precious doll. She
-knew that it was a prized family possession. To her consternation she
-suddenly felt it leave her hold, and in an instant she saw it lying
-broken upon the stairs. When she was questioned by her mother, she
-announced simply that the doll had jumped from her arms. In spite of
-all that her mother said to her on the evil of willful untruth, she
-persisted in her story. Whether she was punished I do not know; but if
-she was, it was not because of an accident, but because of a falsehood.
-In any case, she suffered the indignity of being disbelieved. For a
-long time the feeling of injustice rankled in her. It was not until
-she had grown old enough to learn that a doll cannot leap that she
-relinquished her faith in the statement which had been treated by her
-mother as a lie. A dash of credulity would have established a good
-understanding with that child; but that was too much to expect. It is
-not easy to be credulous at the right times. That is one reason why we
-need never take pains lest we be too just with our children.
-
-With the best of intentions, the most competent of us will now and then
-lapse into deeds of injustice. If we discovered them all, we should
-lead uneasy lives. A kind Providence, however, keeps us oblivious of
-most of them; and our children are slow in learning to preserve a
-grudge. When one of us, however, discovers that he has been unjust
-toward his child, what does he do? That depends on his standards. If
-his ambition is to be omniscient and infallible, he keeps the discovery
-to himself, and, if he corrects the injustice, manages by some
-subterfuge to make the correction, not an act of justice, but an act
-of grace. His policy might be epitomized in Jowett's motto for public
-men: with children his practice is, "Never retract, never explain; get
-it done, and let them howl." For one who does not care to pay the price
-of courage and self-respect, this rule can be made to work very well.
-One whose ambition, however, is to be authoritative with children will
-value sincerity with them as a principle and not as an expedient.
-Karl has apparently been guilty of willful disobedience; he has done
-something he was told not to do. The punishment which regularly
-follows rebellion is announced. It then transpires that what seemed
-disobedience was really misunderstanding. What can be done? Since the
-maternal court does not crave infallibility, the error in sentence
-is acknowledged. So far from impairing confidence in the court, this
-proceeding actually tends to buttress it. The next time an adverse
-judgment is declared and sentence is inflicted, the culprit, even if
-he believes himself guiltless, will, if he thinks about it at all,
-suspect that the judge is attempting, not to preserve her dignity, but
-honestly to administer justice. A child can pay his parents no greater
-honor than by protesting, in the belief that he will be heard, that a
-threatened punishment would be unfair.
-
-Even that mother who finds other occupations more dignified and
-gratifying than that of motherhood cannot wholly escape the necessity
-of deciding whether the ground of her dealings with her children shall
-be justice or something else. In delegating responsibility to servants,
-she must decide whether she will delegate authority also. The woman
-who puts her children in the charge of a hired maid and then declares,
-"I will never require a child of mine to obey a servant," deliberately
-chooses to be unjust to her children. That she is also unjust to the
-servant is not so grave a matter. The servant can, if she wishes, find
-another mistress; but the child is compelled to be content as he can
-with that mother. Such a woman is usually quite powerless to secure
-obedience toward herself. When her daughters are grown, she wonders why
-they do not become her friends; when her sons are grown, she wonders
-why they exhibit no desire for her companionship.
-
-The only footing for comradeship is fair dealing. Even a sense of
-humor, essential as that is, will not take its place. Who would be a
-comrade with his children must first be just with them.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-FOR 'TIS THEIR NATURE TO
-
-
-Why we expect children to be more tranquil than a parliamentary body
-or a ministers' meeting I do not know and cannot imagine. To be
-troubled because children quarrel is to deplore one of their chief
-prerogatives--the prerogative of being themselves. The time to be
-troubled is not when they quarrel merely, but when they quarrel in the
-wrong way or about wrong things. To teach children how to quarrel and
-what to quarrel about is one of the duties of parents.
-
-Together with some compensating advantages, an only child has one
-indisputable misfortune: there is no one in the family he can really
-quarrel with. No altercation he might have with a grown-up could be
-dignified with the name of quarrel. All his quarreling he must do
-outside his home. Consequently, he cannot receive from his parents
-all the attention that he might receive if he were, say, one of six.
-When he finally encounters other children, he does not know the
-bounds either of expediency in tolerating their idiosyncrasies, or
-of right in maintaining his own. With skill his parents may acquire
-artificially for themselves, as well as for him, the experiences which
-naturally befall a larger household. It is plain, therefore, that those
-parents are fortunate who have quarreling children. To them avenues of
-education are open which are closed to the parents of an only child.
-
-I do not refer to those roads which, originating in the nursery, have
-led to the depths of theology or to the heights of moral discourse.
-The road which has landed more than one theologian in meditation upon
-the depraved nature of the child may well have had its beginning in
-childish quarrels. There was Jonathan Edwards, for instance; he had
-ten sisters and about as many children. This suggests a fit subject
-for a thesis. Then that pleasanter if less picturesque way, bordered
-with the flowers and the weeds of rhetoric, which has brought the
-preacher and the versifier to sermons and rhymes for the edification of
-the young, must have received many a traveler from tributary paths of
-domestic strife. Isaac Watts, for instance, who being dead yet speaketh
-of dogs and bears and lions and children, was the eldest of nine.
-The avenues of education to which I refer, however, are open only to
-parents or vice-parents, and lead only to parental skill.
-
-Some parents act as if they did not even know that these avenues exist.
