Then a great trouble, always pressing heavily on many a little mind, is that it is overtasked with lessons. You still see here and there idiotic parents striving to make infant phenomena of their children, and recording with much pride how their children could read and write at an unnaturally early age. Such parents are fools: not necessarily malicious fools, but fools beyond question. The great use to which the first six or seven years of life should be given is the laying the foundation of a healthful constitution in body and mind; and the instilling of those first principles of duty and religion which do not need to be taught out of any books. Even if you do not permanently injure the young brain and mind by prematurely overtasking them,—even if you do not permanently blight the bodily health and break the mind’s cheerful spring, you gain nothing. Your child at fourteen years old is not a bit farther advanced in his education than a child who began his years after him; and the entire result of your stupid driving has been to overcloud some days which should have been among the happiest of his life. It is a woful sight to me to see the little forehead corrugated with mental effort, though the effort be to do no more than master the multiplication table: it was a sad story I lately heard of a little boy repeating his Latin lesson over and over again in the delirium of the fever of which he died, and saying piteously that indeed he could not do it better. I don’t like to see a little face looking unnaturally anxious and earnest about a horrible task of spelling; and even when children pass that stage, and grow up into school-boys who can read Thucydides and write Greek iambics, it is not wise in parents to stimulate a clever boy’s anxiety to hold the first place in his class. That anxiety is strong enough already; it needs rather to be repressed. It is bad enough even at college to work on late into the night; but at school it ought not to be suffered for one moment. If a lad takes his place in his class every day in a state of nervous tremor, he may be in the way to get his gold medal, indeed; but he is in the way to shatter his constitution for life.
We all know, of course, that children are subjected to worse things than these. I think of little things early set to hard work, to add a little to their parents’ scanty store. Yet, if it be only work, they bear it cheerfully. This afternoon, I was walking through a certain quiet street, when I saw a little child standing with a basket at a door. The little man looked at various passers-by; and I am happy to say, that, when he saw me, he asked me to ring the door-bell for him: for, though he had been sent with that basket, which was not a light one, he could not reach up to the bell. I asked him how old he was. “Five years past,” said the child, quite cheerfully and independently. “God help you, poor little man!” I thought; “the doom of toil has fallen early upon you!” If you visit much among the poor, few things will touch you more than the unnatural sagacity and trustworthiness of children who are little more than babies. You will find these little things left in a bare room by themselves,—the eldest six years old,—while the poor mother is out at her work. And the eldest will reply to your questions in a way that will astonish you, till you get accustomed to such things. I think that almost as heart-rending a sight as you will readily see is the misery of a little thing who has spilt in the street the milk she was sent to fetch, or broken a jug, and who is sitting in despair beside the spilt milk or the broken fragments. Good Samaritan, never pass by such a sight; bring out your two-pence; set things completely right: a small matter and a kind word will cheer and comfort an overwhelmed heart. That child has a truculent step-mother, or (alas!) mother, at home, who would punish that mishap as nothing should be punished but the gravest moral delinquency. And lower down the scale than this, it is awful to see want, cold, hunger, rags, in a little child. I have seen the wee thing shuffling along the pavement in great men’s shoes, holding up its sorry tatters with its hands, and casting on the passengers a look so eager, yet so hopeless, as went to one’s heart. Let us thank God that there is one large city in the empire where you need never see such a sight, and where, if you do, you know how to relieve it effectually; and let us bless the name and the labors and the genius of Thomas Guthrie! It is a sad thing to see the toys of such little children as I can think of. What curious things they are able to seek amusement in! I have known a brass button at the end of a string a much prized possession. I have seen a grave little boy standing by a broken chair in a bare garret, solemnly arranging and rearranging two pins upon the broken chair. A machine much employed by poor children in country places is a slate tied to a bit of string: this, being drawn along the road, constitutes a cart; and you may find it attended by the admiration of the entire young population of three or four cottages standing in the moorland miles from any neighbor.
You will not unfrequently find parents who, if they cannot keep back their children from some little treat, will try to infuse a sting into it, so as to prevent the children from enjoying it. They will impress on their children that they must be very wicked to care so much about going out to some children’s party; or they will insist that their children should return home at some preposterously early hour, so as to lose the best part of the fun, and so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of their young companions. You will find this amiable tendency in people intrusted with the care of older children. I have heard of a man whose nephew lived with him, and lived a very cheerless life. When the season came round at which the lad hoped to be allowed to go and visit his parents, he ventured, after much hesitation, to hint this to his uncle. Of course the uncle felt that it was quite right the lad should go, but he grudged him the chance of the little enjoyment, and the happy thought struck him that he might let the lad go, and at the same time make the poor fellow uncomfortable in going. Accordingly he conveyed his permission to the lad to go by roaring out in a savage manner, “Begone!” This made the poor lad feel as if it were his duty to stay, and as if it were very wicked in him to wish to go; and though he ultimately went, he enjoyed his visit with only half a heart. There are parents and guardians who take great pains to make their children think themselves very bad,—to make the little things grow up in the endurance of the pangs of a bad conscience. For conscience, in children, is a quite artificial thing: you may dictate to it what it is to say. And parents, often injudicious, sometimes malignant, not seldom apply hard names to their children, which sink down into the little heart and memory far more deeply than they think. If a child cannot eat fat, you may instil into him that it is because he is so wicked; and he will believe you for a while. A favorite weapon in the hands of some parents, who have devoted themselves diligently to making their children miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am reminded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant; the husband, a very inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, he would be fully forgiven; which, as Mr. Weller justly remarked, was very generous, seeing he had never done anything at all.
