Bambino

“ The little ones are not here familiar and merry as they are on the plantations in America; they do not stretch out their little hands for a friendly salutation; they look at the white man with suspicious glances—they are shy: but the very little Bambinos, which are quite naked, fat, and plump, as shiny as black, or black-brown silk, dance upon their mother's knees, generally with a blue or red string of beads around the loins, and another round the neck ”

“ A cheery, chubby infant, leading a flesh-eating dinosaur on a leash, illustrated the child spirit leading the baser passions of mankind. The entire front page of Peoples Pictures was devoted to babies, unclothed.
In Great American Hall the great annual babies' carnival, under the auspices of Mayor and Mrs. True—the home family mayor of all the people, and Mother True, so called in all the journals when shown with all the photographs of her own children, or while wheeling her first grandchild.
Babies—a great hall full of babies! Of the health of babies, of the betterment of babies. ”

“ This boy had come to tea with his mother on his first introduction into their midst, and after tea, and while the two mothers sat on a sofa watching their children, and each one thinking how much nicer hers were, the babies said, 'Now we shall play.'
'Come, boy,' said June, seizing his arm as he showed no signs of moving, 'come—does you hear? We shall play.'
'I never play with little girls,' said the boy.
The babies stared. 'Why not?' they asked.
'They're much too stupid. They can't be soldiers when they grow up, and can't fight. ”

“ I stepped up to a lady to ask the age of a baby which she had in her maternal arms, when I found myself instantly a centre of baby attraction—babies seemed to pitch into me from all directions—a baby poked its fingers into my eye, a baby put sugar on my ruffled shirt, a baby daubed gruel on my white vest, a baby filled my kid glove with milk, a baby dropped something done up in a rag down my neck, and a baby of huge dimensions and unredeemed ugliness amused itself by filling my hat full of playthings which it appropriated from the weaker babies on either side. ”

“ For, what has a baby to be miserable about in a land where it is scarcely ever slapped, where its clothing, always loose, is yet warm in winter, where it basks freely in air and sunshine? It lives in a house, that from its thick grass mats, its absence of furniture, and therefore of commands "not to touch," is the very beau-ideal of an infant's playground. ”

“ Barus keeps record of her boy’s favorite playthings; if I sit by the window and catch with my pencil my niece’s prattle as she plays about below—and if these babies afterward turn out spoiled, the mischief must be credited to some other agency than the silent notebook.
Even direct experimenting on a child is not so bad as it sounds. When you show a baby his father’s photograph to see if he recognizes it, you are experimenting on him. ”

“ In the babies' kingdom, my friend, my favorite is the country baby, running about in the dust on the highway barefoot and ragged, and searching for black birds' and chaffinches' nests on the outskirts of the woods. I love his great black wondering eye, which watches you fixedly from between two locks of un combed hair, his firm flesh bronzed by the sun, his swarthy forehead, hidden by his hair, his smudged face and his picturesque breeches kept from falling off by the paternal braces fastened to a metal button, the gift of a gendarme. ”

“ All babies are round, yielding, weak, timid, and soft to the touch as a handful of wadding. Protected by cushions of good rosy flesh or by a coating of soft down, they go rolling, staggering, dragging along their little unaccustomed feet, shaking in the air their plump hands or featherless wing. See them stretched haphazard in the sun without distinction of species, swelling themselves with milk or meal, and dare to say that they are not alike. Who knows whether all these children of nature have not a common point of departure, if they are not brothers of the same origin? ”

“ Did you ever see so many little children and so many poor little youngsters with babies on their backs? They seemed perfectly content and happy, both babies and their carriers, but it was funny to see the babies' heads bob around with no one to mind in the least. The little girls never appear to be aware that the babies are there; they go skipping or bobbing or playing while the babies are like great big bundles and nothing more."
[Pg 104]
Nan told her experience with one little girl and baby, Mary Lee listening attentively. ”

“ These people “believe that an infant is the child, not of its parents, but of the spirits, and in this belief they go through the following formalities. As soon as an infant is born it is bathed and dressed, laid upon a rice-sieve, and placed—by the grandmother if present, if not, by the next near female relative—at the head of the stairs or of the ladder leading to the house. ”

“ We shall see hundreds of small children, not more than five or six years of age, carrying, fast asleep on their shoulders, the baby of the household, its tiny smooth brown head swinging hither and thither with every movement of its small nurse, who walks, runs, sits, or jumps, flies kites, plays hop-scotch, and fishes for frogs in the gutter, totally oblivious of that infantile charge, whether sleeping or waking. If no young sister or brother be available, the husband, the uncle, the father, or grandfather hitches on his back the baby, preternaturally good and contented. ”

“ Sometimes he would gather up all the children and take them to the meadow, and teach them about the leaves and stones, the flowers and birds and ants, as his brother used to teach him, and then they would play the very plays the wind and flowers and birds had played. So he called it his kindergarten,—his child-garden,—and he began to show to the whole world that little children must learn and grow in the same sweet way that flowers do. ”

“ But in Amerique, Maman tell me, all is big, big! It is droll, so big little boys. Sometimes I ask myself if you are veritably a little boy. Perhaps it is to make laugh you tell me you are one infant. Perhaps you are the old gentleman.
Tell me dear godfather, what is it the Sunday-school? In Paris we go not to school the Sunday. We rise more lately, and we dress more pretty than the days of week, and for breakfast we eat the cacao in lieu of soup of potato left of last night. And we go to the grand mass with Maman. Little brother Jean is one infant of choir at the church. ”

