A home where there are many boys and no girls is a jolly, healthy, happy household enough, but it lacks something, a gentler element, which the boys miss keenly, though they may not even be conscious of it. It is a great misfortune for boys to have no sisters, because in the family circle, where they grow up side by side, they acquire a knowledge of girl-nature which is invaluable to them when they begin to take an interest in that interesting personage, "another fellow's sister." And vice versâ—girls brought up in a brotherless home have no opportunity of studying boy-nature, and are apt to take a very prim, narrow view of the same. The ideal family is the one judiciously mixed, where boys and girls rub shoulders and carry on their little campaigns, entering into each other's pursuits and being chums all round. It is good for both.
As I said before, girls, even in infancy, are more easily managed and reared than boys, the usual exceptions being allowed; and the same may be said of them as they grow older. They are more docile, more amenable to control, and their animal spirits, dependent on bodily organisation, are not usually so obstreperous. It is astonishing how soon a little girl becomes a companionable creature; she develops at a much earlier age than her brothers. Of course there are great differences. We have the tomboy, never still, more interested in her brothers' pranks than in the sober frolics of girls—dolls have no charm for her; yet the curious thing is that the tomboy has been known to develop into the extraordinarily successful wife and mother, her very energies of mind and body, when mellowed by experience, proving invaluable to her in her new sphere.
I have often thought that an interesting article might be written on the place and power of dolls in the early life of women; it is such an interesting study to watch the different grades of interest taken in them by different children. To some they are real flesh and blood, treated as such, fondled over and considered quite as much as any living baby, invested with aches and pains, tempers and troubles, and subjected to a regular system of reward and punishment; while to others they are mere toys, which serve only to beguile the tedium of a rainy day. Then there are the few who regard them as mere objects for scorn and hatred; and when they do not ignore them, maltreat them mercilessly.
The small girl who hates dolls, and dubs them as stupid things, is apt to be a little troublesome to amuse, though it is also quite possible that she may possess a very original mind, which strikes out a new path even in amusement for itself.
Some little boys who afterwards became good and noble men have not disdained dolls as a baby amusement, and you generally find that the small boy who takes a kind interest in his sister's dolls, and who does not spend his leisure in concocting schemes for their torture and dismemberment, has the fatherly instinct very strongly developed, and will in his own home be tenderly devoted to his children.
Boys ought to be taught early the beauty of little kindly attentions and thoughtfulness for others. On no account ought their sisters to be allowed to fetch and carry for them. There may be a system of mutual obligation if you like, but boys of a certain age are apt to become very arbitrary, and to consider their sisters in the light of body servants. By allowing boys to order their sisters about, to bring them things and give in always, you foster a spirit of selfishness, which grows tyrannical as the years go by, and paves the way for some domestic discomfort in a future home which will be beyond your jurisdiction.
They tell us the age of chivalry is dead; and really manners do not seem to be as they were. The changed order of things concerning women, who are no longer cooped up within the four walls of a house, and told that that is their sphere spelled with a very big S, but who are pushing their way steadily to the front in every walk of life, no doubt partly accounts for this; still the lapse of that old-fashioned and gracious courtesy of men to women is to be deplored, and I cannot but think that we who have raw material to work upon in the nursery might do something to restore it. We cannot afford to lose any of the graces of life. Heaven knows things are reduced to a prosaic enough level with us in these days, when the fret and fever seem to leave time for nothing but the barest realities.
As we have already admitted that early impressions and early training never quite lose their hold, so if we teach our boys to be gracious, courteous, considerate always to their sisters because they are little women, some women of a later date will be grateful to us.
The very advanced of our sex have been known to disclaim any desire for such consideration; they want none from the opposite sex, but only room to fight the battle side by side; but we who do not wish to see life robbed of all its grace and courtliness would respectfully insist that this reserve should not be entirely dispensed with. We still like a man to take off his hat to us in the street, instead of jerking his head on one side; we have no objection to the inside of the pavement or the most comfortable seat in carriage or tram, for which we have still a word of appreciative thanks left, though we may thereby show how far we are left behind in the race. I wish to make myself very clear. We do not want our girls to be namby-pamby, selfish, silly creatures, who imagine it is interesting and fascinating to pose as weak, dependent, fluttering creatures; but neither do we want our sons to be boors, and it is in the home where manners as well as morals are formed. So let us not despise the little courtesies which do so much to sweeten daily intercourse, but teach them to the children from the beginning, so that to be chivalrous, courteous, gentle to rich and poor, gentle and simple of both sexes, will become as natural for them as to breathe.