-Consequently, when they encounter contention among their offspring,
-they fly in all directions at once. This undoubtedly makes for agility.
-For example:--
-
-Waves of turmoil burst through the closed doors of the playroom, flood
-the stairway, and whelm to the ears the placid group of grown-ups
-in the living-room. As the visiting cousin nervously halts her small
-talk, and the tired mother lays down her knitting, the master of the
-house, with an air of finality, gesturing the others into subsidence,
-breasts the billows of sound. Upward, two steps in a stride, he makes
-an assault upon the playroom.
-
-"What's all this about?" as he flings open the door. "Bless me!
-everybody can hear you all over the house. Your mother and I aren't
-undertaking to keep a zoo. Do you suppose that somebody can be running
-up here every five minutes? Besides, don't you know that your mother's
-cousin Bettina is visiting us, and that she is distracted by this
-sort of uproar? Now don't try to interrupt. What did you say? That
-Ruth threw a coal-car at you? Why, Ruth, my little girl! that's a
-very dangerous thing to do. If you had struck one of the boys in the
-eye, you might have made him blind. I shall have to take the cars
-away, if you are going to do dangerous things with them. What's that?
-They're not Ruth's cars? What of it? Does that make them any the less
-dangerous? Now, don't interrupt again. Besides, Ruth, that was a very
-unladylike thing for a little girl to do. And, boys, you are at fault,
-too. Ruth would never have done that if you hadn't done something to
-her. Is that the way young gentlemen should treat a young lady? And
-Ruth is younger than you. She can't defend herself unless she does
-something like that. I shall have to punish you all; perhaps that will
-help you to learn how to behave. Now, you boys, go over to Ruth and ask
-her pardon; and, Ruth, you kiss them and tell them you're sorry. And
-now play together properly. See if you can't get along till tea-time
-without making a disturbance."
-
-Satisfied that he has settled an acute difficulty, this composite
-father, in whose voice has sounded some tones that I dare not disown,
-descends the peaceful stairs. What he has actually done has been to
-throw into hopeless unsettlement a situation that was after a fashion
-already half settled. If the children are quiet, it is because they are
-dazed by the feats of an acrobatic adult mind. They have watched their
-father make a circuit of the situation, cross at least a half-dozen
-paths that led safely out, and, ignoring all, return to the point of
-departure. The benefit they have received from the performance is
-not at all the benefit he believes he has imparted. It has not been,
-as he fancies, the benefit of discipline; it has been the benefit
-of diversion. As for himself, he has received that most welcome of
-benefits--a mental frame of complacency.
-
-Not being as nimble as he, we may find it worth our while to stop for
-a moment at each path that he passed and explore it. What we are prone
-to forget is that from almost every difficulty of this kind there are
-several exits, and that there is no progress made in attempting to
-travel more than one at a time. In this case, all need for the display
-of gymnastics might have been avoided by the consideration of a few
-simple questions.
-
-One question has precedence of all others: Shall I interfere or not?
-To decide that question in the negative is to eliminate all the
-others. That it is necessary to do this, the conjunction of a quarrel
-and a luncheon party may demonstrate. The critical time comes when
-there is no luncheon party. To allow children some chance to settle
-their own differences is as certainly an act of discipline as it is
-to settle every difference for them. It is none the less discipline
-for the children because it seems to be chiefly self-discipline. A
-younger sister once had a grievance; she made her protest with a
-strident whine. Annoyed by the outburst, her mother descended upon the
-whole crew, wormed out the merits of the case, and with an even hand
-apportioned among the offenders penalty or reproof. Having profited,
-as it happened, by this occurrence, the small girl, the next time she
-wished to gain an advantage over the others, resorted to the same
-whining outcry. Immediately the three older children fell to playing
-church. With a loud and discordant hymn, they designed to drown the
-sound of protest. Though at this time in the right, they preferred not
-to take the risk. Already well trained by her children, that mother
-was quick to remain where she was. It sometimes requires alertness to
-do nothing. Just though her interference had been, she saw that it not
-only had encouraged in one child an annoying mode of complaint, but
-also had suggested to the others a noisy mode of averting judgment.
-Thereafter it seemed easier for her to hesitate before participating
-in her children's controversies. How can children experiment with the
-principles with which their elders have tried to endow them, except
-upon those occasions when those didactic elders do not interfere?
-How, on the other hand, can those same elders see what effect their
-precepts have had, unless the children can begin a quarrel on the
-chance that they may end it themselves? Deliberately to determine not
-to interfere in a children's quarrel comes not of grace but of labor.
-Any one can lapse into indifference as to the merits of a dispute
-between two youngsters, but only one who has come through affliction
-to self-control can at the same time maintain an acute interest in
-the triumph of the just cause and keep his hands off. The virtue of
-non-interference is not a gift, it is an achievement.
-
-Occasions which demand interference, however, occur frequently enough
-to supply with plenty of exercise any normally active parental mind.
-Whenever it is clearly best that the children should not be allowed to
-end their quarrel themselves, the parent who is not in search merely
-of self-complacency can ask himself a number of questions. Usually,
-the time for asking and answering those questions is very brief. The
-exercise is vigorous while it lasts. On the way from the living-room
-to the nursery, the hastening parent can, for example, perform this
-rapid mental scale passage: To what purpose am I interfering? Is it
-to suppress a noise? or to avert a danger? or to teach courtesy? or
-to instruct in morals? or to do justice? or to establish an amicable
-basis? Later, and perhaps more deliberately, he will run over this
-scale of questions: What means shall I use? Shall it be force? or
-argument? or ridicule? or explanation? or advice? or instruction? or
-command? or punishment? It requires practice to pounce upon the note
-principally out of tune in a wealth of discord, and then to choose the
-one tool that will set it right; but then, there is no vocation more
-exciting than parenthood.
