Elizabeth McCracken

“ No matter how joyously American children may play with their elders, or with their contemporaries, whatever enhancement their satisfaction in play with one another may gain from the presence of grown-up spectators, they are not likely to become so dependent upon the one, nor so self- conscious by reason of the other, that they will relinquish—or, worse still, never know—the dear delights of "playing alone." Games played in company may be the finest prose—they are yet prose; games played alone are pure poetry. ”

“ Can we not all see her, that "smart" child of two generations ago?
As for her lesson, can we not hear it with our mind's ear? In arithmetic, it was the multiplication table; in English history, the names of the sovereigns and the dates of their reigns; in geography, the capitals of the world; in deportment—ah, in deportment, a finer lesson than any of our schools teach now! These were the lessons. Indeed, my elderly friend has told me as much. "And not easy lessons, either, my dear, nor easily learned, as the lessons of schoolchildren seem to be to-day. ”

“ CONCLUSION We are a child-loving nation; and our love for the children is, for the most part, of the kind which Dr. Henry van Dyke describes as "true love, the love that desires to bestow and to bless." The best things that we can obtain, we bestow upon the children; with the goodliest blessings within our power, we bless them. ”

“ Some of us in America are prone to deprecate in the children of our Nation this pleased consciousness of their own enjoyment, this desire for our presence as sympathetic onlookers at those of their games in which we cannot join. We must not allow ourselves to forget that it is a state of mind fostered largely by our National habit of treating children as familiars and equals. ”

“ I wonder why," she went on, half- musingly, before I could make an attempt to persuade her to qualify her rather sweeping assertion. "It may be because you do so much for children, in America. They are always on your mind; they are hardly ever out of your sight. You are forever either doing something for them, or planning to do something for them. No wonder the child is your one subject of conversation. You do so very much for children in America," she repeated. ”

“ The religious liberty of American children of the present day is perhaps the most salient fact of their lives. Without doubt, the giving to them of this liberty is the most remarkable fact in the lives of their elders. No grown people were ever at any time willingly allowed to exercise such freedom in matters pertaining to religion as are the children of our nation at the present time. Not only is churchgoing not compulsory; religion itself is voluntary.
A short while ago a little girl friend of mine was showing me her birthday gifts. ”

“ The mother, in letting her little girl share her grief, let her share too the knowledge of the source to which she looked for consolation. Above all, she not only told her of heavier sorrows; she told her how those greater griefs might be lightened. Children in America enter into so many of the things of their parents' lives, is it not good that they are given their parts even in those spiritual things that are most near and sacred? ”

“ The great books of the world do not lend themselves well to making over. "Tales from Shakespeare" are apt to leave out Shakespeare's genius, and "Stories from Homer" are not Homer. In cutting the doublet to fit, the most precious part of the fabric is in danger of being sacrificed.
But whatever the children lose when they are small, they find again when they come to a larger growth. Most significant of all, when they find it, they recognize it. A little girl who is a friend of mine had read Lambs' "Tales." The book had been given to her when she was eight years old. ”

“ No American child is too shy to inquire of his parents concerning anything he may wish to know. Shyness is a veil children wear before strangers; in the company of their intimates they lay it aside— and forget it. In the autobiographies of Americans we shall not find many accounts of childish terrors arising from any reserve in the direction of asking questions. In American homes there are no closets whose doors children are afraid to pass, or to open, even after dark. ”

“ The presence of the children in our lives,—so closely near, so intimately dear!—unites us in grave and serious concerns,—unites us to great and significant endeavors; and unites us even in smaller and lighter matters,—to a pleasant neighborliness one with another. However we may differ in other particulars, we are all alike in that we are tacitly pledged to the "cause" of children; it is the desire of all of us that the world be made a more fit place for them. And, as we labor toward the fulfillment of this desire, they are our most effectual helpers. ”

“ To-day we feel that the children can hardly do anything likely to prove more useful than reading a book. Is not this because we have taught them, not only to read, but to read for a diversity of reasons? ”

“ You may have noticed that grandma always says, 'my son,' and I always say 'my husband,' when we speak of him."
"Does he call his father by his Christian name?" I could not resist questioning, when the little boy had left the room.
"Sometimes," replied the child's mother.
"He hears so many persons do it, he can't see why he shouldn't. And there really is no reason. Soon enough he will find out that it isn't customary and stop doing it."
This is a far cry from the days when children were taught to address their parents as "honored sir" and "respected madam." ”

