I branched off from Nellie's startling me with her "new-literature-for-children" idea. She went on to explain it further.
"The greatest artists work for children now, John," she said. "In the child-gardens and child-homes they are surrounded with beauty. I do not mean that we hire painters and poets to manufacture beauty for them; but that painters and poets, architects and landscape artists, designers and decorators of all kinds, love and revere childhood, and delight to work for it.
"Remember that half of our artists are mothers now—a loving, serving, giving spirit has come into expression—a wider and more lasting expression than it was ever possible to put into doughnuts and embroidery! Wait till you see the beauty of our child-gardens!"
"Why don't you call them schools? Don't you have schools?"
"Some. We haven't wholly outgrown the old academic habit. But for the babies there was no precedent, and they do not 'go to school.'"
"You have a sort of central nursery?" I ventured.
"Not necessarily 'central,' John. And we have great numbers of them. How can I make it any way clear to you? See here. Suppose you were a mother, and a very busy one, like the old woman in the shoe; and suppose you had twenty or thirty permanent babies to be provided for? And suppose you were wise and rich—able to do what you wanted to? Wouldn't you build an elaborate nursery for those children? Wouldn't you engage the very best nurses and teachers? Wouldn't you want the cleanest, quietest garden for them to play or sleep in? Of course you would.
"That is our attitude. We have at last recognized babies as a permanent class. They are always here, about a fifth of the population. And we, their mothers, have at last ensured to these, our babies, the best accommodation known to our time. It improves as we learn, of course."
"Mm!" I said. "I'll go and gaze upon these Infant Paradises later—at the sleeping hour, please! But how about that new literature you frightened me with?"
"Oh. Why, we have tried to treat their minds as we do their stomachs—putting in only what is good for then. I mean the very littlest, understand. As they grow older they have wider range; we have not expunged the world's past, my dear brother! But we do prepare with all the wisdom, love, and power we have, the mental food for little children. Simple, lovely music is about them always—you must have noticed how universally they sing?"