Kid

“ "Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but—but it was an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I remember rightly?"
"As ugly as that?"
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank. ”

“ Malemute Kid sat on the bunk, chin to knees, greatly interested. Jack Harrington sat beside him, scraping away on his violin and following the dancers.
It was a unique situation, the undertaking of these three men with the woman. The most pathetic part, perhaps, was the businesslike way in which they went about it. No athlete was ever trained more rigidly for a coming contest, nor wolf-dog for the harness, than was she. But they had good material, for Madeline, unlike most women of her race, in her childhood had escaped the carrying of heavy burdens and the toil of the trail. ”

“ And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it. ”

“ Imagination follows the boy to his happy home, where his father welcomes him with a hearty shake of the hand, his mother with a fond clinging embrace, and his sisters with smiles and kisses; while his younger brothers, who have been on the watch for hours, greet him with shouts of delight, and hurry him away to see their favourite rabbits, and pet guinea-pigs, and mice. Who so happy as a school-boy home for the holidays! ”

“ THE LITTLE BOY FOUND The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wandering light,
Began to cry, but God, ever nigh,
Appeared like his father, in white.
He kissed the child, and by the hand led,
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale,
Her little boy weeping sought.
LAUGHING SONG When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it ”

“ 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. ”

“ As much variety of character and countenance may be found among them, as exists in their elders, while the picture is so much the more pleasing, as the lines are always softened by something of the freshness of childhood. This sweet-faced little girl, that bright-eyed boy, this laughing, merry young rogue, yonder timid, gentle child, this playful, kitten-like creature, that frank and manly lad, will each in turn attract attention ”

“ But take them civilised or natural, those who love and observe little children no more expect to find that peculiar exquisite charm of the girl-child which I have endeavoured to describe in the boy, than they would expect the music of the wood-lark and the airy fairy grace and beauty of the grey wagtail in Philip Sparrow. And yet, incredible as it seems, that very quality of the miraculous little girl is sometimes found in the boy and, with it, strange to say, the boy's proper mind and spirit. ”

“ If some one should ask a boy—any boy, why it wouldn’t be better to play football in the summer and baseball at Thanksgiving time, he couldn’t tell you, but his sense of the fitness of things would be outraged. ”

“ Every gift and occupation and exercise of the kindergarten has been developed with infinite love and forethought to meet the child's wishes and capabilities; every one of them has been so delicately adjusted to meet the demands of the case, and so gently drawn into the natural and legitimate channel of childlike play, that they never fail to meet with an enthusiastic reception from the child, nor to awaken the strongest interest in him. ”

“ The children enter the kindergarten at the end of the toddling age, and the little lads and lassies sit side by side in their delightful rooms and make their first songs of life, as they end them, together, their little arms and hands making the first efforts at rhythm together, awkward movements full of grace. They pass at eight years to the primary department and begin the toilsome upward pull of real study, and here their ways part,—the boys for the Peers’ School and the ruder ways of masculine effort. ”

“ Once more, the Kindergarten professes to take account of the joyousness of the child’s nature: to allow him full and free expression for the glee that is in him, without the ‘rampaging’ which follows if he is left to himself to find an outlet for his exuberant life. ”

“ Now and then there is the ambitious boy, and then again there is your studious boy; there is your bookish boy; there is your shy boy who does not get into the games. He is the boy you should watch all the time. There is the boy who has become delicate and finicky, because he has been doddled at home. I hope you haven't got so many of them here as we have in the East, but he is here and you must watch him, because his parents are doing everything in the world to spoil him. ”

“ But amid all the excitement, and hurry, and joy, and noise, and confusion, how unutterably miserable is that boy who has no home to go to, and is to remain at school during the holidays; his face is like a cloud amid the [Pg 57] sunshine, a frown amid smiles; he views the preparations of each departing boy with envy, and, try all he can, he cannot assume a nonchalant or I-don't-care kind of air, nor prevent a lump rising in his throat, and an occasional dimness gathering over his eyes. ”

“ The pure but ignorant boy going for the first time into the new life of the school, looking up to the older boys with that peculiar veneration the younger boy almost always feels for the older, moved in his senses by what he hears and sees, may speedily forget such home warnings as seem vague and pointless, and he may yield himself to a course most disastrous to his future. ”

“ Kate Douglas Wiggin (Mrs. Riggs) and Nora Archibald Smith possess these qualities and this experience. Their efforts, as pioneers of kindergarten work, the love and admiration in which their works are held by all young people, prove them to be in full sympathy with this unique piece of work.
Let all parents, who wish their little ones to have their minds and tastes developed along the right paths, remember that once a child is interested and amused, the rest is comparatively easy. ”

“ Surely the Kindergarten is a great boon for these! Perhaps so; but a cottage-child as a companion, or a lively young nursemaid, might be better. A child will have taught himself to paint, paste, cut paper, knit, weave, hammer and saw, make lovely things in clay and sand, build castles with his bricks; possibly, too, will have taught himself to read, write, and do sums, besides acquiring no end of knowledge and notions about the world he lives in, by the time he is six or seven. ”

