“These are the main characteristics of the new child literature: truth and something better ahead.”
“I don’t like it!” I said firmly. “No wonder you dodged about so long. You’ve apparently made a sort of pap out of Gradgrind and Rollo, and feed it to these poor babies through a tube!”
This time my sister rebelled. She came firmly to my side and pulled my hair—precisely as she used to do forty years ago and more—the few little hairs at the crown which still troubled me in brushing—because of being pulled out straight so often.
“You shall have no more oral instruction, young man,” said she. “You shall be taken about and shown things; you shall ‘Stop! Look! Listen!’ until you admit the advantages I have striven in vain to pump into your resisting intellect—you product of past methods!”
“You’re the product of the same methods yourself, my dear,” I replied amiably; “but I’m quite willing to be shown—always was something of a Missourian.”
No part of my reeducation was pleasanter, and I’m sure none was more important, than the next few days. We visited place after place, in different cities, or in the country, and everywhere was the same high standard of health and beauty, of comfort, fun, and visible growth.
I saw babies and wee toddlers by the thousands, and hardly ever heard one cry! Out of that mass of experience some vivid pictures remain in my mind. One was “mother time” in a manufacturing village. There was a big group of mills with waterpower; each mill a beautiful, clean place, light, airy, rich in color, sweet with the flowers about it, where men and women worked their two-hour shifts.
The women took off their work aprons and slipped into the neighboring garden to nurse their babies. They were in no haste. They were pleasantly dressed and well-fed and not tired.
They were known and welcomed by the women in charge of the child-garden; and each mother slipped into a comfortable rocker and took into her arms that little rosy piece of herself and the man she loved—it was a thing to bring one’s heart into one’s throat. The clean peace and quiet of it, time enough, the pleasant neighborliness, the atmosphere of contented motherhood, those healthy, drowsy little mites, so busy with their dinner.
Then they put them down, asleep for the most part, kissed them, and strolled back to the pleasant workroom for another two hours.
Specialization used to be a terror, when a whole human being was held down to one motion for ten hours. But specialization hurts nobody when it does not last too long.
In the afternoons some mothers took their babies home at once. Some nursed them and then went out together for exercise or pleasure. The homes were clean and quiet, too; no kitchen work, no laundry work, no self-made clutter and dirt. It looked so comfortable that I couldn’t believe my eyes, yet it was just common, everyday life.
As the babies grew old enough to move about, their joys widened. They were kept in rooms of a suitable temperature, and wore practically no clothes. This in itself I was told was one main cause of their health and contentment. They rolled and tumbled on smooth mattresses; pulled themselves up and swung back and forth on large, soft horizontal ropes fastened within reach; delightful little bunches of rose leaves and dimples, in perfect happiness.
Very early they had water to play in; clean, shallow pools, kept at a proper temperature, where they splashed and gurgled in rapture, and learned to swim before they learned to walk, sometimes.
As they grew larger and more competent, their playgrounds were more extensive and varied; but the underlying idea was always clear—safety and pleasure, full exercise and development of every power. There was no quarrelling over toys—whatever they had to play with they all had in abundance; and most of the time they did not have exchangeable objects, but these ropes, pools, sand, clay, and so on, materials common to all; and the main joy was in the use of their own little bodies, is as many ways as was possible.
At any time when they were not asleep a procession of crowing toddlers could be seen creeping up a slight incline and sliding or rolling triumphantly down the other side. A sort of beautified cellar door, this.
Strange that we always punished children for sliding down unsuitable things and never provided suitable ones. But then, of course, one could not have machinery like this in one brief family. Swings, seesaws, all manner of moving things they had, with building-blocks, of course, and balls. But as soon as it was easy to them they had tools and learned to use them; the major joy of their expanding lives was doing things. I speak of them in an unbroken line, for that was the way they lived. Each stage lapped over into the next, and that natural ambition to be with the older ones and do what they did was the main incentive in their progress.
To go on, to get farther, higher, to do something better and more interesting, this was in the atmosphere; growth, exercise, and joy.
I watched and studied, and grew happy as I did so; which I could see was a gratification to Nellie.
“Aren’t they ever naughty?” I demanded one day.
“Why should they be?” she answered. “How could they be? What we used to call ‘naughtiness’ was only the misfit. The poor little things were in the wrong place—and nobody knew how to make them happy. Here there is nothing they can hurt, and nothing that can hurt them. They have earth, air, fire, and water to play with.”
“Fire?” I interrupted.
“Yes, indeed. All children love fire, of course. As soon as they can move about they are taught fire.”
“How many burn themselves up?”
“None. Never any more. Did you
