CHIVALROUS SPIRIT

The love of mother and sister can naturally and happily be turned early to a chivalrous attitude toward all women when it is developed by suggestion and other training. In giving up a chair or bringing one for a guest, in lifting the hat, in noticing ways to be polite and attentive to mother, a lifelong conduct may be ensured.

Each day gives us trying and sometimes shocking revelations of the prevalent lack of courtesy, or even humanity, on the street cars during the "rush" hours. The indifference to the comfort of women, even the aged, on the part of many men and boys in the matter of giving them seats or other care, indicates a dangerous social condition.

The mother, instead of exercising selfish concern for her boy, should make it her duty very early to suggest that he give his seat to a woman or girl, as he would be glad to have someone do for his mother or sister. Such unselfish service will become a habit of pleasure, and help the boy become a pure-minded, manly gentleman with that respect for womanhood without which a nation is doomed.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

PLAY AND RECREATION

There are a number of theories advocated by late authors on the "psychology of play," in which they connect the free and easy play of the modern child with the more serious and sober pursuits of our ancestors—our racial parents of prehistoric and primitive times. We quote from Worry and Nervousness:

And so we are told that the spectacle of the young infant suspending its weight while holding on to some object, and the early instincts so commonly shown to climb ladders, trees, or anything else available, are but racial mementos of our ancestral forest life. The hide and seek games, the desires to convert a blanket into a tent, the instinct for "shanties"—which all boys universally manifest—we are told that these forms of play are but the echo of remote ages when our ancestors sojourned in caves, lived in tents, or dwelt in the mountain fastness. In this same way the advocates of this theory seek to explain the strange and early drawings which the young lad has for wading, swimming, fishing, boating, and other forms of aquatic recreation.[[5]]

In this chapter we purpose to discuss the play of the child, whose career we will divide, for convenience, into three stages:

  1. The age from three to six—juvenile days.
  2. The age from six to twelve—the "going to school" child.
  3. The age from twelve to twenty—the adolescent youth.

[5] William S. Sadler, Worry and Nervousness, p. 377.