-
-The noise of a quarrel may be its most serious offense. We can admit
-that fact without accepting as an invariable rule the maxim of our
-nervous, overwrought ancestors, Children should be seen and not heard.
-At times it seems, indeed, as if the present age were too phlegmatic.
-There are people for whose nerves children should be made to have
-some regard; there are invalids who do not thrive on din; there is
-necessary work which cannot be done in the midst of a racket; there
-are neighbors who declare, with some show of right, that they regard
-monopoly in noise as against public policy. So, whether for the sake of
-cousin Bettina's nerves, or a tired mother's rest, or a busy father's
-conference with a creditor, or merely for the sake of reputation with
-the neighbors, it may be best to disregard all other factors and insist
-on quiet. That seems clear enough. The trouble with us pretentious
-grown-ups is that usually when we undertake to stop a quarrel because
-it is disturbing, we delude ourselves into thinking that we have some
-high moral purpose. We can expose our own fatuity by simply inquiring
-of ourselves, when we begin our preachment, Would we have interfered if
-this quarrel had not been so strepitous? It is one of the annoyances
-in the training of children that if we are to be honest with them, we
-must be honest with ourselves. I do not see how that can be helped. And
-with children honesty is prerequisite to authority. To pretend that
-we chiefly want them to be good at a time when really we chiefly want
-them to be quiet is to renounce all influence over them when really
-we arrive at the point of chiefly wanting them to be good. That is
-reason enough for being honest with them. So when we set out towards
-a quarrel with the determination of suppressing a noise, we shall, if
-we are honest, deal with the quarrel, not as turpitude, but as noise.
-We may not be able to persuade the contestants of the existence of
-nerves, or headaches, or creditors, or neighbors, or even of our own
-reasonableness; but we shall at least probably succeed in conveying to
-them the genuineness of this single idea that is uppermost in our own
-mind: if you can't quarrel quietly, you shall not quarrel at all. If
-later we wish to impress upon them the necessity of being considerate
-of others, we can use that specific quarrel as an illustration without
-risking with them our reputation for singleness.
-
-A quarrel may involve something which, even more than noise, demands
-instant interference. Two small boys were in an altercation. The older
-had a ball. The younger wanted that ball with a consuming hunger. The
-nearest weapon at hand was the discarded shaft of a golf club. Seizing
-it, he began his attack with reckless fury. The sound of a blow upon a
-piece of furniture followed by an outcry of fear brought their father
-to the room. His thought was not for anybody's manners or morals,
-nor for the disturbance, nor for a just settlement of the contest;
-it was for the defenseless boy's head. There was but one possible
-measure: immediate and forcible confiscation of the club. This was
-frankly not punishment--which would have involved a moral judgment--but
-simply humane intervention. The announcement that the club was to
-remain confiscated for a week merely emphasized the extent of the
-intervention, not the severity of a punishment. The incident might have
-served as an occasion for a lecture upon the danger of the wanton use
-of weapons; as a matter of fact, I believe, it was, of a sort; but--
-
-"Oh, daddy, it was my ball!"
-
-"No, daddy, really it wasn't!"
-
-All such discussion as to the merits of the dispute was quashed.
-Likewise was stifled all inclination on the part of the intervening
-parent to deliver a lesson on the evils of an ungovernable temper. That
-might not have been confusing, if it could have been made distinct from
-the act of intervention; but it was not necessary. The fault was not
-an excess of temper so much as a thoughtless or ignorant use of power.
-At least, that was the judgment on which this father acted. Whether he
-was right or wrong is not to the point; what is to the point is that he
-formed his judgment, acted upon it, and did not obscure the issue by
-confusing the consequences--or possible consequences--of a deed with
-its moral character.
-
-Just as the physical consequence of a quarrel may be more important
-than its moral aspects, so may be its significance as an exhibition of
-manners. When their elders hopelessly intermingle precepts as to the
-amenities with deliverances upon ethics, children can hardly be blamed
-if they come to regard murder as in the same category with the wearing
-of tan boots to the accompaniment of a frock coat. An altercation
-marked by vulgarity, or even by nothing more than delinquencies in
-courtesy, may be more distasteful to grown-ups than one involving
-meanness or deceit. In such a case we may give interference the form
-of an expression of disgust, and keep the issue clear. If, however,
-we allow it to take the form of punishment, we might as well admit
-to ourselves that we are engaged not in disciplining children but in
-relieving our own feelings, and be grateful that we have at hand such
-an outlet for our emotions.
-
-Occasionally there arises a quarrel which supplies a text for a moral
-lesson. A quarrel of this sort arose one day between a small boy of
-five or six and his sister a year or two older. The mother of these
-two had issued a command to the younger that he take off his wet
-shoes. In a few minutes she heard the sound of struggle. It called for
-investigation. There on the nursery floor was the lad, tearful and
-angry; near at hand his sister, reproachful and indignant. It appeared
-that his neglect of the order had aroused her to action. He resented
-her assumption of authority; she resented his resentment. The case was
-not as simple as it appeared to be. Punishment of the small boy without
-explanation would have seemed to him like punishment for disobedience
-toward a sister who was without authority. On the other hand, a rebuke
-of the sister for unwarranted assumption of authority would have seemed
-to her like a rebuke for loyalty to her mother. It was a case, not
-primarily for punishment or even for rebuke, but for moral instruction,
-or, if you prefer, explanation.
