I had to admit that it had its advantages.
As they grew older there was every chance for specialization. In the first years they gathered the rudiments of general knowledge, and of general activity, of both hand and brain, and from infancy each child was studied, and his growth—or hers—carefully recorded; not by adoring, intimately related love, but by that larger, wiser tenderness of these great child-lovers who had had hundreds of them to study.
They were observed intelligently. Notes were made, the mother and father contributed theirs; in freedom and unconsciousness the young nature developed, never realizing how its environment was altered to fit its special needs.
As the cool, spacious, flower-starred, fruitful forests of this time differed from the tangled underbrush, with crooked, crowded, imperfect trees struggling for growth, that I remembered as “woods,” or from clipped and twisted products of the forcing and pruning process; so did the new child-gardens differ from the old schools.
No wonder children wore so different an aspect. They had the fresh, insatiable thirst for knowledge which has been wisely slaked, but never given the water-torture. As I recalled my own youth, and thought of all those young minds set in rows, fixed open as with a stick between the teeth, and forced to drink, drink, drink till all desire was turned to loathing, I felt a sudden wish to be born again—now!—and begin over.
As an adult observer, I found this rearranged world jarring and displeasing in many ways; but as I sat among the children, played with them, talked with them, became somewhat acquainted with their views of things, I began to see that to them the new world was both natural and pleasant.
When they learned that I was a “leftover” from what to them seemed past ages, I became extremely popular. There was a rush to get near me, and eager requests to tell them about old times—checked somewhat by politeness, yet always eager.
But the cheerful pride with which I began to describe the world as I knew it was considerably dashed by their comments. What I had considered as necessary evils, or as no evils at all, to them appeared as silly and disgraceful as cannibalism; and there grew among them an attitude of chivalrous pity for my unfortunate upbringing which was pretty to see.
“I see no child in glasses!” I suddenly remarked one day.
“Of course not,” answered the teacher I stood by. “We use books very little, you see. Education no longer impairs our machinery.”
I recalled the Boston school children and the myopic victims of Germany’s archaic letterpress; and freely admitted that this was advance. Much of the instruction was oral—much, very much, came through games and exercises; books, I found, were regarded rather as things to consult, like a dictionary, or as instruments of high enjoyment.
“Schoolbooks”—“textbooks”—scarcely existed, at least for children. The older ones, some of them, plunged into study with passion; but their eyes were good and their brains were strong; also their general health. There was no “breakdown from overstudy;” that slow, cruel, crippling injury—sometimes death, which we, wise and loving parents of past days, so frequently forced upon our helpless children.
Naturally happy, busy, self-respecting, these grew up; with a wide capacity for action, a breadth of general knowledge which was almost incredible, a high standard of courtesy, and vigorous, well-exercised minds. They were trained to think, I found; to question, discuss, decide; they could reason.
And they faced life with such loving enthusiasm! Such pride in the new accomplishments of the world! Such a noble, boundless ambition to do things, to make things, to help the world still further.
And from infancy to adolescence—all through these years of happy growing—there was nothing whatever to differentiate the boys from the girls! As a rule, they could not be distinguished.
X
It was this new growth of humanity which made continuing social progress so rapid and so sure.
These young minds had no rubbish in them. They had a vivid sense of the world as a whole, quite beyond their family “relations.” They were marvelously reasonable, free from prejudice, able to see and willing to do. And this spreading tide of hope and courage flowed back into the older minds, as well as forward into the new.
I found that people’s ideas of youth and age had altered materially. Nellie said it was due to the change in women—but then she laid most things to that. She reminded me that women used to be considered only as females, and were “old” when no longer available in that capacity; but that as soon as they recognized themselves as human beings they put “Grandma” into the background, and “Mother” too; and simply went on working and growing and enjoying life up into the lively eighties—even nineties, sometimes.
“Brains do not cease to function at fifty,” she said. “Just because a woman is no longer an object to ‘fall in love’ with, it does not follow that life has no charms for her. Women today have all that they ever had before, all that was good in it; and more, a thousand times more. When the lives of half the world widen like that it widens the other half too.”
This quite evidently had happened.
The average mental standard was higher, the outlook broader. I found many very ordinary people, of course; some whose only attitude toward this wonderful new world was to enjoy its advantages; and even some who grumbled. These were either old persons with bad digestions or new immigrants from very backward countries.
I traveled about, visiting different places, consulting all manner of authorities, making notes, registering objections. It was all interesting, and grew more so as it seemed less strange. My sense of theatrical unreality gave way to a growing appreciation of the universal beauty about me.
Art, I found, held a very different position from what it used to hold. It had joined hands with life again, was common, familiar, used in all things. There were pictures, many and
