The addition of a child to the family circle is an event too solemn to be deformed by any falsehood. But few parents have the courage to be truthful with their children as to how the infant comes; a question which their natural curiosity always prompts. The deceptions usually practised are altogether to be reprobated. It is an abominable practice to tell children that the doctor brought the baby, and the like. It is abominable as a lie: and it is worse than useless. Any intelligent child will go on to ask,—or if not to ask, to ponder with excited imagination,—where the doctor found it, and so on; and its attention will be piqued, and its mind injuriously set to work, where a few serious words of simple but carefully expressed truth, would have satisfied it entirely. The child must, sooner or later, awaken to an understanding of the subject; and it is no more difficult to impress him with a sense of decency about this, than about other things, that a well trained child never speaks of, but to its mother in private. The natural question once truthfully answered, the little mind is at rest, and free for the much stronger interests which are passing before its eyes.
The first month of an infant's life is usually a season of great moral enjoyment to the household. Everybody is disposed to bear and to do everything cheerfully for the sake of the new blessing. The father does not mind the discomforts of the time of his wife's absence from the table and the fireside, and makes himself by turns the nurse and the playfellow, to carry the children well through it. If Granny be there, and not able to do much in the house, she gathers the little ones about her chair, and tells them longer stories than ever before, to keep them quiet. The children try with all their might to be quiet; and even the little two-year-old one struggles not to cry for company when baby cries, and learns a lesson in self-restraint. They look with respect on the maid or the nurse when they find that she has been up in the night, tending mother and baby, and that she looks as cheerful in the morning as if she had had good rest. And when they are permitted to study the baby, and to see how it jerks its little limbs about, and does not see anything they want it to see, and takes no notice of anything they say to it; and when they hear that their great strong father, so wise and so clever about his business, was once just such a helpless little creature as this, they learn to reverence this feeble infant, and one another, and themselves, and their hearts are very full of feelings which they cannot speak. I well remember that the strongest feelings I ever entertained towards any human being were towards a sister born when I was nine years old. I doubt whether any event in my life ever exerted so strong an educational influence over me as her birth. The emotions excited in me were overwhelming for above two years; and I recal them as vividly as ever now when I see her with a child of her own in her arms. I threw myself on my knees many times in a day, to thank God that he permitted me to see the growth of a human being from the beginning. I leaped from my bed gaily every morning as this thought beamed upon me with the morning light. I learnt all my lessons without missing a word for many months, that I might be worthy to watch her in the nursery during my play-hours. I used to sit on a stool opposite to her as she was asleep, with a Bible on my knees, trying to make out how a creature like this might rise "from strength to strength," till it became like Christ. My great pain was, (and it was truly at times a despair,) to think what a work lay before this thoughtless little being. I could not see how she was to learn to walk with such soft and pretty limbs: but the talking was the despair. I fancied that she would have to learn every word separately, as I learned my French vocabulary; and I looked at the big Johnson's Dictionary till I could not bear to think about it. If I, at nine years old, found it so hard to learn through a small book like that Vocabulary, what would it be to her to begin at two years old such a big one as that! Many a time I feared that she never could possibly learn to speak. And when I thought of all the trees and plants, and all the stars, and all the human faces she must learn, to say nothing of lessons,—I was dreadfully oppressed, and almost wished she had never been born. Then followed the relief of finding that walking came of itself—step by step; and then, that talking came of itself—word by word at first, and then many new words in a day. Never did I feel a relief like this, when the dread of this mighty task was changed into amusement at her funny use of words, and droll mistakes about them. This taught me the lesson, never since forgotten, that a way always lies open before us, for all that it is necessary for us to do, however impossible and terrible it may appear beforehand. I felt that if an infant could learn to speak, nothing is to be despaired of from human powers, exerted according to Nature's laws. Then followed the anguish of her childish illnesses—the misery of her wailing after vaccination, when I could neither bear to stay in the nursery nor to keep away from her; and the terror of the back-stairs, and of her falls, when she found her feet; and the joy of her glee when she first knew the sunshine, and the flowers, and the opening spring; and the shame if she did anything rude, and the glory when she did anything right and sweet. The early life of that child was to me a long course of intense emotions which, I am certain, have constituted the most important part of my education. I speak openly of them here, because I am bound to tell the best I know about Household Education; and on that, as on most subjects, the best we have to tell is our own experience. And I tell it the more readily because I am certain that my parents had scarcely any idea of the passions and emotions that were working within me, through my own unconsciousness of them at the time, and the natural modesty which makes children conceal the strongest and deepest of their feelings: and it may be well to give parents a hint that more is passing in the hearts of their children, on occasion of the gift of a new soul to the family circle, than the ingenuous mind can recognise for itself, or knows how to confide.
