Oh, a mighty deal that some good women pass half through a lifetime without knowing, and are just as likely as not all the better for it. Some of the lessons are paid for, and some are given free gratis for nothing by the scholars to each other, and what some of them don't know in the way of flirting, drooping the eyes, and things you never dreamed of, ain't worth keeping secret.
"A little leaven leavens the whole lump." That passage has always relieved my feelings about the old patriarchs; for it's a proof that they and their families had raised bread in those old Bible times; and light bread, even if saleratus has to be used, is a blessing on the domestic hearth. For that reason, I'm astonished that bread-making is left to men-bakers here in York. But this passage sometimes puts you in mind of something beside turnpike emptins. I should like to promulgate some genuine old-fashioned ideas into these tip-top schools, where one bold, forward girl with unwholesome ideas in her head, would set them working like leaven in every innocent young soul in the seminary. Somehow, more or less, girls always do manage to give a good deal of knowledge that isn't set down in the bill, though that is generally long enough, goodness knows.
I wish you could see one of these bills with the extras. Now in our district schools, there isn't much chance for the scholars to get over intimate. They don't sleep and eat and work together, like canary birds crowded in one cage and huddled together on one roost; the weak don't catch the faults of the strong, and if they did, the free breezes of our hills would sweep them away before the poison struck in. Flirtations do not become a science with them before they can spell "baker," and they don't often learn such things from their New England mothers, anyhow.
Well, I would give a good deal to see a genuine girl who did not think herself a marvel of superior knowledge at twelve, or had not plunged into a heart disease at the sight of some hotel lounger at fourteen. I tell you, sisters, these young creatures have too much liberty; they have no wholesome growth either of body or mind. They know too much at fifteen, and will know a great deal too little at forty.
The girl of twelve—which is about the age you are thinking of—has a great deal more assurance than some of our church members at fifty. Baby boys and girls haven't gone quite out of fashion, but they are getting scarcer every year, people tell me; and regular-built, wholesome children are as hard to find here as green gooseberries in October. I've seen plenty of little men and women, that couldn't speak plain to save their lives, dressed out like soldiers on a training day, with short frocks or tunics, and legs as bare as bare could be; but such boys and girls as we remember are not to be found anywhere nowadays, I tell you.
What does all this mean? Just this: Mothers don't trust their young ones out of fashion long enough to grow. Besides, there isn't, only now and then, one who gets acquainted with her own child well enough to know what is good for it. Why, these city women would go crazy to see a little girl, six years old, swing upon a gate or riding horseback on a rusty old farm-horse, gripping the mane with both hands, and sending up shouts of fun if she happened to tumble off. Children, in the natural state, love water, like ducks and goslings. It used to be a sight to watch them, knee-deep in the brooks, with their tenty-tointy feet shining through the ripples, as they hunted for water-cresses and sweet flag-root; but catch one of your new-fangled young ones at anything with so much human nature in it. All the water they see is in the bottom of a bath-tub, rubbed on their skimpy limbs by an Irish girl's hands. Not the mother's. Oh, no! Care of one's own children is too much for a healthy young woman nowadays. Being a professor and member of a church, I want to speak accordingly, and just drop the mothers here. Christian language isn't up to the occasion.
Well, as I was saying, the meanness of these mothers in hiving up their young ones and cheating 'em out of the very best years of life, is enough to make a saint mad. The rough-and-tumble season, which gives a child sound lungs, strong limbs, and a brain that thinks of nothing but high play, is just knocked out of their lives. It's an awful swindle on the poor little things, and I'm not afraid to say it openly and above-board here in my very first report.
If I haven't a right to speak on this subject, I should like to know who has. That's all. I never had a child of my own, which is, perhaps, natural to a state of single blessedness, and so had plenty of time to make other people's children a speciality. Besides, haven't I kept district school, and boarded round enough to get an inside view of a good many family circles? Haven't I seen droves of young ones, in loose calico slips or cosey-fitting jackets and trousers, coming miles to school, only setting their dinner baskets down now and then to stone a squirrel, or climb up among the burrs of some great chestnut limb which offered to give them a ride to Boston or a trip to Canterbury.
Dear me, I think I see them now running "like split," as they said, to catch up time, with such a lively color rushing through the tan on their faces, hats off, and sun-bonnets flying out by the strings.
There, that's what I call childhood. You and I, sister, know something about it; now don't we? Do you remember that little red school-house where we learned our letters, and the old broken-limbed apple-tree behind it? No wonder the limbs got scraggly; they couldn't stand horse for a whole school, year after year, without some wear and tear, could they?