HEAVEN help that poor little victim of experiments, the first baby in a family. Upon whom every new and old nostrum is tried; who is overloaded with fine clothes, and feeding; who is constantly kept in a state of excitement by cluckings, and chuckings, and tossings, and ticklings, till he frets from sheer nervousness; and then—is blanketed, and physicked, and steamed, till he is as limp as a thread paper. Who is kept in a gaspingly close apartment six weeks, at the instigation of one grandmother, and driven out-doors, without regard to wind or weather, the next six, at the recommendation of the other. Who is so overburdened with toys, that he would prefer at any time a chance stick or twig of his own picking from the carpet or sidewalk, and who takes to fisticuffs from sheer weariness of being fondled.
What a moral millennium to such is the advent of a second, third, and fourth baby. When young master may sneeze, and the whole neighborhood not be called to witness the phenomenon. When, if he fall, he may sprawl there at least two whole minutes without a spoiling condolence, and make the wholesome discovery that he can pick himself up whenever he gets ready. When the playthings, over which he has been sole monarch, are ruthlessly snatched by the new baby's fingers, and he is taught, what he would never else have learned,—that this world was not made for one. When, fifty times a day, he must wait his turn to be served, instead of bringing all the household operations to a standstill, till his real or imaginary wants are satisfied. When an over busy mother at last clips the boy's long curls, which, pretty as they were, should have been laid on the altar of common-sense long ago. No longer do his little playmates call the tears to his eyes, by shouting after him "girl-boy." Now he is one of "the fellows." There is no danger now of his being called into the parlor to be shown off to mamma's visitors, and flattered into precocious impertinence, for there is no knowing what rents are in elbows and knees, or how many coats of dirt are on his face. But meanwhile, thank heaven, he is not being spoiled, and the important process of self-education, i.e., poking his nose into everything, that he may find out the whys and wherefores, is going on. This blessed let-alone system, which, with proper limitations, is so necessary to a child at an age when its whole business should be to sleep, eat, and grow well, and which every successive birth in the family helps him to enjoy unmolested.
How surprising is the discovery to papa and mamma, and the whole troop of adulators, that the second, third and fourth baby, says, "pa-pa," "mamma," as well, and as early as that wonderful of a first!
How levelling and disgusting the knowledge that everybody's baby in the United States, without distinction of brown-stone-front houses, has done just that! And what fond idiots they must have appeared to lookers on, who had grown old rearing families. With what wonderment mamma now handles the first baby's robes, where she very nearly stitched in her life, in the anxiety to have all the absurd frills and embroidery that a tyrannical precedent has enumerated in such cases. And now look at those of Johnny—the last! Judging by his robes, he might have been anybody's baby! Well, well, his eyes are as bright, and his limbs as dimpled, and his cheeks as rosy, as if his clothes were not sensible and plain. In short, what a thing is experience. "Let us be careful, dear," says mamma, sagely, "to teach our girls to do better than we have." As if every young couple must not go through all these mistakes for themselves, and ten to one kill one baby, before they learn how to take care of the rest.