“ And domestic science—did not mothers teach that, not only to their girls, but to their boys also, with a degree of thoroughness not surpassed even by that of the best of modern domestic science teachers? The subjects to be brought to the notice of children appear to be so fixed; the things to be learned by them seem to be so slightly alterable! It is only the place of instruction that has shifted. Such a quantity of things once taught entirely at home are now taught partly at school. ”

“ It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. ”

“ My friend who had said that a man did not make use of his child to give weight to his arguments unless he had a genuine belief in that for which he was pleading might have gone further; he might have added that neither do men and women make such a use of other people's children excepting they be as completely sincere,—provided that those men and women love children. ”

“ And how assiduously they attempt to make as many as they can of the other things we grown-ups make! They imitate our play; and, in a spirit of play, they contrive to copy to its last and least detail our work. If we play golf or tennis, they also play these games. Are we painters of pictures or writers of books, they too aspire to paint or to write!
It cannot be denied that we encourage the children in this "endless imitation." We not only have diminutive golf sticks and tennis rackets manufactured for their use as soon as they would play our games ”

“ It takes the children so short a time to elevate the teacher to the rank of final arbiter in their intellectual world. So soon, they follow her footsteps in preference to any others along the ways of education. Not only do they pronounce words as she pronounces them; in so far as they are able, they define words as she defines them. In due course, they are a bit fearful of any knowledge obtained otherwise than as she teaches them to obtain it. Is there one of us who has attempted to help a child with "home lessons" who has not been obliged to reckon with this fact? ”

“ It is no new thing for fathers and mothers to think more of the future than of the present in their dealings with their boys and girls. Parents of all times and in all countries have done this. It seems to me, however, that American fathers and mothers of to-day, unlike those of any other era or nation, think, in training their children, of what one might designate as a most minutely detailed future. The mother of whom I have been telling wished to teach her little girl not only how to buy, but how to buy gingham ”

“ Perhaps the most significant influence of the American home upon the American school is to be found in the regular setting apart of an hour of the school-day once, or twice, or even three times a week, as a story hour; and the filling of that hour with the stories, read or told, that in earlier times children never so much as heard mentioned at school by their teachers. It is indeed a pleasant thought that in school-rooms throughout the land boys and girls are hearing about the Argonauts, and the Knights of the Round Table, and the Crusaders ”

“ Its windows opened upon the barnyard; glancing out, I saw eight or ten cows, just home from pasture, pushing their ways to the drinking-trough. I looked around the little room. On the walls were framed photographs of great composers, on the mantelshelf was a metronome, on the centre-table were two collections of classic piano pieces, and in a corner was,—not a melodeon,—but a piano. ”

“ America is full of ordinary, nice children who beguile their elders into playing with them games that are not uncommon. How much "pleasant time" is thereby spent!
"Where do American children learn to expect grown people to play with them?" an Englishwoman once asked me. "In the kindergarten?"
Undoubtedly they do. In no country except Germany is the kindergarten so integral a part of the national life as it is in America. In our cities, rich and poor alike send their children to kindergartens. ”

“ Such a situation almost invariably means distress to the family, and to the relinquished church of the person the form of whose faith has altered. In few other matters is so small a measure of liberty understandingly granted a grown person, even in America. But when a child would turn from one form of belief to another, how differently the circumstance is regarded!
One Sunday, not long ago, visiting an Episcopal Sunday-school, I saw in one of the primary classes a little girl whose parents, as I was aware, were members of the Baptist Church. ”

“ There is no antagonism between love and law. Parents are in a position of authority over their children; no risk of the strength of that position is involved in a friendship between parents and children anywhere. It is not remarkable that American parents should retain their authority over their children. What is noteworthy is that their children, less than any other children of the civilized world, rebel against it or chafe under it: they perceive so soon that their parents are governing them only because they are not wise enough to govern themselves ”

“ We hear a great deal about the differences between public and private schools, and certainly there are differences; but the pupils of the public and the private schools are very much alike. It is considerably easier to distinguish a public from a private school than it is to tell a public- school child from a private-school child. ”