Description of a good boy:
A good boy is dutiful to his Father and Mother, obedient to his master and loving to his playfellows. He is diligent in learning his book and takes a pleasure in improving himself in everything that is worthy of praise. He rises early in the morning, makes himself clean and decent, and says his prayers. He loves to hear good advice, is thankful to those who give it and always follows it. He never swears[17] or calls names or uses ill words to companions. He is never peevish and fretful, always cheerful and good-tempered.
7. Stories of exaggerated and coarse fun. In the chapter on the positive side of this subject I shall speak more in detail of the educational value of robust and virile representation of fun and of sheer nonsense, but as a preparation to these statements, I should like to strike a note of warning against the element of exaggerated and coarse fun being encouraged in our school stories, partly, because of the lack of humor in such presentations (a natural product of stifling imagination) and partly, because the strain of the abnormal has the same effect as the too frequent use of the melodramatic.
In an article in Macmillans's Magazine, December, 1869, Miss Yonge writes:
"A taste for buffoonery is much to be discouraged, an exclusive taste for extravagance most unwholesome and even perverting. It becomes destructive of reverence and soon degenerates into coarseness. It permits nothing poetical or imaginative, nothing sweet or pathetic to exist, and there is a certain self-satisfaction and superiority in making game of what others regard with enthusiasm and sentiment which absolutely bars the way against a higher or softer tone."
Although these words were written nearly half a century ago, they are so specially applicable today that they seem quite "up-to-date." Indeed, I think they will hold equally good fifty years hence.
In spite of a strong taste on the part of children for what is ugly and brutal, I am sure that we ought to eliminate this element as far as possible from the school stories, especially among poor children. Not because I think children should be protected from all knowledge of evil, but because so much of this knowledge comes into their life outside school that we can well afford to ignore it during school hours. At the same time, however, as I shall show by example when I come to the positive side, it would be well to show children by story illustration the difference between brutal ugliness without anything to redeem it and surface ugliness, which may be only a veil over the beauty that lies underneath. It might be possible, for instance, to show children the difference between the real ugliness in the priest's face of the "Laocoon" group, because of the motive of courage and endurance behind the suffering. Many stories in everyday life could be found to illustrate this.
8. Stories of infant piety and death-bed scenes. The stories for children forty years ago contained much of this element, and the following examples will illustrate this point:
Notes from poems written by a child between six and eight years of age, by name Philip Freeman, afterwards Archdeacon of Exeter:
Poor Robin, thou canst fly no more,
Thy joys and sorrows all are o'er.
Through Life's tempestuous storms thou'st trod,
But now art sunk beneath the sod.
Here lost and gone poor Robin lies,
He trembles, lingers, falls and dies.
He's gone, he's gone, forever lost,
No more of him they now can boast.
Poor Robin's dangers all are past,
He struggled to the very last.
Perhaps he spent a happy Life,
Without much struggle and much strife.[18]