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

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

I told him about the metamorphoses of insects, and their depositing their life in eggs as soon as they were born. When the old man came by, as he did nearly every day, we commented on the wearing out of his body, but he did not think of death as a relief for him.

At last one day it happened that stretching out of the window for some purpose, he nearly lost his balance, and it was only by my timely seizing him that he escaped falling out. I said, "F., what if you had fallen out on those rocks and been broken all to pieces!" He shrieked with horror, "I don't want to! I don't want to!" "But what if you had!" said I, calmly. "You came very near it. What should you have done?" "What could I?" he screamed. "What could I do, all broken to pieces!" "Why, don't you think," said I, smiling, "that your Heavenly Father would have taken you right into His own bosom?"

A heavenly smile spread over his face and a look of perfect satisfaction and acquiescence, and he said after a moment's pause, "I forgot my Heavenly Father. Oh, what a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father He is!" Then, after another moment, he said in a distressed voice, "But must I be broken all to pieces when I go to the Heavenly Father?"

"Oh, dear, no!" said I; "but when we are broken all to pieces, or starved, or are very sick, He takes us; but generally people grow to be old like the old man, and all their bodies get worn out, and they get very tired and kind of go to sleep, and the Heavenly Father takes them, so they do not wake up again in their old bodies, which are buried as the children buried the bodies of the robins."

He expressed himself very happy, and asked a great many questions, and it seemed as if he had already known of the fact of death. At all events, he now accepted it as the common destiny, without any painful feeling, and it seemed to give new realization to his mother's feeling that her own was indeed nothing but a morbid feeling, and that normal nature did not shrink from death. The subsequent questions were innumerable. I read to him Krummacher's parable of the caterpillar and butterfly in the garden of Thirza, after the death of Abel, as it was paraphrased by Mr. Alcott when he read it in his school, in which I was assisting him at the very time that I was called away to the child's mother. And it was the study I had made of childhood in his school which had enabled me to pursue with so much confidence the method I took with the child, though it was in my own childhood I conceived the plan; and I remember speaking of it to Dr. Channing in 1824, and how much interested he was in the idea, though he told me that in his own case he was indebted to the symbolism of nature, especially the ocean seen from the beach at Newport, for clearing his mind of the effects of the teaching and preaching which he had heard. These grand objects, and later the beauty of some manifestations he had seen of love giving courage and power to the weak, kindled his ideal, and gave form and substance to his consciousness of God.

For a time there was nothing but delight expressed in the fact of death, the relief from all suffering, the enlargement of life and joy and new knowledge of God and His ways. At last a little incident showed him the shadow which attends death in this world.

We often went to call on the family of the physician who attended his mother. One day when we went, the Doctor, who was very fond of F., took him into his lap while I was playing with the baby in his mother's arms. They always called it "baby." I said to Mrs. D., "Has not baby any name?" The mother replied, "His name is Edward." F. looked up at the Doctor with a bright, joyous expression, and said, "Where is your other Edward?" The Doctor's face changed instantaneously; he clasped the child close to him, and said, "Oh, he has gone to his Heavenly Father," with a burst of grief. F. stretched himself back, looked into the agitated face, and said with a look of the greatest concern, "Are you sorry that he has gone to the Heavenly Father?" "Oh, very, very sorry," said the poor father. "Should not you be sorry if he should take away your dear mother?" and putting the child down, he immediately left the room. Mrs. D. said, "The Doctor has never got over the death of that child, and we never name him in his presence."

I immediately left the house, and we walked some distance in silence, and as I found F. did not incline to speak, I said, "F., did the Doctor look glad when you spoke to him about his other Edward?" He pressed himself close up to me, and said eagerly, "No, no! he looked very sorry. What made him sorry? Did he not like to have his other Edward with the Heavenly Father?" "Oh, yes! he liked that, but then he wanted to have him in his own arms. You see he cannot see him now, and he wants to kiss him." "Yes," said F., "he hugged me!" I continued: "You see, the Doctor is very strong and well, and I suppose he will live in his body a good many years, and he has Mrs. D. and Julia and the rest, but he wants that other Edward, too, every day of his life." F. replied sympathizingly, "He was large, and white, and bright, and when I go into the sky, I shall look all over to see where he is." I said, after a little while, "Shall you say anything more to the Doctor about his other Edward?" "No, indeed!" said he. "I never shall say another word about him. Do you think I want to make the poor Doctor sorry?" I told his mother, when I got home, of the whole affair, and we agreed that it was well he should see the sad side of death for the survivors.

It was soon a question with F. how we were to live without the body, and he asked me. I told him I did not know exactly how it was to be, but I supposed God would let new eyes, ears, and whatever limbs we should need, grow out of us, made of the finest stuff like air, which we could not see because it was so delicate, or even feel, as we did the air when it moved, but which souls could use just as they pleased. He said, "I have seen some pictures of souls that had gone out of their bodies, and I did not know before what they were." Surprised, I asked him how they looked. He said, "They were nothing but heads with wings."

The delightful thing was to see the effect of all this earnest prattle upon the mother; and one day, after I had returned from a visit to a friend in the town, she told me she had had a conversation with F. on her own approaching death that was very satisfactory.