As the cool, spacious, flower-starred, fruitful forests of this time differed from the tangled underbrush, with crooked, crowded, imperfect trees struggling for growth, that I remembered as "woods," or from clipped and twisted products of the forcing and pruning process; so did the new child-gardens differ from the old schools.
No wonder children wore so different an aspect. They had the fresh, insatiable thirst for knowledge which has been wisely slaked, but never given the water-torture. As I recalled my own youth, and thought of all those young minds set in rows, fixed open as with a stick between the teeth, and forced to drink, drink, drink till all desire was turned to loathing, I felt a sudden wish to be born again—now!—and begin over.
As an adult observer, I found this re-arranged world jarring and displeasing in many ways; but as I sat among the children, played with them, talked with them, became somewhat acquainted with their views of things, I began to see that to them the new world was both natural and pleasant.
When they learned that I was a "leftover" from what to them seemed past ages, I became extremely popular. There was a rush to get near me, and eager requests to tell them about old times—checked somewhat by politeness, yet always eager.
But the cheerful pride with which I began to describe the world as I knew it was considerably dashed by their comments. What I had considered as necessary evils, or as no evils at all, to them appeared as silly and disgraceful as cannibalism; and there grew among them an attitude of chivalrous pity for my unfortunate upbringing which was pretty to see.
"I see no child in glasses!" I suddenly remarked one day.
"Of course not," answered the teacher I stood by. "We use books very little, you see. Education no longer impairs our machinery."
I recalled the Boston school children and the myopic victims of Germany's archaic letter-press; and freely admitted that this was advance. Much of the instruction was oral—much, very much, came through games and exercises; books, I found, were regarded rather as things to consult, like a dictionary, or as instruments of high enjoyment.
"School books"—"text books"—scarcely existed, at least for children. The older ones, some of them, plunged into study with passion; but their eyes were good and their brains were strong; also their general health. There was no "breakdown from overstudy;" that slow, cruel, crippling injury—sometimes death, which we, wise and loving parents of past days, so frequently forced upon our helpless children.
Naturally happy, busy, self-respecting, these grew up; with a wide capacity for action, a breadth of general knowledge which was almost incredible, a high standard of courtesy, and vigorous, well-exercised minds. They were trained to think, I found; to question, discuss, decide; they could reason.