Green grows the willow tree,
Green grows the willow tree.
Come my love where have you been?
Come and sit at the side of me.
O, how she blushes so!
Kiss her sweet and let her go,
But don't you let her mother know.
Tag and I Spy are other games that furnish opportunities for love to discriminate in favor of its chosen ones. In fact there is scarcely a social game indulged in by both sexes wherein the incidents are not turned to the emotion's account by the young lovers. It must not be understood that all of the children who take part in these games are to be considered as lovers. As was suggested above the games may appeal to many other instincts and be indulged in on that account rather than on account of the love sentiment that characterizes them. On the other hand many of the games whose content does not suggest love may be turned into a love opportunity and expression.
The routine of the school furnishes other opportunities that are taken advantage of. Lovers will manage some way to sit or stand together, and are thrilled by touching. One boy who sat behind his sweetheart would place his arm along the back of the desk where she would come in contact with it. Others carry on their courtship by touching their feet under the desks, etc. It is common to see favoritism in recitations wherein pupils make the corrections; the lover seldom corrects the sweetheart, and vice versa. In contests such as spelling, words are purposely misspelled in order to favor the sweetheart or to keep from “turning her down.” The eye glance is another means as efficacious with children as with adults. One pair of young lovers, whose unsympathetic teacher forbade their looking at each other, brought hand mirrors by means of which they continued to exchange their “love messages.”
Few teachers complain of the love affairs of children in these first two periods as interfering with school work,—except when one of the lovers is absent. A score or more of the observers assert that during the absence of one of the lovers, the other does not do as good work and often becomes moody and irritable. On the other hand it very materially quickens the efforts of many who want to appear well before their lovers. One boy, nine years old, who had been quite lazy and was looked upon as being rather dull, braced up and for two years led his class, in order, as he said, “to win his Ottilia.” During the adolescent stage that follows this the emotion becomes so intense and all absorbing as to interfere very much with school work, or with anything else that requires application.
Akin to the disturbance caused by the absence of the lover from school is the grief that comes from being more or less permanently separated, as by moving away or by the death of one. In some instances the grief is very intense and protracted. Four cases of attempts at suicide are reported: one boy eight years old; another nine; a girl nine and another eleven. Six cases of nervous illness are reported as due, either to separation or jilting. Ordinarily, however, weaning is comparatively an easy matter.
Teasing breaks up many of these love affairs, and not infrequently causes the lovers to hate each other; in which case they childishly look upon each other as the cause instead of the occasion of the torment. Also under the spur of the taunts of mates the lovers are stimulated to say things to or about each other that lead to estrangement. In some instances, however, the persecution is taken as a sort of martyrdom and is enjoyed. Jealousy is another potent factor in separating these young lovers. Teasing is not the primary cause of the tendency to conceal the emotion.
The season of the year seems to have its effect upon the intensity of the emotion of sex-love among children. One teacher from Texas, who furnished me with seventy-six cases, said that he had noticed that the matter of love among children seemed “fairly to break out in the spring-time.” Many of the others who reported, incidentally mentioned the love affairs as beginning in the spring. This also agrees with my own observations. It may partly be accounted for by the fact that during the winter months the children have much less freedom in playing together, and hence fewer opportunities for forming and showing preferences. On the other hand the suggestion inevitably occurs that there is some connection between this and the pairing season among animals and the sexual periodicity among primitive peoples.
“Showing-off” as a method of courtship is not only as old as the human race, but is perhaps the most common one used by animals. While the complete discussion of this topic is reserved for the chapter upon courtship, the picture of love as it is experienced by the young people in this second stage would not be complete without at least a passing reference to it. It constitutes one of the chief numbers in the boy's repertory of love charms, and is not totally absent from the girl's. It is a most common sight to see the boys taxing their resources in devising means of exposing their own excellences, and often doing the most ridiculous and extravagant things. Running, jumping, dancing, prancing, sparring, wrestling, turning hand-springs, somersaults,—backward, forward, double,—climbing, walking fences, singing, giving yodels and yells, whistling, imitating the movements of animals, “taking people off,” courting danger, affecting courage, are some of its common forms. I saw a boy upon one such occasion stand on the railroad track until by the barest margin he escaped death by a passenger engine. One writer gives an account of a boy who sat on the end of a cross-tie and was killed by a passing train. This tendency to show off for love's sake, together with the inability to make any direct declaration, is well illustrated in the love affair of Piggy Pennington, King of Boyville.[10] “Time and time again had Piggy tried to make some sign to let his feelings be known, but every time he had failed. Lying in wait for her at corners, and suddenly breaking upon her with a glory of backward and forward somersaults did not convey the state of his heart. Hanging by his heels from an apple tree limb over the sidewalk in front of her, unexpectedly, did not tell the tender tale for which his lips could find no words. And the nearest that he could come to an expression of the longing in his breast was to cut her initials in the ice beside his own when she came weaving and wobbling past on some other boy's arm. But she would not look at the initials, and the chirography of his skates was so indistinct that it required a key; and, everything put together, poor Piggy was no nearer a declaration at the end of the winter than he had been at the beginning of autumn. So only one heart beat with but a single thought, and the other took motto candy and valentines and red apples and picture cards and other tokens of esteem from other boys, and beat on with any number of thoughts, entirely immaterial to the uses of this narrative.” This “showing-off” in the boy lover is the forerunner of the skillful, purposive and elaborate means of self-exhibition in the adult male and the charming coquetry in the adult female, in their love relations.
Another kind of indirection that is very interesting is that of a boy who ostensibly is talking to one, but everything which he is saying is intended for another. This is sometimes extended into a sort of pleasant teasing and scuffling in which the very one whom he wants to touch is very carefully avoided. A further phase of the same thing is shown by the embrace or caress that is given to one while the emotional discharge goes out to some one else; as for example, a boy under the influence of a meeting with the girl whom he had begun to love but to whom he had made no confession, went home and walked up to his sister, put his arms about her neck and kissed her. The action was so unusual as both to surprise the sister and to arouse her intelligent suspicions. Goethe makes much use of this type of emotional discharge in his “Elective Affinities,” and Tennyson alludes to it in the lines,
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others.