“ It needed so careful a hunt before one would come on the little kid, covered up so ingeniously, in its cradle in a thorn brake. In a very short time though the babies get their jungle legs and can follow the mother at her own pace. I don’t know of any very much prettier sight than an aoul nursery full of kids playing. They are such sportive little creatures, just like lambs at home—jumping imaginary obstacles, running races, mimicking their elders in childish battle. ”

“ The babies are as delicate as if they were made of glass, and as light and airy as if they belonged to fairy-land. They run, all the time, backward and forward, just for the pleasure of moving, over the sidewalk, and under it. ”

“ And then the children that should have been in bed hours ago—little children, large children, young children, old children, fat children, thin children, children clinging-to-mother's-skirts, children running in and out, like mice, between legs and trousers, children riding on father's shoulder, children sticky with sweets and sucking their thumbs, children screaming with pleasure, shrieking with terror, howling with weariness—and one child all by itself on the steps of the town hall, curled up and fast asleep. ”

“ I said to the daughter, "Katherine, where did you learn how to talk to baby, and to take care of one so nicely?" "Why, that's the way we talk to the dolly at Kindergarten!" she replied. Her powers of baby-loving had been developed definitely by the toy baby, so that when the real baby came, she was ready to transfer her tenderness to the larger sphere. Thus, as I said before, toys form a bridge between the great realities and possibilities of life, and the small capacities of the child. If wisely selected, they lead him on from conquering yet to conquer. ”

“ When a fresh infant was published in a house, the critics would call in a body to pass their judgment upon it, and the young mother would bring it down for them to sample.
"Did you ever see a child anything like that in this world before?" she would say, holding it out to them. "Isn't it a wonderful baby? You never saw a child with legs like that, I know. Nurse says he's the most extraordinary baby she ever attended. ”

“ While the bodily powers of the infant are nourished and preserved by observing Nature, as pointed out in the last chapter, the powers of the mind are growing from day to day. When an infant has once been pleased with the glitter of the sun upon the brass warming-pan, or with the sound of a rattle, it will kick and shake its little arms, and look eager, the next time it sees the rattle and the warming-pan. And having once remembered, it will remember more every day. ”

“ They called so loudly that the still air of that autumn morning was strangely startled, and the old woodchuck in the pasture 'way off yonder heard the echoes and wondered.
"Little boy! little boy!" they called, "why are you sleeping? Why are you sleeping, little boy?"
Call on, dear voices! but the little boy will never hear. The dimpled hands that caressed you are indeed folded upon his breast; the lips that kissed your honest faces are sealed; the baby voice that sang your playtime songs with you is hushed, and all about him are the fragrance and the beauty of flowers. ”

“ Three hours have passed in which over thirty children, barely out of babyhood, have worked incessantly at many different occupations, have moved gracefully and with complete freedom about the room, have changed occupations as often as they wished, have not once quarreled. But now, out of the ordered disorder, comes a marvelous hush. No word is spoken, but one baby after another, glancing the written sign, drops back with closed eyes into a hushed silence in which the whir of bird wings in the garden, the fluttering of casement hangings, the far-away sound of a bell are audible. ”

“ Can we help suspecting a period, somewhere in the remote ages, when the baby’s ancestry dwelt amid the treetops, and learned to stand by balancing on one branch while they held by a higher one? when they edged along the branch, holding on above, but dropped to all-fours and crept when they came to the ground now and then to get from tree to tree? The whole history of the baby’s movements points to this: the strong arms and clinging hands, from birth; the intense impulse to pull up, even from the beginning of sitting; the way in which standing always begins, by laying hold above and pulling up ”

“ If waiting for play till baby has had its meal, how it stands at its mother's knee, making folds in her gown,—see-sawing its body perhaps, and fetching deep sighs, to throw off its impatience, but speaking no word—making no complaint till baby has had its dues. And when its turn is come, baby being laid down, what a spring into the lap, what a clasp of the neck is there! ”

“ The infant has its paradise in the arms of its mother, its providence; here the infant, the grub, is the providence of the mother. With its patient tooth, which neither the perils of the outside world nor the difficult task of boring through hard wood are able to deter, it clears a way for her to the supreme delights of the sun. ”

“ Such pains disturb and haunt his fancy, and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy give strength and enterprise to activity.
The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary processes which foreshadow all the processes of the Divine Providence. Therefore, even in the nursery we play antagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoyment [203] by making him conscious of isolation a moment, to restore, as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head unexpectedly, and suddenly withdrawn again and again. ”

“ In winter time little King Baby is rolled in clothes until he looks like a ball, though his feet and part of his [15] legs are usually bare. When asleep he is laid in a bamboo cradle, on rough rockers which loudly thump the floor. A red cord is tied to his wrist, lest he should be naughty when grown up, and people should say, “They forgot to bind your wrist when you were little.” Ancient coins are hung round his neck by a string to drive away evil spirits and to make him grow up an obedient child. ”

“ In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened—if it is never superseded by your will—until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. ”

“ He jumps and pulls, crows and chuckles, crawls and kicks and gurgle with joy; and, amid all the play, is taught what he may not do. Hands and feet, legs and arms, fingers and toes, are continually going while he is awake; mouth, eyes and ears are agog. All is play without intention, and mother plays with baby as glad as he. ”