She looked so serenely beautiful, and sat so still after she said this, that I felt a little awkward.
"I don't mean to jar on you, Nellie," I said. "I didn't know you were so—religious."
Then she laughed again merrily. "I'm not," she said. "No more than anybody is. We don't have 'religious' people any more, John. It's not a separate thing; a 'body of doctrine' and set of observances—it is what all of us have at the bottom of everything else, the underlying basic fact of life. And it goes far, very far indeed, to make the strong good cheer you see in these children's faces.
"They have never been frightened, John. They have never been told any of those awful things we used to tell them. There is no struggle with church-going, no gagging over doctrines, no mysterious queer mess—only life. Life is now open to our children, clear, brilliant, satisfying, and yet stimulating.
"Of course, I don't mean that this applies equally to every last one. The material benefit does, that could be enforced by law where necessary; but this world-wave of new knowledge is irregular, of course. It has spread wider, and gone faster than any of the old religions ever did, but you can find people yet who believe things almost as dreadful as father did!"
I well remembered my father's lingering Calvinism, and appreciated its horrors.
"Our educators have recognized a new duty to children," Nellie went on; "to stand between them and the past. We recognize that the child mind should lift and lead the world; and we feed it with our newest, not our oldest ideas.
"Also we encourage it to wander on ahead, fearless and happy. I began to tell you the other day—and you snubbed me, John, you did really!—that we have a new literature for children, and have dropped the old."
At this piece of information I could no longer preserve the attitude of a patient listener. I sat back and stared at my sister, while the full awfulness of this condition slowly rolled over me.
"Do you mean," I said slowly, "that children are taught nothing of the past?"