We have known a fine little boy, not three years old, who, on the entrance of a friend of his mother’s, would haul up a chair for her, and invite her to a seat near the fire, place a footstool at her feet, ask her to let him take her bonnet, and invite her to stay to dinner, to stay all day, and to “stay for ever,” adding, “I try to be polite.”
There are very little girls who, if their mother is from home, can do the honours in her place; seat the visiter on the sofa, and press her to stay till their mother comes in; and if the lady declines doing so, they will ask her at least to stay awhile, and rest herself, and have a glass of cool water; and while she stays, they will do their best to entertain her. Such children always grow up with polished manners, if not removed from the influence that made them so in early life.
Children should be early taught not to repeat the conversation of grown persons, and never to tell the servants any thing they have heard in the parlour. When they come home from school, they ought not to be encouraged in telling school-tales. If they dine out, never question them concerning what they had for dinner. Forbid their relating any circumstances concerning the domestic economy of the house at which they have been entertained.
If a child purloins cakes or sweetmeats, punish him by giving him none the next time they are on table.
At four years of age, a beginning should be made in teaching them to read, by hearing them the alphabet every day till they have learned it perfectly; and afterwards the first spelling-tables. With a quarter of an hour’s daily instruction, a child of common capacity will, in six months, be able to spell in two or three syllables, and to read short easy stories with the syllables divided. At the end of the year, if her lessons are regular, and not so long as to tire her, she will, in all probability, take pleasure in reading to herself, when her lessons are over. Were they taught out of story-books only, there are few children that at the age of six years would find any difficulty in reading fluently. If very intelligent, they often can read well at five. When they can once read, encourage them in the love of books; but do not set them at any other branch of education till they are eight. Then, their hands being strong enough to guide the pen firmly, they may commence writing copies. They should be supplied with slates and pencils at three years old. If they have any dormant talent for drawing, this will call it out. Little girls may begin to sew at four or five, but only as an amusement, not as a task. The best and most satisfactory dolls for young children are those of linen or rag, made very substantially. Much money is wasted in toys that afford them no amusement whatever; and toys that, being merely to look at, they grow tired of immediately, and delight in breaking to pieces.
Never give an infant a book to play with. He will most assuredly tear it; that being the only amusement it can afford him. It is possible at a very early age to teach a tractable female child such a respect for books that she will never attempt to injure them. When they are old enough to take pleasure in looking at the pictures, it is easy to accustom them to be always satisfied with the books being shown to them in the hands of grown persons. Do not buy those books that have absurd and revolting prints of people with gigantic heads and diminutive bodies. Children always dislike them, and so they ought.
Rejoice when a little girl shews a fondness for reading, and by all means encourage it. Keep her well supplied with good and entertaining books, and you will have little trouble with her. Do not needlessly interrupt, and call her off—but let her read in peace. It will do her more good than any thing else, and lay the foundation of an intelligent mind. A taste for reading, if not formed in early childhood, may perhaps never come at all. And then what a solace it is in bodily illness! How patiently a reading child, whose mind is stored with “pleasant memories,” can bear pain, and submit to the confinement of a sick-bed. We have known more than one instance of the illness of a reading child taking a turn for the better, from the time she was indulged with an amusing and interesting book.
There is no place in which children appear to greater disadvantage or are less ungovernable than at hotels or boarding-houses. We are always sorry when the circumstances of parents oblige them permanently to live thus in public, with their young families, who are consequently brought up in a manner which cannot but have an unfavourable effect in forming the characters of the future men and women. By way of variety, and that they may not always be confined up-stairs, the children are encouraged, or at least permitted by their mothers, to spend much of their time in the drawing-room, regardless of the annoyance which their noise and romping never fails to inflict upon the legitimate occupants of that apartment. The parents, loving their children too much to be incommoded themselves by any thing that their offspring can say or do, seem not aware that they can possibly interrupt or trouble the rest of the company. Or else, conscious of their own inability to control them, they are afraid to check the children lest they should turn restive, rebel, or break out into a tantrum. “Any thing for the sake of peace,” is a very foolish maxim where juveniles are concerned. By being firm once or twice, and dismissing them from the room when they deserve it, you may have peace ever after. The noisiest and most inconvenient time to have children in a public parlour is in the interval between their tea and their bed-time. Some children have no bed-time. And when they are tired of scampering and shouting, they lie about sleeping on the sofas, and cry if they are finally wakened, to go up with their mother when she retires for the night.
Still worse is the practice that prevails in some hotels and boarding-houses, of the mothers sending the nurse-maids with the babies, to sit in the drawing-room among the ladies; who are thus liable to have a vulgar and obtrusive servant-girl, most probably “from the old country,” boldly taking her seat in the midst of them, or conspicuously occupying one of the front-windows; either keeping up a perpetual undercurrent of fulsome, foolish talk to the baby, or listening eagerly to the conversation around her, and, perhaps, repeating it invidiously as soon as she gets an opportunity. If one lady sends her nurse-maid to sit in the drawing-room with the child, all the other mothers of babies immediately follow suit, and the drawing-room becomes a mere nursery.
Every hotel should have a commodious and airy parlour set apart entirely for the children and nurses. The proprietors could easily afford to keep one good room for that purpose, if they would expend a little less on the finery of the parlours, &c. We have heard of an embroidered piano-cover, in a great hotel, costing fourteen hundred dollars, and the children pulling it down and dragging it about the floor. With a piano-cover of the usual cost, and other things less ostentatious, a children’s parlour might well have been afforded in this very establishment.