-
-As an occasion for the doing of justice, a quarrel among children often
-presents great perplexities. It is hard for a mother to be a just judge
-between her children. This is partly because she is so practiced in
-partiality for her children that she revolts at the apparent hardness
-of impersonal fairness; partly because she frequently cannot ascertain
-the facts. A mother who loves justice while she loves her children
-will not be quick to ascend the bench. Sometimes, however, she must.
-There was once called, for instance, the case of Ronald _vs._ Dan.
-After a statement of the case made in turn by the two litigants,
-and confirmed or corrected by the visiting playmate Davy, the facts
-seemed to be as follows: The boys were cutting advertising pictures
-out of newspapers. Each of the boys had his own pile of newspapers
-which was his property. Dan had on one of his papers a picture which
-he did not care for, but which Ronald cared for very much. No sooner
-had Ronald expressed his desire for this picture than Dan crumpled the
-paper up in his hand and threw it into the waste-basket. Hence the
-complaint. The act was undeniably one of meanness; it was done with
-the intent to exasperate; but it transgressed no rights. The paper
-was Dan's property, to be disposed of as he pleased. Ronald had not
-the slightest claim upon it. This was clearly understood. While the
-trial was in progress, Davy, the witness, fished the paper out of the
-waste-basket, where it had become the personal property of nobody,
-cut out the picture, smoothed its wrinkles, and presented it to the
-grateful Ronald. Justice to Dan had compelled the recognition of his
-right to do with his own as he pleased. Judgment rendered for the
-defendant. Could any mother be satisfied with that outcome? So far as
-determining whether punishment was to be measured out, that ended the
-case. Strictly observing as between herself and her children their
-property rights, that judge could not refuse to enforce those rights as
-among themselves. This case, however, raised another question than that
-of justice.
-
-This was the question of future amity. The generous action of Davy, the
-witness, made it possible to use the incident for furthering not only
-just but also happy relations among the children. It made the defendant
-somewhat ashamed of himself, although of course it did not in the
-least obscure to his mind the consciousness that the judge had dealt
-with him justly. It moreover restored the sun to the complainant's
-cloudy face. Thus at the same time it impressed on the mind of the
-guilty a sense of his own meanness and effaced the memory of that
-meanness from the mind of the aggrieved. It is not always that a judge
-has a Davy at hand. It will not, however, necessarily confuse matters
-if she act the part of Davy herself. It is sometimes possible thus to
-give a practical demonstration of the fact that the spoils of justice
-are not always satisfying.
-
-As in walking, so in living with our fellows, some friction is
-necessary. To deprive a child of friction with other children is to
-keep him in slippery places. Unless we wish to teach him how to elude
-his kind, we shall not begrudge him his wholesome contests of skill, of
-wit, of strength, of temper. We shall only take care that he does his
-fighting fairly and not on too slight a provocation, that he knows how
-to yield to the weakness of another, that he does not learn to whine or
-snivel, that he does not become a tale-bearer, that he can take defeat
-or rebuke without callousness and without a whimper, that he becomes
-capable of forgetting his resentments and his personal triumphs over
-others, and that of all his victories, he learns to value most those
-which he wins over himself.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM
-
-
-The master of the house had returned from a visit to the country home.
-
-"Whom do you suppose I saw to-day?"
-
-The children could not imagine.
-
-"Old Robert. And what do you think he said?"
-
-The guesses flew wide.
-
-"No; you're all wrong. What he said was, 'How are the little men?'"
-
-Then up rose Deacon, as the old colored man had dubbed him, the
-youngest, blandest, tricksiest of the trio; and he laughed in derisive
-resentment.
-
-"I think old Robert is funny. He calls us little men. I don't think
-people will like old Robert if he calls 'em names."
-
-Names! Will children never cease to shock us by their points of view?
-Old Robert, like a well-baked pie, had put all the richness of his
-highly flavored feeling for the lads into that one phrase. He made it
-serve him as a message of loyalty, respect, affection, comradeship.
-
-Old Robert had probably never heard of James Mill; and if he had,
-he would not have cited him as an authority; for old Robert did not
-act according to the logic of his phrase. James Mill, however, did
-just that; he proceeded on the theory that it is wholesome to treat
-children as if they were miniature men and women. He began with his
-first-born by fitting to him an intellectual frock coat and tall hat.
-Why he waited till the youngster was three years old no one, so far as
-I know, has ever explained. Without much further delay he also gave
-him a religious outfit. This, though decidedly less conventional than
-his intellectual wardrobe, had the same adult cut. It was not the
-Benthamite fashion of his religious garb, but its mature lines, that
-gave John Stuart Mill his air of fascinating priggishness and suave
-conceit.
-
-Our taste, unlike James Mill's, may be for orthodoxy. We need not on
-that account despair of imbuing our children with religious precocity
-and self-assurance. Before he was ten years old, John Stuart Mill had
-learned that Christianity was immoral, and that there was no personal
-God. There is no reason why any child at the same age may not know
-all the mysteries of predestinarianism, and be old in the experiences
-of sanctification. All we need is the diligence, the courage, the
-determination of James Mill.
