Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy.

by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann; Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

Another little darling, who cannot speak plain, says, "Oh, is 'at feathers? Why! is it feathers? Oh, now tell me where wings is! Oh! is 'at wings? Oh! I want to kiss oo."

I hear these little ones read four or five times a day. The lesson occupies about fifteen minutes each time. All "study" together, as they call it. I put my pointer on the book of each in turn, making it a habit that they shall not look off the book for the space of three minutes, perhaps, during which each reads. They keep within a few sentences of each other, near enough to think they read together, as I detain them long upon the repetition of all they know; but I see very clearly which will start off soon and outstrip the rest. I say nothing of which reads the best, but sometimes make such remarks as, "L—— will learn to read very fast, I think, he is so attentive." This makes L—— all the more attentive, and helps the others to make the effort; for with these four, to be able to read is the most charming of prospects. I am determined that no touch of weariness shall break the charm. In three months they will be able to read the two first stories in the Primer, which occupy about two pages. Their eyes will by that time become so accustomed to analyzing the looks of the words, that they will be able to print them without the book, and soon new words will be learned very rapidly. I stave off the spelling as long as possible, but you may be sure that these children will spell well by and by. I am convinced of this by experience, for the next class above these in age have begun within a few weeks to write stories of their own, composing instead of copying them from books, as they have done for two years, and I am myself quite astonished at their spelling. They have never spelled a word they did not understand, and their spelling in composition is better than that of some children still older who learned to spell elsewhere, and who hate spelling-books.

One of my exercises in thinking is to ask the children to tell me the names of all the actions they can think of; and to help them I say, for instance, "What can the bird do?" "What can the fly do?" "How many things can the fly do?" Another is to ask them what things are made of, and where they are found, "Are they vegetables, or are they from animals, or are they minerals?" They are vastly entertained by this, and one little fellow became so much excited, and wearied himself so much with his investigations at home, that his mother begged me to suspend the exercise for a time. Jemmy's head is a little too big for his body; and the look of research in his great eyes gives evidence of precocity, the thing of all others to be shunned. His mother has put thick boots upon him lately, and turned him out into the snow, and he looks like a butterfly in boots, with his ethereal head and spiritual orbs.

I have but one child under my care that I call a prodigy; and my influence has not yet been strong enough to check her ardor as it ought to be checked. She is sent to school because she is happier at school than in the nursery, to which rich people's children are so often banished. (I never intend to have a nursery in my house.) This child has been with me three years, and is but six now. She might be made one of those wonders of learning that occasionally astonish the world, if the plan of her education had not been to supply as little food as possible for her cravings. Fortunately she did not ask to read for a long time, but I have not a scholar so perseveringly industrious, so absorbed in whatever she is doing, so full of nervous energy. She is as conscientious as she is intellectual. I have never had to repeat a request to her, or to subject her to a rule. She always sees and does the fitting and the lovely thing. Before she learned to read she would sit for the hour together with a book in hand, (upside down, perhaps,) and improvisate stories wonderful to hear, in which the characters preserved their individuality, and the descriptions of nature were as vivid as those of a poet of many years. She was quite lost to outward things while improvisating thus. One day after school, the maid who came for her not having arrived, she threw herself on the floor, and began a story about a naughty child. I cannot now remember all the very words, for it was a year ago; but the qualities of the heroine were a combination of all the faults she knew anything about. "If people were ill, she always made a noise; she would shut the door hard if told that it would make people's heads ache. She hid other people's things, and would not tell where she had put them. She was very cross to her little brother, and often hurt the baby. She cut valuable things with the scissors, tore up her books, and left the pieces of paper on the parlor carpet. One day it rained very hard, and her mother told her not to go out, lest she should take cold. She was always disobedient, so she went up-stairs and put on a very nice dress and her best bonnet, with blue ribbons, and thin stockings and shoes, and nothing to keep herself warm, but went out in the rain, and paddled and paddled about, and wet her dress, and spoilt the blue ribbons on her bonnet; and when she came in she was very, very sick indeed, and had a dreadful fever, and people slammed the doors and made a great noise, and she had dreadful, oh, dreadful pains in her head and her side, and she could not eat or drink anything; and at last she died and did not go to heaven!" She stopped, completely out of breath. After a few moments' pause, I said, "Oh, I am sorry for the poor little girl that was punished so much. Was she so very naughty she could not go to heaven?"

She made no reply for some time, and then recommenced in a low, solemn voice: "When she was lying in her bed, she was very sorry she had not obeyed her mother, and a heavenly angel came down out of the heavenly sky and took her up into heaven." After a short pause she burst out again very energetically—"Then how she ramped! She trampled on the clouds, and put her foot in the sun, moon, and stars!" I made no further comment. I rarely interrupted her utterances, for they never were addressed to any one, and seldom indulged in, unless she thought herself alone. They were picturesque and symbolical, but never vague. The moral was always very apparent. But her imagination sometimes clothes objects with a light of its own. I was leading her up-stairs the other day, and as we stepped into the hall, we saw a large spider running before us. She dropped my hand and bounded forward, "Oh, you beautiful, smiling creature!" was her exclamation.

Would not a bird have been her passport into paradise at that moment?

Another of these children was walking in the mall with me one day, when the sun was shining with an afternoon light upon the bare trees, over rather a dreary landscape of snow and ice. "Oh, the trees look like golden twigs," said my little poetess, so full of joy that I could hardly hold her.

This, dear A——, is the

"time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To us do seem,
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream."

To return a moment to my little prodigy. When she did not for a long time ask to read, she wished to print, and it must have been this practice which gradually so accustomed her eye to the shapes of words, that when she suddenly conceived the desire to read, she remembered them with marvellous rapidity. Everything else was abandoned for the time, and in the course of two or three weeks she could read very well. I had often seen her take up the books which contained the stories she liked, and I supposed, at first, that she must have learned to read them herself in some unaccountable way. She had often repeated such stories from the book from beginning to end, word for word. But I found it was not the case,—that she had never actually read them before. However, I never could trace the steps. Spelling she does not find easy. Even now, several months after she has been able to read currently, if, when she comes to a new word, I propose to her to spell it, she will mention the letters (I never taught her their names, but she doubtless learned them while printing so industriously), and then say again, "What is it?" as if that had not helped her at all. But she never forgets a word after it is once told her. She joins in an exercise I frequently practise with older scholars, of spelling a few lines of the reading lesson, but she is not so ready as the others, although none read better, and few as well. She now composes stories on the slate instead of improvisating aloud so much; and I am surprised to find how many words she spells aright. But I try no experiments upon her, as my plan is to clip her wings. If she was enshrined in as rotund a body as some of the other children, I might venture a little, but she already looks too ethereal;—one sees at a glance that the sword of her fervent little spirit might easily be made to cut its sheath.