The Child at Home : Part 5

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 6 of 13)

A short time ago I had occasion to invite to Sunday dinner a little boy friend of mine who is nine years old. Lest he might feel his youth in a household which no longer contains any nine-year-olds, I invited to "meet him" two other boys, playmates of his, of about the same age. There chanced also to be present a friend, a professor in a woman's college, into whose daily life very seldom strays a boy, especially one nine years old.

"What interesting things have you been doing lately?" she observed to the boy beside her in the pause which followed our settling of ourselves at the table.

"I have been seeing 'The Blue Bird,'" he at once answered. "Have you seen it?" he next asked.

No sooner had she replied than he turned to me. "I suppose, of course, you've seen it," he said.

"Not yet," I told him; "but I have read it - "

"Oh, so have I!" exclaimed one of the other boys; "and I've seen it, too. There is one act in the play that isn't in the book - 'The Land of Happiness' it is. My mother says she doesn't think Mr. Maeterlinck could have written it; it is so different from the rest of the play."

Those present, old and young, who had seen "The Blue Bird" debated this possibility at some length.

Then the boy who had introduced it said to me: "I wonder, when you see it, whether you'll think Mr. Maeterlinck wrote 'The Land of Happiness' act, or not."

"I haven't seen 'The Blue Bird,'" the third boy remarked, "but I've seen the Coronation pictures." Whereupon we fell to discussing moving-picture shows.

During the progress of that dinner we considered many other subjects, lighting upon them casually; touching upon them lightly; and - most significant of all - discoursing upon them as familiars and equals. None of us who were grown-up "talked down" to the boys, and certainly none of the boys "talked up" to us. Each one of them at home was a "dear partner" of every other member of the family, younger and older, larger and smaller. Inevitably, each one when away from home became quite spontaneously an equal shareholder in whatever was to be possessed at all.

A day or two after the Sunday of that dinner I met one of my boy guests on the street. "I've seen 'The Blue Bird,'" I said to him; "and I'm inclined to think that, if Mr. Maeterlinck did write the act 'The Land of Happiness,' he wrote it long after he had written the rest of the play. I think perhaps that is why it is so different from the other acts."

"Why, I never thought of that!" the boy cried, with absolute unaffectedness. He appeared to consider it for a moment, and then he said: "I'll tell my mother; she'll be interested."

Foreign visitors of distinction not infrequently have accused American children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated." Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are children in America, as there are children in every land, who are pert, and lacking in reverence, and sophisticated; but they are in the small minority, and they are not the children to whom foreigners refer when they make their sweeping arraignments.

The most gently reared, the most carefully nurtured, of our children are those usually seen by distinguished foreign visitors; for such foreigners are apt to be guests of the families to which these children belong. The spirit of frank camaraderie displayed by the children they mistake for "pertness"; the trustful freedom of their attitude toward their elders they interpret as "lack of reverence"; and their eager interest in subjects ostensibly beyond their years they misread as "sophistication."

It must be admitted that American small boys have not the quaint courtliness of French small boys; that American little girls are without the pretty shyness of English little girls. We are compelled to grant that in America between the nursery and the drawing-room there is no great gulf fixed. This condition of things has its real disadvantages and trials; but has it not also its ideal advantages and blessings? Coöperative living together, in spite of individual differences, is one of these advantages; tender intimacy between persons of varying ages is one of these blessings.

A German woman on her first visit to America said to me, as we talked about children, that, with our National habit of treating them as what we Americans call "chums," she wondered how parents kept any authority over them, and especially maintained any government of them, and for them, without letting it lapse into a government by them.

"I should think that the commandment 'Children, obey your parents' might be in danger of being overlooked or thrust aside," she said, "in a country in which children and parents are 'chums,' as Americans say."

That ancient commandment would seem to be too toweringly large to be overlooked, too firmly embedded in the world to be thrust aside. It is a very Rock of Gibraltar of a commandment.