-
-In these qualities some of our forbears had the advantage of us. They
-knew very definitely what they wished their children to do and to
-believe. Among them was an American contemporary of James Mill, the
-Rev. Carlton Hurd. There are people still living who gratefully recall
-the ministration of this kindly, stalwart New England divine. He so
-ran as not uncertainly; so fought he, not as one that beateth the air.
-And his certitude did not forsake him in the training of his little
-daughter. It may seem almost grotesque to couple the English author and
-employee of the East India Company with the Orthodox American parson.
-The one held beliefs antipodal to those of the other. James Mill,
-moreover, not being able to believe in a God so stern as to create this
-evil world, made up what was lacking in the cosmos by cultivating in
-himself an iron sternness toward his son; on the other hand, Parson
-Hurd, as he is still affectionately called, being fully persuaded of
-the existence of a God capable of infinite wrath, seemed to cherish in
-himself, as sort of compensation, a most touching solicitude for his
-daughter. In only one respect did Parson Hurd resemble James Mill,--in
-having and holding to a body of convictions which were, to his mind,
-not only indisputable, but also, in substance at least, essential to
-the proper adornment of the mind of a child. The letter in which he
-tells the story of Marion Lyle Hurd is the narrative of a complete and
-orderly religious experience.
-
-Marion died at the age of four years. When she was eight months old,
-her parents read to her from leaflets for Sabbath Schools. They
-explained to her, when she was a year and a half old, in answer to
-questions from her, the origin and use of the Bible. They noted that
-when she had reached the age of two "her mind was seriously exercised
-with religious things." At that time she would sometimes kneel down and
-would say:--
-
-"Mother, I am going to pray. What shall I say to God?"
-
-"Ask God to make you good and give you a new heart."
-
-"What is a new heart, Mother?"
-
-"This was familiarly explained," writes her father, "and at the same
-time she was particularly informed of the way of salvation by Jesus
-Christ, and the steps God had taken to save sinners. We endeavored to
-impress upon her mind that she was a sinner and needed forgiveness;
-and God would forgive her sins, and give her a new heart through Jesus
-Christ." That from this time "she chiefly devoted her few remaining
-days to the acquisition of religious knowledge" her father finds to
-be "a consoling reflection." He adds, with conscientious caution, "If
-she was truly converted, we cannot tell when the change took place."
-Her parents hoped, however, after she had died two years later, that
-she had "entered 'the city of our God.'" Though they had no means of
-perceiving the approach of the disease of the brain which occasioned
-her death, they realized that the sensitiveness and activity of her
-mind warned them "to lead Marion with the gentlest hand; to make her
-way as quiet and even as possible." In this third year the books
-which were read to her included Parley's "Geography" and "Astronomy,"
-Gallaudet's "Child's Book on the Soul," and "Daily Food for
-Christians." In her fourth year her books, which she read to herself,
-were, besides the Bible, "Child's Book on Repentance," "Life of Moses,"
-"Family Hymns," "Union Hymns," "Daily Food," "Lessons for Sabbath
-Schools," "Henry Milnor," Watts's "Divine Songs," "Memoir of John
-Mooney Mead," "Nathan W. Dickerman," Todd's "Lectures to Children," and
-"Pilgrim's Progress." As these titles indicate, she was "particularly
-fond of reading the biography of good little children." Of all her
-books, however, Bunyan's masterpiece seems to have been the most
-instructive. Her knowledge of the allegory was tested by questions.
-She knew why Christian went through the river while Ignorance was
-ferried over. She knew what was meant by the Slough of Despond and the
-losing of the Burden. "When we come to Christ," said she, "we" (not
-Christians, or people, or you, but we) "lose our sins." And she sought
-from her father a certificate to enter the City. "We cannot doubt,"
-comments her father, "Marion understood much of what was intended to
-be taught in that book, which Phillip says, in his life of John Bunyan,
-contains the essence of all theology. Certainly, she was familiar with
-every step of the pathway of holiness trod by Christian, from the city
-of Destruction through the river of death to the 'Celestial City.'" And
-later he adds that she evinced "a familiar acquaintance with all parts
-of that allegory and its doctrine." Though he makes clear in his letter
-that "it is not the piety of the full grown and mature christian, that
-we are to look for in a child," he makes equally clear that in all
-essential particulars her piety was complete. It included even a regard
-for the significance of eternal reward and penalty. From Doddridge's
-"Expositor," both by examining the pictures and reading "the sacred
-text" under the direction of her father, she derived many ideas of the
-crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection
-at the end of the world. "Marion," continues the narrative, "after
-closely inspecting the countenances given in those pictures, both to
-the just and unjust, in the resurrection, would say,
-
-"'Oh! how the wicked look, when they rise from the dead!' adding in a
-serious and solemn manner,
-
-
-     "'"There is a dreadful hell,
-       And everlasting pains,
-     Where sinners must with devils dwell,
-       In darkness, fire, and chains."'"
-
-
-Indeed, from the earlier months, life after death, "the happiness of
-the good, and the misery of the wicked," were topics of "frequent and
-delightful conversation with her parents."
-
-In her last hours she expressed her assurance that she would be saved,
-and her last audible words were, "I am not afraid to die." Thus ended
-this brief life of four years and twenty-six days.
