"That's a good little boy! He knows ever so much; and here is a peppermint. Open his mouth and shut his eyes, and pop! it goes."
There is, however, a pretty picture on the other side, that Jamie thrusts his iconoclastic fists through quite as unconcernedly; and that is the dignity of human nature. The human being can be trained into a dignified person: that no one denies. Looking at some honored and honorable man bearing himself loftily through every crisis, and wearing his grandeur with an imperial grace, one may be pardoned for the mistake, but it is none the less a mistake, of reckoning the acquirement of an individual as the endowment of the race. Behold human nature unclothed upon with the arts and graces of the schools, if you would discover, not its possibilities, but its attributes. The helplessness of infancy appeals to all that is chivalric and Christian in our hearts; but to dignity it is pre-eminently a stranger. A charming and popular writer—on the whole, I am not sure that it was not my own self—once affirmed that a baby is a beast, and gave great offence thereby; yet it seems to me that no unprejudiced person can observe an infant of tender weeks sprawling and squirming in the bath-tub, and not confess that it looks more like a little pink frog than anything else. And here is Jamie, not only weeks, but months and years old, setting his young affections on candy and dinner, and eating in general, with an appalling intensity. It is humiliating to see how easily he is moved by an appeal to his appetite. I blush for my race, remembering the sparkle of his eyes over a dainty dish, and the abandonment of his devotion to it,—the enthusiasm with which his feet spring, and his voice rings through the house, to announce the fact, "Dinnah mo' weh-wy! dinnah mo' weh-wy!" To the naked eye, he appears to think as much of eating as a cat or a chicken or a dog. Reasons and rights he is slow to comprehend; but his conscience is always open to conviction, and his will pliable to a higher law, when a stick of candy is in the case. His bread-and-butter is to him what science was to Newton; and he has been known to reply abstractedly to a question put to him in the height of his enjoyment, "Don' talk t' me now!" This is not dignity, surely. Is it total depravity? What is it that makes his feet so swift to do mischief? He sweeps the floor with the table-brush, comes stumbling over the carpet almost chin-deep in a pair of muddy rubber boots, catches up the bird's seed-cup and darts away, spilling it at every step; and the louder I call, the faster he runs, half frightened, half roguish, till an unmistakable sharpness pierces him, makes him throw down cup and seed together, and fling himself full length on the floor, his little heart all broken. Indeed, he can bear anything but displeasure. He tumbles down twenty times a day, over the crickets, off the chairs, under the table, head first, head last, bump, bump, bump, and never a tear sheds he, though his stern self-control is sometimes quite pitiful to see. But a little slap on his cheek, which is his standing punishment,—not a blow, but a tiny tap that must derive all its efficacy from its moral force,—oh, it stabs him to the heart! He has no power to bear up against it, and goes away by himself, and cries bitterly, sonorously, and towards the last, I suspect, rather ostentatiously. Then he spoils it all by coming out radiant, and boasting that he has "make tear," as if that were an unparalleled feat. If you attempt to chide him, he puts up his plump hand with a repelling gesture, turns away his head in disgust, and ejaculates vehemently, "Don' talk t' me!" After all, however, I do not perceive that he is any more sensitive to reproof than an intelligent and petted dog.
His logical faculty develops itself somewhat capriciously, but is very prompt. He seldom fails to give you a reason, though it is often of the Wordsworthian type,—
"At Kilve there was no weathercock,
And that's the reason why."
"Don' talk t' me! I little Min-nee-so-toh boy!"—as if that were an amnesty proclamation. You invite him to stay with you, and let Papa go to Minnesota without him. He shakes his head dubiously, and protests, with solemn earnestness, "Mus' go Min-nee-so-toh ca'y my fork," which, to the world-incrusted mind, seems but an inadequate pretext. I want him to write me a letter when he is gone away; but, after a thoughtful pause, he decides that he cannot, "'cause I got no pen." If he is not in a mood to repeat the verse you ask for, he finds full excuse in the unblushing declaration, "I bashful." He casts shadows on the wall with his wreathing, awkward little fingers, and is perfectly satisfied that they are rabbits, though the mature eye discerns no resemblance to any member of the vertebrate family. He gazes curiously to see me laugh at something I am reading,—"What 'at? my want to see,"—and climbs up to survey the page with wistful eyes; but it is "a' a muddle" to him. He greets me exultantly after absence, because I have "come home pay coot with Jamie"; and there is another secret out: that it is of no use to be sentimental with a child. He loves you in proportion as you are available. His papa and mamma fondly imagine they are dearer to him than any one else, and it would be cruel to disturb that belief; but it would be the height of folly to count yourself amiable because Jamie plants himself firmly against the door, and pleads piteously, "Don' go in e parly wite!" He wants you to "pay coot" with him,—that is all. If your breakfast shawl is lying on a chair, it would not be sagacious to attribute an affectionate unselfishness to him in begging leave to "go give Baddy shawl t' keep Baddy back warm." It is only his greediness to enter forbidden ground. Sentiment and sensibility have small lodgement in his soul.
But when Jamie is duly forewarned, he is forearmed. Legally admitted into the parlor to see visitors, he sits on the sofa by his mother's side, silent, upright, prim, his little legs stuck straight out before him in two stiff lines, presenting a full front view of his soles. By the way, I wonder how long grown persons would sit still, if they were obliged to assume this position. But Jamie maintains himself heroically, his active soul subdued to silence, till Nature avenges herself, not merely with a palpable, but a portentous yawn. "You may force me to this unnatural quiet," she seems to say; "but if you expect to prevent me from testifying that I think it intolerably stupid, you have reckoned without your host."
And here Jamie comes out strongly in favor of democracy, universal suffrage, political equality, the Union and the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the rights of man. Uncontaminated by conventional rules, he recognizes the human being apart from his worldly state. He is as silent and abashed in the presence of the day-laborer, coarsely clad and rough of speech and manners, as in that of the accomplished man of the world, or the daintiest silken-robed lady. With simple gravity, and never a thought of wrong, he begs the poet, "Pease, Missa Poet, tie up my shoe." He stands in awe before the dignity of the human soul; but dress and rank and reputation receive no homage from him. He is reverent, but to no false gods. The world finds room for kingdoms and empires and oligarchies; but undoubtedly man is born a democrat.
Is there only one Jamie here? Can one little urchin about as high as the table so fill a house with mirth and mischief, so daguerrotype himself in every corner, possess, while claiming nothing, so large a share of the household interest? For he somehow bubbles up everywhere. Not a mischance or a misplacement but can pretty surely be brought home to him. Is a glass broken? Jamie broke it. Is a door open that ought to be shut? Jamie opened it. Or shut that ought to be open? Jamie shut it. Is there a mighty crash in the entry? It is Jamie dropping the crowbar through the side-lights. The "Atlantic" has been missing all the morning.
"Jamie,"—a last, random resort, after fruitless search,—"where is the 'Atlantic Monthly'?"
"In daw."