Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

When I came to the mother's bedside, she told me it was best for her to die, because she was utterly baffled in all her efforts to bring up her child. She went on to describe her timid methods; she said she feared he was non compos, for he made no progress. Among many phenomena, she mentioned that when she gave him playthings, he immediately broke them to pieces, and when she tried to prevent this, by endeavoring to make him understand their uses and construction, he would look drearily into her face and say, rather than ask, "What for?" He seemed deficient in will, without impulse, for, though flowers seemed rather to please him, if she took him into the garden and told him he might gather them, he would stand still, and helplessly cry; and she had to command him to do everything, even to play, before he would attempt it. He acted like an automaton. Moreover, he had no sensibility, and expressed no affection.

Just at this point of her dismal story her chamber door was opened by the nurse, with this great boy in her arms. He had his mother's beautiful large brow and deep eyes, but with no speculation in them, and his whole figure was lifeless and so languid that the arms that had been about the nurse's neck, slowly lost their curve when she put him down on his feet. But his look rested on me, who, with an inviting smile and gesture, held out my hand. Immediately the large eyes filled with intelligent light, and with a cry of joy he sprang towards me, climbed up into my lap, clasped his arms round my neck, nestled upon my bosom, and looking up with a joyful expression of confidence said, "Story—little boy—drop of water!" It was, as I have said, about half a year before, that I had lured him to me as he held off in timidity, by offering to show him the picture where the child, in the "Story without an end" is represented beside the brook, looking at a drop of water hanging from a leaf, "telling the little boy a story," as I said, to which he had answered "Story!" and I had gone on and invented a free paraphrase of the story given in the book, adapted to his infantile capacity, and when I had finished, he said, "Story again!" and I repeated it again and again, so imperative was his "story again!" and now he again said "Story," with a confiding pressure, as he leaned on me then, gazing at the picture on the book in my lap, giving me the conviction that he understood me. It was really, as I found subsequently, the only rational words that had ever been addressed to the child's imagination.

"This does not look like want of sensibility, or mens non compos," I said to the mother. "I never saw anything like it before," she said, all tears. The ensuing silence was immediately broken by the child's imperative repetition of the word "story!" I was too much affected by the mother's emotion to remember or invent any story, but it was an early, warm spring day and the windows were open. The house stood on a bluff of the Merrimac, within sight of the Rapids; and the sound of the rushing waters came in upon our silence. I said, cheerfully, "Do you hear the water running?" to which he responded with a joyful "yes! what does it run for?" "Oh, because it is glad," I replied, and again he responded with a joyful and satisfied "yes," and after a moment asked, "Where is it running to?" "Oh, into the ocean, where all the rest of the waters are!" and again an emphatic "yes" expressed his satisfaction. Perhaps he remembered that in the story I had told him of a drop of water it had ended with the drop falling off the leaf, and running away with its brothers and sisters, and falling into the ocean, out of which the sun had originally taken it. At any rate, he not only repeated his yes with the emphasis of satisfaction, but seemed to be thoughtful. I said, "Do you ever look out of the window and see the sun shine on the water, and all the little sparkles of light in the water?" "Yes," said he, joyfully, "what makes the sun shine on the water?" "Oh," said I, "it is because the sun loves the water." "Yes," said he, and began to embrace me in the most energetic manner.

It was too much for the poor mother, who absolutely wept aloud, whether with joy or sorrow she could not tell, as she afterwards said.

The sound of her weeping attracted his attention, and he sat up in my lap and turned his large eyes upon her as she lay in bed, and then upon me, with a look of concern and appeal. "See," said I, "poor mother. She is sick and sorry. She wants me to tell her a story, and won't you get down and go into the nursery and let me tell dear mother a story to make her feel better? Then I will come to you and tell you one."

With a cheerful "yes" he immediately got down and went into the nursery, but stopped at the door to say:—

"When you have told mother a story, won't you come right in and tell me one?"

I said to the mother, "You see, my dear friend, that the child has mind enough, heart enough, and a moral nature. He can understand and feel sympathy; feels the symbolism of nature; and can obey a self-denying motive. No fatal harm has been done after all by your delay, but he needs now to know he has a Heavenly Father, fully to manifest all the powers of a human being. You must allow me to give him that name for the Love he feels within and without."

"Not quite yet," said she, "not until you come to stay, because he would ask me questions that I should not know how to answer. Children ask such terrible questions. I am afraid as soon as you name the Invisible God, he will be frightened. Don't you know M. D. was afraid to stay in a room alone because of the omnipresence of God, which seemed to be an unimaginable horror to her?"

"I do not wonder," I replied. "Omnipresence of God! What was there in a child's experience to interpret this Latin abstraction? I think it would have been quite another thing, considering who her earthly father was, had she been told that our Heavenly Father was all about her though she could not see Him with her eyes, but could feel Him giving her love and joy. I cannot but wonder that anybody around her should have talked to her in such abstractions."