On one occasion I was lecturing in the town of Cleveland, and was to stay in the house of a lady whom I had met only once, in New York, but with true American hospitality she had begged me to make her house my home during the whole of my stay in Cleveland. In writing to invite me, she mentioned the pleasure it would afford her little ten-year-old daughter to make my acquaintance, and added this somewhat enigmatic sentence: “Mignon has asked permission to dedicate her last work to you.” I was alarmed at the word last, given the age of the author, and felt sorry that the literary faculty had developed quite so early, lest the unfettered and irresponsible years of childhood should have been sacrificed. I was still more troubled when, upon my arrival, I learned that the title of the book which was to be dedicated to me was “The Two Army Girls,” and contained the elaborate history of a double courtship. But, as the story was read to me, I was soon disarmed. A more innocent recital I never heard—and it was all the quainter because of certain little grown-up sentences gathered from the conversation of elders in unguarded moments, which evidently conveyed but slight meaning to the youthful authoress. The final scene between two of the lovers is so characteristic that I cannot refrain from quoting the actual words. Said John: “I love you, and I wish you to be my wife.” “That I will,” said Mary, without any hesitation. “That's all right,” said John. “And now let us get back to the Golf Links.”
Oh, that modern writers of fiction would “get back to the Golf Links” sooner than they do, realising with this little unconscious philosopher that there are some reactions from love-making which show a healthy and balanced constitution.
Experience with children ought to teach us to avoid stories which contain too much allusion to matters of which the hearers are entirely ignorant; but, judging from the written stories of to-day, supposed to be for children, it is still a matter of difficulty to realise that this form of allusion to “foreign” matters, or making a joke the appreciation of which depends solely on a special and “inside” knowledge, is always bewildering and fatal to sustained dramatic interest.
It is a matter of intense regret that so very few people have sufficiently clear remembrance of their own childhood to help them to understand the taste and point of view of the normal child. There is a passage in the “Brownies” (by Mrs. Ewing) which illustrates the confusion created in the child mind by a facetious allusion in a dramatic moment which needed a more direct treatment.
When the nursery toys have all gone astray, one little child exclaims joyfully:
“Why, the old Rocking-Horse's nose has turned up in the oven!”
“It couldn't” remarks a tiresome, facetious doctor, far more anxious to be funny than to sympathise with the joy of the child; “it was the purest Grecian, modelled from the Elgin marbles.”
Now, for grown-up people this is an excellent joke, but for a child who has not yet become acquainted with these Grecian masterpieces, the whole remark is pointless and hampering.[20]
VI.—Stories which appeal to fear or priggishness. This is a class of story to be avoided which scarcely counts to-day and against which the teacher does not need a warning; but I wish to make a passing allusion to it, partly to round off my subject and partly to show that we have made some improvement in choice of subject.
When I study the evolution of the story from the crude recitals offered to our children within the last hundred years, I feel that, though our progress in intelligent mental catering may be slow, it is real and sure. One has only to take some examples from the Chap Books of the beginning of last century to realise the difference of appeal. Everything offered then was either an appeal to fear or to priggishness, and one wonders how it is that our grandparents and their parents ever recovered from the effects of such stories as were offered to them. But there is the consoling thought that no lasting impression was made upon them, such as I believe may be possible by the right kind of story.