-
-An example of such training would be hard to find among parents of the
-present day. This is not because there are no parents who have Parson
-Hurd's convictions; neither is it because there are none who have his
-confidence in the capacity of children. It is because there are lacking
-parents who have both the convictions and the confidence. The reason
-why many parents fail where James Mill and Parson Hurd succeeded is
-that they try to make compromise between two contradictory theories.
-Although they wish to give their children a full complement of
-doctrines, they either do not possess the full complement themselves,
-or do not believe that their children are mature enough to receive it.
-The spectacle of adults attempting to instruct a primary class in the
-Logos Doctrine by the kindergarten method is thoroughly modern.
-
-If the way of Parson Hurd and James Mill seems to us either too hard or
-unreal, there is another way that may be found. That is the studious
-exclusion of religion from the life--even from the knowledge--of our
-children. It was this way that J. S. Mill supposed his father set him
-traveling. Of course he was mistaken when he said in his autobiography
-that he never had religious belief. He was embowered in religious,
-though not in Christian, or even in theistic, belief. The way that he
-walked was erroneously marked on his map; that was all. This is worth
-noting because it indicates how easily even a logician may miss this
-obscure way of no religion. Those who would lead their children by this
-route must avoid the very shadow of religion as they would that of
-the upas. Indeed, against even the air that has passed the shadow of
-religion they must quarantine their children. Religion is infectious.
-It can be conveyed by the subtlest means. To it children are perilously
-liable. Against it there seems to be no trustworthy antitoxin. Children
-are surrounded by infected people. A chance word may deposit the germ.
-One child out of the brood may thus fall a victim to a particularly
-virulent species of religion simply because he never had it in a
-mild form. Nevertheless, it is possible to establish a quarantine
-that may chance to remain effective for years. By this means children
-may be kept from a knowledge of religion just as many are safely,
-or dangerously, kept from a knowledge of what most people regard as
-advanced physiology. One family, I am told, has taken this way. How
-successful it has proved, I cannot say. All I have heard is that one
-member of the family is now enlisted in the ministry. This does not
-necessarily betoken failure. The theory was simply that each child
-was to be kept immune until he was old enough to decide for himself
-whether or not he would take the infection. This way is not the way of
-indifference. It cannot be followed by any one who is not profoundly
-affected by religion, whether hostile or friendly to it. It may require
-less routine diligence than the other way, but it requires more anxious
-circumspection.
-
-Different from either of these is that third way blazed by the
-developing traits of our children. Those who take it cannot regard
-religion as a form of doctrines or practices to be handed over to their
-child ready-made; neither can they regard it as a superfluity, which
-they are to withdraw from their child until he can choose to avoid it
-as a danger or accept it as a luxury. They can regard it only as a mode
-of life and therefore a mode of growth. They conceive it to be quite as
-perfect when it is genuinely manifested in the immaturities of the boy
-or girl as when it is shown in the riper forms of old age.
-
-Not that they undervalue doctrines. They know that there never was a
-religion that did not formulate itself. They look, however, for the
-doctrines to follow the religion, not the religion the doctrines.
-They are not surprised when they find their children constructing a
-philosophy of religion for themselves. Once upon a time a little girl
-was heard to address her dolls: "There's us, and Bridget, and Jews.
-We're all made of the same material; and we all have the same Father;
-I guess the difference is that some are more refined than others."
-No grown-up could have given her in the same number of words a more
-thoroughly typical example of theology: a union of anthropology,
-biology, and metaphysics, with a quasi-ethical conclusion. No
-ecumenical creed could have been more valid for the generation that
-produced it than could this brief philosophy be for her.
-
-Those who would take this third way well know, too, that there are some
-phases of religion from which it may be well, if possible, to save
-children for a time. It is no more necessary to feed them on Dante's
-"Inferno" than on Welsh rabbit. This, however, is very different from
-enforcing abstinence from all religious food.
-
-Conceding as much as this, then, to dogma and to caution, those who do
-not object to seeing a child grow will--let him grow. They will not be
-surprised if he looks out on the world with wonder. Neither will they
-be surprised if his wonder is slow in reaching satiety. It is sometimes
-very leisurely.
-
-Davy, aged six, asked one day at table: "Mamma, what's above the
-clouds?"
-
-"Air."
-
-After a moment of thought: "What's above the air?"
-
-"Ether."
-
-Another moment of thought; then, "What's above the ether?"
-
-"More ether. Ether is everywhere."
-
-Throughout this colloquy, Davy's brother Donald, two years younger,
-seemed no more attentive than usual; which means he was quite
-inattentive. A few weeks later, Davy had occasion to tell some one the
-story of the Tower of Babel, and added his usual formula, "I think they
-were foolish to try to get up to God, for God is everywhere." Donald's
-mind seemed busily engaged about some other matter. A few months
-passed, and Donald, now turned five, Donald the inattentive, suddenly
-thrust at his mother this question:--
-
-"Is God ether?"
-
-"No," said his mother, with a little hesitating inflection; she was
-trying to prepare herself for the unknown but inevitable sequence. It
-came promptly:--
-
-"Is God the universe?"
-
-Not willing to commit herself to pantheism, she answered again, "No;"
-and this time her inflection was more hesitant and inquiring than
-before.
-
-"How can God be everywhere?"
-
-For all those months that wonder had been nestling in that small mind
-until it grew brave enough to become vocal. Ether everywhere; God
-everywhere; God is ether. Why not? And if not, how can both be true?
-
-"Grandfather is in the library; perhaps he can tell you."