Yes, the conscience of children is an artificial and a sensitive thing. The other day, a friend of mine, who is one of the kindest of parents and the most amiable of men, told me what happened in his house on a certain Fast-day. A Scotch Fast-day, you may remember, is the institution which so completely puzzled Mr. Buckle. That historian fancied that to fast means in Scotland to abstain from food. Had Mr. Buckle known anything whatever about Scotland, he would have known that a Scotch Fast-day means a week-day on which people go to church, but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary effect: it would give the body the mastery over the soul; it would make a man so physically uncomfortable that he could not attend with profit to his religious duties at all. I am aware, Anglican reader, of the defects of my countrymen; but commend me to the average Scotchman for sound practical sense. But to return. These Fast-days are by many people observed as rigorously as the Scotch Sunday. On the forenoon of such a day, my friend’s little child, three years old, came to him in much distress. She said, as one who had a fearful sin to confess, “I have been playing with my toys this morning”; and then began to cry as if her little heart would break. I know some stupid parents who would have strongly encouraged this needless sensitiveness; and who would thus have made their child unhappy at the time, and prepared the way for an indignant bursting of these artificial trammels when the child had grown up to maturity. But my friend was not of that stamp. He comforted the little thing, and told her, that, though it might be as well not to play with her toys on a Fast-day, what she had done was nothing to cry about. I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast-day with the Covenanting austerity.
But when one looks back and looks round, and tries to reckon up the sorrows of childhood arising from parental folly, one feels that the task is endless. There are parents who will not suffer their children to go to the little feasts which children occasionally have, either on that wicked principle that all enjoyment is sinful, or because the children have recently committed some small offence, which is to be thus punished. There are parents who take pleasure in informing strangers, in their children’s presence, about their children’s faults, to the extreme bitterness of the children’s hearts. There are parents who will not allow their children to be taught dancing, regarding dancing as sinful. The result is, that the children are awkward and unlike other children; and when they are suffered to spend an evening among a number of companions who have all learned dancing, they suffer a keen mortification which older people ought to be able to understand. Then you will find parents, possessing ample means, who will not dress their children like others, but send them out in very shabby garments. Few things cause a more painful sense of humiliation to a child. It is a sad sight to see a little fellow hiding round the corner when some one passes who is likely to recognize him, afraid to go through the decent streets, and creeping out of sight by back-ways. We have all seen that. We have all sympathized heartily with the reduced widow who has it not in her power to dress her boy better; and we have all felt lively indignation at the parents who had the power to attire their children becomingly, but whose heartless parsimony made the little things go about under a constant sense of painful degradation.
An extremely wicked way of punishing children is by shutting them up in a dark place. Darkness is naturally fearful to human beings, and the stupid ghost-stories of many nurses make it especially fearful to a child. It is a stupid and wicked thing to send a child on an errand in a dark night. I do not remember passing through a greater trial in my youth than once walking three miles alone (it was not going on an errand) in the dark, along a road thickly shaded with trees. I was a little fellow; but I got over the distance in half an hour. Part of the way was along the wall of a church-yard, one of those ghastly, weedy, neglected, accursed-looking spots where stupidity has done what it can to add circumstances of disgust and horror to the Christian’s long sleep. Nobody ever supposed that this walk was a trial to a boy of twelve years old: so little are the thoughts of children understood. And children are reticent: I am telling now about that dismal walk for the very first time. And in the illnesses of childhood, children sometimes get very close and real views of death. I remember, when I was nine years old, how every evening, when I lay down to sleep, I used for about a year to picture myself lying dead, till I felt as though the coffin were closing round me. I used to read at that period, with a curious feeling of fascination, Blair’s poem, “The Grave.” But I never dreamed of telling anybody about these thoughts. I believe that thoughtful children keep most of their thoughts to themselves, and in respect of the things of which they think most are as profoundly alone as the Ancient Mariner in the Pacific. I have heard of a parent, an important member of a very strait sect of the Pharisees, whose child, when dying, begged to be buried not in a certain foul old hideous church-yard, but in a certain cheerful cemetery. This request the poor little creature made with all the energy of terror and despair. But the strait Pharisee refused the dying request, and pointed out with polemical bitterness to the child that he must be very wicked indeed to care at such a time where he was to be buried, or what might be done with his body after death. How I should enjoy the spectacle of that unnatural, heartless, stupid wretch tarred and feathered! The dying child was caring for a thing about which Shakspeare cared; and it was not in mere human weakness, but “by faith,” that “Joseph, when he was a-dying, gave commandment concerning his bones.”
I believe that real depression of spirits, usually the sad heritage of after-years, is often felt in very early youth. It sometimes comes of the child’s belief that he must be very bad, because he is so frequently told that he is so. It sometimes comes of the child’s fears, early felt, as to what is to become of him. His parents, possibly, with the good sense and kind feeling which distinguish various parents, have taken pains to drive it into the child, that, if his father should die, he will certainly starve, and may very probably have to become a wandering beggar. And these sayings have sunk deep into the little heart. I remember how a friend told me that his constant wonder, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, was this: If life was such a burden already, and so miserable to look back upon, how could he ever bear it when be had grown older?