To do this to a grown-up friend would warrant an angry dropping of acquaintance. Such traitorous rudeness would not be tolerated by man or woman. But the child,—the child must pocket every insult, as belonging to a class beneath respect.
Is it not time that we summoned our wits from their wool-gathering,—however financially profitable the wool may be,—and gave a little honest thought to the status of childhood? Childhood is not a pathological condition, nor a term of penal servitude, nor a practical joke. A child is a human creature, and entitled to be treated as such. A human body three feet long is deserving of as much respect as a human body six feet long. Yet the bodies of children are handled with the grossest familiarity. We pluck and pull and push them, tweak their hair and ears, pat them on the head, chuck them under the chin, kiss them, and hold them on our laps, entirely regardless of their personal preferences. Why should we take liberties with the person of a child other than those suitable to an intimate friendship at any age?
"Because children don't care," some one will answer. But children do care. They care enormously. They dislike certain persons always because of disagreeable physical contact in childhood. They wriggle down clumsily, all their clothes rubbed the wrong way, with tumbled hair and flushed, sulky faces from the warm "lap" of some large woman or bony, woolly-clothed man, who was holding them with one hand and variously assaulting them with the other, and rush off in helpless rage. No doubt they "get used to it," as do eels to skinning; but in this process of accustoming childhood to brutal discourtesy we lose much of the finest, most delicate development of human nature. There is no charge of cruelty, unkindness, or neglect involved in this.
Discourtesy to children is practised by the most loving and devoted parents, the most amiable of relatives and visitors. Neither is it a question of knowledge on the part of the elder. These rudenesses are practised by persons of exquisite manners, among their equals. It is simply a case of survival of an undeveloped field of human nature,—a dark, uncultivated, neglected spot where we have failed to grow. The same forces which have so far civilised us will work farther when we give them room. We have but to open our minds and widen our sphere of action to become civilised in these domestic relations. It is the citizenship—the humanness—of the child we need to recognise, not merely its relative accomplishments compared to ourselves. Also the tendencies and restraint born of power and freedom should teach us to respect the child precisely because of its helplessness. The principle that urges even the bullying school-boy to "take a fellow of his own size," and which forbids torturing a captive, killing an unarmed man, or insulting an inferior, ought to put more nobility into our conduct in relation to the child. As so much weaker, strength should respect him; and, as one bound to supersede us, wisdom should recognise his power.
X.
TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION.
The child comes to the table. He looks a little weary, knowing the task before him.
"Now what will you have?" asks his fond mamma. "What would you like, dear?"