“ Even here, however, an insight into boy character will help her in smaller matters, here and there, to handle the boy with the grain instead of across it. Outside school hours, there is sometimes opportunity for the teacher to enter into many of the activities dear to boyhood which I have already discussed. The excursions to interesting and historic spots, the nature walks, the visits to industrial plants, and the like, the value of which I have already emphasized, are for the most part quite within the range of most teachers. ”

“ When our little boy wakes, he always beckons and cries to come into our room. He draws the curtains himself with his little dimpled hand; he laughs, he crows, he dances in the nurse’s arms, he shows his teeth, he blows like the bellows, pretends to snuff candles, and then, having shown off all his accomplishments, calls for his playthings. ”

“ HE
curtain should rise upon an introductory front scene depicting the pupils on their way to school, singly, or in groups of two or three, swinging book-bags or dinner-pails; one group of girls play bean-bag; a group of boys play marbles; one boy tries to fly a kite; some skip, others walk sedately, or jump rope, drive hoop, etc.
(Enter BOY, whittling.)
BOY. Say, Seth, old Hickory’s coming! Got your hands all waxed, sonny? ’Cause you’ll have to ketch it hot and heavy this morning. Teacher’s awful mad about your stealing Squire Green’s apples. ”

“ In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of [49] childhood, impressions are made clearly; and it should be the care of the educator to have all the child's notions associated with significant words, as can only be done by his becoming their companion in the play, and talking about it, as children always incline to do. It is half the pleasure of their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing. In the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her dealings with it, are expressed in words that are important lessons in language ”

“ Squills?—last till the boy goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no more with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a very ordinary little boy. ”

“ To see a boy of ten or twelve playing tag and jumping ditches with a boy strapped to his back is a sight. There are no public rebukes or scoldings of the children or even cross words, to say nothing of slappings, no nagging, at least not in public. Some would say that the children are not scolded because they are good, but it is a fair guess that it is the other way. ”

“ Outside of school for a considerable time each day the child falls under the influence of playmates who may or may not be helpful, but the greater part of every twenty-four hours belongs to the home.
[2] Parents, guardians, brothers and sisters, servants, consciously or unconsciously, wisely or unwisely, are teaching all the time. It is from this great complex of influences that every child builds his character and lays the foundation of whatever success he afterwards achieves. ”

“ I very much doubt whether small children should play with big ones—the rush of a set of great fellows at football, or the speed of a cricket-ball sent by a strong hitter, must be very alarming to a mere child, to a child who might stand up boldly enough among children of his own size and height. ”

“ My boy's closest friend was a boy who was probably never willingly at school in his life, and who had no more relish of literature or learning in him than the open fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. ”

“ Children everywhere, all along. Curly-pated children, bare-legged children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, but all shouting, screaming, laughing, smiling, or singing, and all as happy, seemingly, as the summer’s day was long. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The younger boy, Bill, is six years younger and still at school, and having been a delicate child, or as his mother puts it, 'enjoying bad health,' is not promising for farm-work, and, being fond of his book and a favourite at school, his mother cherishes hopes of his becoming a school-teacher in days to come. ”

“ Child attention centers first upon familiar things, and radiates from them to the unknown. Through his interest in creatures that are a part of his environment, the kindergarten tot becomes interested in those of other regions, in the men, women, children, and animals that are part of the life of some other child. Through knowledge of his immediate surroundings he comes [145] to acquire knowledge of life in other surroundings, and according to the appeal it makes to his imagination, he understands and sympathizes with it, and his social sense is broadened. ”

“ Near where I often go in the autumn is a boys’ school and I have seen little new boys on the first evening of their arrival look just so—livid and lost, poor little chaps—but you know that in a day or two they will be running about as happy as grigs in the excitement of school events and the exhilaration of football. ”

“ This power may be brought to bear on every boy when he is, say, from fourteen to sixteen years old—perhaps in some cases even earlier; and, when once the teacher has made the all-important discovery, then let everything be done to stimulate, and at the same time to discipline, the boy's natural inclination, his inborn aptitude. ”

“ When a boy has reached the age of eleven or twelve, another consideration presents itself which is a source of serious perplexity to parents. Shall he be educated at home—that is, attend school in his own city or town—or be sent to one of the boarding-schools or academies which are ready to open their doors to him and fit him for college? ”

“ Then she laughed.
'But what shall I call you?' I asked.
'You called me "child" once. I'm not a child. I'm seventeen.'
I smiled at her. She at once caught up the bag of grapes, undid the mouth, and offered it to me. ”

“ The kindergartner's conversation with the children upon their playthings is therefore her most important and delicate work, and one which she cannot do instinctively, but only if she scientifically understands the child on the one hand, and nature in some department on the other. ”

“ For instance, in the Kindergarten the child’s senses are carefully and progressively trained: he looks, listens, learns by touch; gets ideas of size, colour, form, number; is taught to copy faithfully, express exactly. And in this training of the senses, the child is made to pursue the method the infant shapes for himself in his early studies of ring or ball. ”