-
-A sound on the stairway like the roll of a drum and Donald was down in
-the library.
-
-"Grandfather, how can God be everywhere?"
-
-Grandfather touched Donald's hand: "Is Donald here, or," touching his
-shoulders, "is he here, or," touching his chest, "is he here, or,"
-touching his knee, "is he here?"
-
-Donald did not hesitate; touching each spot in turn, he answered:
-"Donald is here, _and_ here, _and_ here, _and_ here."
-
-"So it is with God," said his grandfather; "he is in New York and
-England and China and the sun and the moon and the stars."
-
-With a smile that broke like the dawn, and that meant both
-understanding and gratitude, Donald stood thoughtfully still a moment,
-and then skipped off to his blocks.
-
-Wonder. That seems to be the first phase of religious experience,
-and it grows silently unless it is thrust out by some grown-up
-body's system, or is atrophied by studious neglect. Miracles? Santa
-Claus? Need we trouble ourselves about these when our children are
-sun-worshipers, polytheists, pagans?
-
-Wonder is only one part of religion. The natural response to wonder
-is ritual. And children, whether we like it or not, are natively
-ritualistic. The little son of a well-known writer went with his mother
-for the first time in his life to service in the Church of England. As
-they entered, the people were singing; as the music ended, the people
-knelt.
-
-"What are they going to do now, Mamma?"
-
-"They are going to kneel and say their prayers."
-
-"What! with all their clothes on?"
-
-Untrained in ecclesiasticism, that small boy had developed a ritual of
-his own. Night-clothes, to his mind, were essential to the proprieties
-of religion. What does it matter to the ritualist whether or not he
-understands all the words he says? The ritual itself is his reaction to
-the spirit of reverence.
-
-Indeed, ritual is almost a prerequisite to the spirit of reverence.
-It is Professor James who has said that a man does not double up his
-fists because he is angry, or tremble because he is afraid; he is
-afraid because he trembles, and is angry because he doubles up his
-fist. So one may say that a man does not kneel because he is reverent;
-he is reverent because he kneels. What power ritual has needs no
-further demonstration than that afforded by the Society of Friends.
-What ritual surpasses in power that of the Quaker meeting-house? What
-vestments have given color and form to character more effectually than
-the old-fashioned Quaker garb? If we wish our children to have the
-spirit of courtesy, we insist that they acquire the habit of speaking
-politely. If we wish them to have the spirit of reverence--there is no
-knowing what we shall do, for most of us are very human and irrational.
-
-That is the reason why we shall probably be careless in considering
-the question of church attendance. There are some of us, perhaps,
-who have the sense to give an intelligent answer to the question, Why
-don't you have your children go to church? There is only one rational
-answer to that question. It might be put into some such form as this:
-"I have no special objection to churches. They are useful. So are
-free libraries. People who have no books at home find free libraries
-a great benefit; but my family have at home all the books they need.
-So people who are not well supplied with religion derive undoubted
-benefit from churches; but my family have at home all the religion they
-need. The community would be about as well off without any churches
-as it is with the churches it has. If no other charity seems more
-important, I am willing to contribute to a church as I might to a free
-library; but really I see no reason why I should go to church myself,
-or expect my children to go." That is a rational answer. I know of no
-other answer essentially different that could be called rational. An
-equally rational answer can be given to the other question, Why do you
-require your children to go to church? It might be put in these words:
-"A church of some kind is essential to the welfare of this community.
-Without any church, even the value of real estate in this place would
-enormously depreciate. That shows how everybody recognizes the church
-as a conservator of social morality. In this respect the church stands
-alone. The sermons may be nearly as dull as those which I have to
-preach to my children; the music may be even less entertaining; but
-the congregation represents as no other body of people the moral sense
-of the community. Besides that, the church is the only expression of
-religion as something not merely individual but also organic. Inasmuch
-as the church cannot be a church without a congregation, I am obliged,
-if I believe all this, to take my share in maintaining the existence
-of that congregation. And since the responsibility for seeing that
-my children take their share cannot be put upon them, it rests upon
-me. As a consequence, they no more question why they go to church than
-they question why they go to meals. They are not being entertained;
-they are not primarily even being instructed. For that reason it is
-not necessary, though it may be advantageous, for them to understand
-the sermon. They are forming a habit. On much the same grounds I am
-acquainting them with the Bible. What they store in their memory now
-they need not understand till later. There is a time for learning by
-heart; there is a time for understanding. I no more propose to postpone
-my children's practice in religious observances until they reach the
-age of discretion, than I propose to postpone their practice in being
-honest or in learning their five-finger exercises." That answer, like
-the other, is rational.
-
-A part of ritual is the observance of days and seasons. To this phase
-of religion we may expect children to be sensitive. Paul's mother came
-into the nursery one Sunday afternoon.
-
-"What are you doing?"
-
-"Studying."
-
-Paul's mother was surprised.
-
-"We try to keep Sunday different from other days. After this we shall
-understand that you are not to study on Sundays."
-
-A little more than two weeks later, Paul came home from school.
-
-"Sammy is a funny boy," he remarked.
-
-Sammy is a schoolmate.
-
-"What has he done?" inquired Paul's mother.
-
-"Why, Sammy gets his lessons on Sunday."
-
-Two Sundays had sufficed for the establishment of a tradition in
-religion so complete that a violation of it seemed grotesque.