There never was a greater mistake made than when childhood is called the happiest portion of life. I have seen a little child's breast swell with an anguish as great as would ever agitate it though it should live to four-score. Call it "a trifle" if you will, that a playmate jeered before a laughing crowd of boy judges; no verdict of after-life would be harder to bear; and when, sure of sympathy, he tells the story to some one whom he fancies will sympathize, and that man or woman or child listens with indifference, or pooh-poohs it away—do you suppose that child will ever drink a bitterer drop? I tell you nay, and if the rough grinding heel of the busy, insatiate world, were not on us all the time, we should know and feel it. Nor is the suffering momentary, as many suppose. How can it be, when some such juvenile experience often colors a whole life? I say children suffer immensely more than is believed. Take a child's first day at school; thrust into a crowd of uproarious mischievous little savages, shrinking, cowering, trembling away from their rude contact, with heaving chest, and tear-laden eyes, choking down the misery made so intolerable by suppression, do you tell me that is "a trifle"? Take the child who sits intensely listening to some story related between grown-up people, when suddenly his presence is recollected and the peremptory summons "to bed," is promulgated without a thought of the wise clemency of a reprieved ten minutes. I well remember in my days of pinafore and pantalettedom, an old maid who used to say "that child," in a tone that made all my curls stand on end. For years I agitated my mind with the question whether old maids went to heaven; because, strong as were my predilections for that blissful state, I was in no wise content to share them with her. Nor, shall I soon forget the transition age, when too tall for short dresses and too short for tall ones; called "nothing but a child," when I was anxious to do the stately young lady; and begged to recollect that "I was no longer a child," when a fit of obstreperous romping overtook me with a vigor I could not resist; called a goose for blushing if a man spoke to me, and "did I think he could notice such a child as me?" and begged to remember "my manners" when I bounced off next time without noticing the young man. Driven to the verge of desperation by my inability to define my place in the world, and disgusted enough with this terrestrial ball to kick it as I would any other. A few more inches to my stature, however, settled all that. Then was my time!
While I am on this subject, I would like to ask, why should not a child's fancy in the way of food—I refer to their intense dislike of certain things—be regarded, as much as the repugnance of an adult. I consider it a great piece of cruelty to force a child to eat things that are repulsive to it, because somebody once wrote a wise saw to the effect, "that children should eat whatever is set before them." I have often seen the poor little victims shudder and choke at sight of a bit of fat meat, or a little scum of cream on boiled milk; toothsome enough to those who like them, but in their case a purgatorial infliction. Whenever there is this decided antipathy, nature should be respected, even in the person of the smallest child; and he who would act otherwise is himself smaller than the child over whom he would so unjustifiably tyrannize.
There are people who, having no children of their own, resolve to adopt one. This is often well, and often ill, too. Ill—when the self-constituted parent only wants a child as he would a pet dog, and puts it through no higher course of training; when he feeds it from his own plate with choice bits, till it becomes too dainty for the chance wayside bone, and then, getting weary of the pastime, opens the door and thrusts it out to forage again in gutters and ash-heaps and street corners. Such things have been. Let none assume this sacred relation who are not prepared for its sacrifices as well as its pleasures—who have not counted in days of sickness, and hours of childish waywardness, and possible hereditary moral weeds to be rooted out; for these little stray waifs of humanity suffer much from these causes, physically and morally. Let no one, we say, open wide his arms and doors to it, unless God's patience be in his soul, God's all-suffering, all-forgiving love, in his heart, to weave a chord from that child's heart to his own, over which no vibration shall pass unheeded, no more than if it were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.
The phrase, "Vulgar Saints," occurs in a late work of great repute, in which the author's aristocratic tendencies stick out through some of the otherwise finest passages ever penned. "Vulgar Saints!" The term itself is a contradiction: there never was, or will be, a vulgar saint; true religion is sublimating, etherealizing. "Breeding" has nothing to do with it; there are vulgar hypocrites, but never a vulgar saint. We might carry you to old houses that never knew a carpet or piano, and leading you up the rickety stairs, into a rough chamber, show you the mother on her knees, pleading with an eloquence no college could ever teach, for her absent sailor-boy; or show you the wrinkled grandmother, who never saw a grammar, singing some old hymn which brings the tears to your eyes, and all your long-forgotten follies to daylight. True religion banishes vulgarity. It is calm-eyed, soft-voiced, all-pervading, like the warm sunshine. There never was a "Vulgar Saint." We don't care what are his antecedents, or where he lives, or what he eats, or what clothes he wears, or how rough are his toil-worn hands, he has that in him which lifts him far beyond turreted libraries, stained-glass windows, and softly carpeted floors, and allies him with the angels; although through the broken roof above his head, the stars may nightly look in upon his peaceful slumbers.
THE END.
Transcriber's Note:
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.
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