CHAPTER VII.
CARE OF THE FRAME.
We have seen something of the influence of the infant upon others: now let us see what others can do for it.
Here is a little creature containing within itself the germs of all those powers which have before been described; but with all these powers in so feeble a state that months and years of nourishing and cherishing under the influences of Nature are necessary to give it the use of its own powers. What its parents can do for it, and all that they can do for it, is to take care that it has the full advantage of the influences of Nature. This is their task. They cannot get beyond it, and they ought not to fall short of it.
Nature requires and provides that the tender frame should be nourished with food, air, warmth and light, sleep and exercise. All these being given to it, the soft bones will grow hard, the weak muscles will grow firm; the eye will become strong to see, and the ear to hear, and the different portions of the brain to feel, and apprehend, and think; and to form purposes, and to cause action, till the helpless infant becomes a self-acting child, and is on the way to become a rational man. What the parents have to do is to take care that the babe has the best of food, air, warmth, and light, sleep and exercise.
First, of food. About this there is no possible doubt. The mother's milk is the best of food. What the mother has to look to is that her milk is of the best. She must preserve her own health by wholesome diet, air, and exercise, and by keeping a gentle and cheerful temper. Many a babe has had convulsions after being suckled by a nurse who had had a great fright, or had been in a great passion: and a mother who has an irritable or anxious temper, who flushes or trembles with anger, or has her heart in her throat from fear of this or that, will not find her child thrive upon her milk, but will have much to suffer from its illness or its fretfulness. She must try, however busy she may be, to give it its food pretty regularly, that its stomach may not be overloaded nor long empty or craving. An infant does not refuse food when it has had enough, as grown people can do. It will stop crying and suck, when its crying is from some other cause than hunger: and it will afterwards cry all the more if an overloaded stomach is added to the other evil, whatever it may be. Of the contrary mischief—leaving a babe too long hungry—there is no need to say anything. And when the weaning time comes, it is plain that the food should be at first as like as possible to that which is given up; thin, smooth, moderately warm, fresh, and sweet, and given as leisurely as the mother's milk is drawn. It is well known that milk contains, more curiously than any other article of food, whatever is necessary for nourishing all the parts of the human body. It contains that which goes to form and strengthen the bones, and that which goes to make and enrich the blood—thereby causing the soft bones of the babe to grow stiff and strong, and its heart to beat healthily, and its lungs to play vigorously, and its muscles to thicken and become firm. While all this is going on well, and the child shows no need of other food, there is nothing but mischief to be looked for from giving it a variety for which it is not prepared. Milk, flour and water are its natural food while it has no teeth to eat meat with, and vegetables turn sour on its stomach. As for giving it a bit or sip of what grown persons are eating and drinking—that is a practice too ignorant to need to be mentioned here.
Next comes air. Here, as usual, we have to consult Nature. There is an ingredient in the air which is as necessary to support human breathing as to feed the flame of a candle. Where there is too little of it, the flame of a candle burns dim; and where it is not freely supplied to a human frame, it languishes, and pines and sickens. A constant supply of pure air there must therefore be. If the house is close, if the room is too long shut up, with people in it who are using up that ingredient of the air, they will all, and especially the babe, languish and pine and sicken. Every morning, therefore, and during the day, there must be plenty of fresh air let in to replace that which has been spoiled by breathing; and in fine weather, the babe should be carried into the open air every day. But Nature also points out that we must avoid extremes in giving the child air, as well as food. We see sometimes how a babe grows black in the face if carried with its face to the wind, or whisked down stairs in a draught. Its lungs are small and tender, like the rest of it, and can bear even fresh air only when moderately given. By a little care in turning its face away from the wind, or lightly covering its head, a child may be saved from being half strangled by a breeze out of doors; while care will, of course, be taken within doors to keep it out of the direct draught from door or window.
As for light—we do not yet know so much as we ought about the relation between light and the human frame. I believe some curious secrets remain to be discovered about that. But we do know this much—that people who live in dark places, prisoners in dungeons, and very poor people in cellars, and savages in caves who do not go abroad much, are not only less healthy than others, but have peculiar diseases which are distinctly traceable to deficiency of light. My own conviction is that we grown people can hardly have too much light in our houses; and that we are, somehow or other, alive almost in proportion to the sunshine we live in. But we must observe, at the same time, the difference which Nature makes between the infant and adults. The infant's eyes are weak, and its brain tender; so that, while there is plenty of light about its body, we must take care that there is not too much directly before its eyes. If held opposite a strong sunshine, it will squint if it does not cry, or by some means show that the light is too much for its tender brain.