The 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. ”

“ The Kid, he's the youngest of the mess an' the worst an' the han'somest, with them little yeller curls, an' his daredevil blue eyes, come on ahead, riding his horse right up to the door, yelling like a drunk Injun an' cussing so it made a woman wonder how any woman could ever have a son like him. He tried to ride his horse right in the door, an' when it got scared of me an' John lyin' in bed, an' rared up, the Kid hit it over the head with the gun in his hand, an' slipped out'n the saddle, laughin' at it stagger. ”

“ I dunno; but nobody has took kids in.”
“Took? Took? Say, young lady, you must study your grammar book. Branton Hills schools don’t——”
“Uh-huh; I know. But a kid just can’t—”
“By golly! A kid can! Grab my hand.” ”

“ The next day the good man found the owner of the watch, and when she heard Kid's story she forgave him.
Kid was placed in a school, where he learned to be a good boy, as well as to be studious, and he soon forgot the old life. He grew to be a man of whom any mother could have been proud. But the only mother Kid ever knew was the mother of the little boy in the picture, which he cherishes as a thing sacred in his life.
headpiece to The Shoemaker Rat
THE SHOEMAKER RAT
One day a rat gnawed his way into a pantry, and after he had eaten all he wanted he grew bold and went into the kitchen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD'S
"This is an excellent story. It treats of simple people, of a noble-hearted girl who saw her duty, and of the man she loved. There are scenes of real dramatic power. The interest is sustained. The kind of book that works the heart chords every now and then."—News and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
"Mr. Child gives us a novel of uncommon interest, but what marks it at once for attention is its purely human quality, its knowledge of the fundamental traits of men and women, its atmosphere of truth to daily life."—New York Tribune. ”

“ Kindergarten play takes the children where they love to be, into the world of "make-believe." In this lovely world the children are blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights; birds, bees, butterflies; trees, flowers, sunbeams, rainbows; frogs, lambs, ponies,—anything they like. The play is so characteristic, so poetic, so profoundly touching in its simplicity and purity, so full of meaning, that it would inspire us with admiration and respect were it the only salient point of Froebel's educational idea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the world of books. Let your boy escape for a time from the meanness of the boy across the street, and let him roam the woods with Hiawatha, sail the seas with Sindbad, build stockades with Crusoe, fight dragons with Jason, joust with Galahad; let him play at quoits with Odysseus, and at football with Tom Brown. These are playmates who will never quarrel with him nor bully him, but from whom he will learn to be brave, self-reliant, manly, quick to do for others, and set with his face toward the light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seems odd that a strapping, pimple-faced, freckled, red-headed boy, loudmouthed and husky-voiced, more or less turbulent and generally in trouble for his insistent defense of his weaker playmates–it seems odd that such a boy could be the center of such grand dreams as they dreamed for their boy. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ In this book I have endeavored to relate the story of a boy's early experiences in college life—a boy who was neither unnaturally good nor preternaturally bad, wholesome, earnest, impulsive, making just such mistakes as a normal boy would make, and yet earnest, sincere, and healthy. We all have known just such boys and are grateful that they are neither uncommon nor unknown. ”

“ It fixes in the child mind the details of the story and impresses effectively many a good piece of literature; it combines intellectual, emotional, artistic, and physical action. The simplest kindergarten plays, such as The Farmer, The Blacksmith, and Little Travelers, naturally lead into playing a story such as The Sheep and the Pig or The Gingerbread Man. The Mouse that Lost Her Tail and The Old Woman and Her Pig are delightful simple plays given in Chain Stories and Playlets by Mara Chadwick and E. Gray Freeman, suited to the kindergarten to play or the first grade to read and play. ”

“ It has been well observed that children do not desire, and ought not to be furnished with purely realistic portraits of themselves; the boy's heart craves a hero, and the Johnny or Frank of the realistic story-book, the little boy like himself, is not in this sense a hero. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the recital of a high-spirited lad of the old school, full of animal spirits and manly notions, a lively sense of fun and humour, reckless of the consequences of playing tricks, but without a vestige of vice in the meaner or lower forms—a lad, in short, who would be a gentleman and a man of the world in his teens, and who, from his foreign travel, had seen more of life than boys do brought up at home. ”

“ In the Kindergarten we saw two other such children—Willie Robin and Tommy Stringer. The first, a little girl, is a pretty child, and seemingly very intelligent. It was wonderful to see all the little blind children playing Kindergarten games, but when this child came forward and joined in playing cat and mouse, with an evident keen sense of the fun, and even sang the songs with the others, finding out what was being sung by touching the throat of the child next to her, we realized what education had done for her. ”

“ The kindergarten has naturally found in the story one of its chief means of effectiveness. Stories, songs, and occupations are its staples. Dealing with this same period of early childhood, before the more taxing work of the school begins, it finds that the children's minds move with that same freedom and spontaneity in these stories with which their bodies and physical energies disport themselves in games and occupations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's house, or to his favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. ”

“ I was not interested, and the teacher did not make it interesting.
[322] In the boys' books I was fond of reading I came across all sorts of heroes, and I sympathized with them all. The boy who ran away to sea; the boy who delighted in the society of ranchmen and cowboys; the stage-struck boy, whose ambition was to drive a pasteboard chariot in a circus; the boy who gave up his holidays in order to earn money for books; the bad boy who played tricks on people; the clever boy who invented amusing toys for his blind little sister—all these boys I admired. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The difficulties of the fifth gift are only apparent, for the well-trained child of the kindergarten sees more than any other, and he will grasp the small complexities with wonderful ease, smoothing out a path for himself while we are wondering how we shall make it plain to him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Little boys come from school at Christmas. Pray wrap them up warm, for it is very cold. Well, spring will come again some time.
[Pg 204]
THE IDLE BOY.
There was a little boy; he was not a big boy, for if he had been a big boy I suppose he would have been wiser; but this was a little boy, not higher than the table, and his papa and mamma sent him to school. It was a very pleasant morning; the sun shone, and the birds sung on the trees. Now this little boy did not much love his book, for he was but a silly little boy, as I told you; and he had a great mind to play instead of going to school. ”