“A friend has lately bought a house, on whose staircase is a beautiful stained glass window; but its value is rather spoiled for her by the fact that in its centre are the initials of the late owners of the house, not interesting people in any way, but very commonplace folk who made money by speculations. One day a little boy-visitor was admiring the window, and asked about the initials. My friend explained them to him, and then, turning to another visitor, laughingly said, ‘We must get somebody to throw a stone through that pane.’ Presently she noticed that the little boy kept very closely to her side, and by-and-by he whispered, ‘Mrs. Gray, I can hit very well. I’ll throw a stone at that window. I’ll do it to-day if you like.’ ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘that would never do at all. We must get it done properly some other time.’ He was disappointed, but said no more then. When he was taking leave, however, he whispered, ‘Mrs. Gray, when do you want that stone thrown? You’ll ask me, won’t you? You won’t let anybody else do it?’ Now if he had not been a child accustomed to free speech, he might have taken that lady’s jest in earnest and have thrown the stone, which would likely have missed its aim and done incalculable mischief. Mrs. Gray would have quite forgotten her remark. Overwhelmed by his failure and by censures unaccountable to him which would have fallen upon him, he would, according to all the precedents of childish criminals, have ‘reserved his defence,’ and he would have been set down as a mischievous monkey, if not a malignant little wretch, for making such return for pleasant hospitality.”
“I suppose too,” said Lucy, “that every time we let a child talk a matter out and help it to follow the explanations we give, we are really unconsciously training its mind to think out things for itself, and not to rest content at any point where it is not really satisfied.”
“Exactly so,” answered Miss Foster. “The facts which a child learns are always of little importance compared with the exercise of its mind in grasping them. That is why learning anything by rote is useless save as an exercise of memory, and that explains, too, why some people who are said to have ‘no book-learning’ are far keener observers and arrive at more judicious conclusions than do pedants. The plainer folk have probably learned to use their minds upon the work of their hands. It is with minds as it is with bodies: unless the digestion is in order, food does not nourish, is not assimilated, and only results in disease. So though there is more ‘knowledge’ in the world to-day than ever before, and though it is more widely distributed, yet at every turn the public mind—with its violent prejudices, its unreasonable fluctuations, and its inability to look below any surface conclusions that are offered to it—proves that the Hebrew prophet’s complaint ‘that the people do not consider’ is as true as ever it was. Probably in face of present day opportunities and issues it is even truer. I often think that it will remain so till parents take more interest in their children’s society before they are eight years old.”
“I hear that many school children have so many home lessons that they can’t have much time for home talk,” said Lucy.
“That is so,” consented Miss Foster, “and in my opinion, during the regular school age home lessons ought to be almost unknown. All the time at home is needed for home society and home usefulness if the child is to have a good all-round development. The worst cases I have known of this kind of loss and defect have been among the children of modish women, who had ‘social duties’ which they preferred to walking out and talking with their little ones. If women can’t have patience and pleasure in their own children, why should they expect it in their nursemaids? And they don’t get it. I have often seen children dragging along, silent, listless, gaping, with an irritable or indifferent nurse, and a few minutes after I have met ‘mamma’ driving out to pay her calls.”
“I am always so sorry for widows who have to leave their children to others simply that they may discharge other duties to their children themselves,” observed Lucy. “A woman cannot at once play with her babies and earn their bread. I’m afraid we don’t think enough about the hardships which beset some lives. Perhaps they seldom press on our attention till we feel a touch of them ourselves.”
“I think a crèche is a very useful form of charity,” answered Miss Foster, “provided that rules are carefully made not to encourage married women to think of becoming wage-earners as if that was the proper thing when their husbands can and should be working for them.”
Lucy smiled a little sadly.
“I am not thinking only of the class who can be helped by a crèche,” she said. “I was thinking of another type of widowed women who uphold their homes by being authors or artists, or by managing shops or businesses. They are forced to leave their children so much under other influences, and it is so sad if, after bravely playing a father’s part for years, it ends in the disappointment of their mother-heart and the frustration of their best hopes.”
“Ay, I quite agree with you!” cried Miss Foster heartily, “and I congratulate you warmly on being one of those whose light affliction, lasting but a little while, suffices to open new and wider sympathies. I hope you are always getting the best news of Mr. Challoner?” she added. For Lucy had told the little teacher how she was placed at the present time.