-
-In regard to the observance of Sunday, one household has reversed the
-traditional rule. The ritual characteristic of that family originated
-in a bachelor uncle's remark. He recalled how alluring were those books
-which had been forbidden him, as a boy, on Sunday, and how gray a day
-Sunday was because those books were proscribed. He advocated the plan
-of selecting certain interesting books, which would be forbidden on
-week-days. In other words, he would remove the ban from Sundays, and
-put it on the other six days. His plan was adopted. Certain delights,
-including several volumes of stories from the Bible, were confined to
-Sunday. In consequence, Bible stories are in great favor, and Sunday is
-a day of privilege. In that household the ritual of Sunday observance
-is a ritual of liberty.
-
-Besides wonder and ritual, there is a factor in religion on which
-children seize. We may call it hero-worship. Others, following the lead
-of psychologists, might prefer to name it imitation. As the children
-of a certain family gather to look at Bible pictures, they are prone
-to ask of any group of people depicted, "Are those people good?"
-Reverence for what to them is an ideal may come later than wonder or
-ritual, but it is sure to come in time to all children. Those parents
-who are ready to take their children as they are and to help the growth
-of the spirit as they help the growth of the body incur the peril of
-always seeing in this reverence a searching inquisition of their own
-lives. The nearest objects of hero-worship that a child has are his
-parents. This fact may raise a disturbing inquiry: Shall they puzzle
-him by setting forth two ideals of fatherhood, one incorporated in
-themselves, the other involved in their representation of the character
-of God? Shall they confuse the mind of the child by setting up two
-inconsistent standards of human service, their own lives and what they
-tell him of the life of Jesus of Nazareth? This dilemma of course is
-avoided by such parents as hold either of those comfortable theories,
-that religion is a theology and that religion is a luxury. In the
-one case such questions are not pertinent; in the other they are
-unimportant. If, however, we understand religion to be a mode of life,
-we may find such questions as these driving us into an uncomfortable
-corner. They seem to compel us to pose as exhorter and pattern, and to
-force on us a paralyzing self-consciousness. Perhaps it will not harm
-us to be occasionally reminded of the fact that we cannot expect our
-children to become altogether different from what we are determined to
-be; but to be always composing precepts and assuming the attitude of
-examples seems to be but a feeble part to play. Happily, we need not
-confine our children to the contemplation of ourselves. There are many
-who, if we but let them, may share with us the burden of our children's
-imitativeness. And here comes our reward, if we have cultivated
-their imagination. We may be a bit stingy ourselves; but if we covet
-generosity for our children, we can let Abram make the suggestion. We
-may cherish our own resentments; but if we want our children to despise
-theirs, we can let them join that group that heard Peter bidden to put
-up his sword. Whatever may happen to us in the process will probably
-do us no hurt. We may find another illustration of that which we
-encountered at the beginning, that the principal part in the training
-of our children is the training of ourselves. This may have meant to
-us, when we started on our course, that the training of ourselves was
-simply the preparation for the training of our children. By this time
-we shall have discovered that it is not so much a preparation as an
-outcome. This art of being a parent is an art of give and take. If it
-is more blessed to give, as the Lord said, it is, as far as parents
-are concerned, quite as obligatory to receive. As much, at least, as
-this is the implication in one thing that our Lord did. Whether he ever
-instructed a child in the faith we do not know; we have not been told.
-What has been told is that when he wished to show his disciples--among
-them some parents, we may surmise--what religion was, he took a child
-and set him in the midst of them.
-
-
-
-***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE TRAINING OF PARENTS***
-
-
-******* This file should be named 60912.txt or 60912.zip *******
-
-
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/0/9/1/60912
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
-be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
-law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
-so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
-States without permission and without paying copyright
-royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
-of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
-concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
-and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
-specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
-eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
-for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
-performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
-away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
-not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
-trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
-
-START: FULL LICENSE
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
-Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
-destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
-possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
-Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
-by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
-person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
-1.E.8.
-
-1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
-agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
-Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
-of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
-works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
-States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
-United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
-claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
-displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
-all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
-that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
-free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
-works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
-Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
-comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
-same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
-you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
-in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
-check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
-agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
-distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
-other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
-representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
-country outside the United States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
-immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
-prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
-on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
-performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
-
-  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
-  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
-  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
-  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
-  United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
-  are located before using this ebook.
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
-derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
-contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
-copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
-the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
-redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
-either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
-obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
-additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
-will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
-posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
-beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
-any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
-to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
-other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
-version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
-(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
-to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
-of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
-Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
-full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-provided that
-
-* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
-  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
-  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
-  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
-  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
-  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
-  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
-  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
-  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
-  Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
-  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
-  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
-  works.
-
-* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
-  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
-  receipt of the work.
-
-* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
-are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
-from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
-Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
-Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
-contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
-or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
-intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
-other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
-cannot be read by your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
-with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
-with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
-lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
-or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
-opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
-the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
-without further opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
-OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
-LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
-damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
-violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
-agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
-limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
-unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
-remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
-accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
-production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
-including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
-the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
-or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
-additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
-Defect you cause.
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
-computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
-exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
-from people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
-generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
-Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
-www.gutenberg.org 
-
-Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary 
-Archive Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
-U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
-mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
-volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
-locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
-Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
-date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
-official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-
-    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-    Chief Executive and Director
-    gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
-DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
-state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
-donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
-freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
-distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
-volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
-the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
-necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
-edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
-facility: www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-