James L. Hughes

THE OVERTHROW OF COERCION.

Dickens, in the preface to Nicholas Nickleby, states that, as Pickwick Papers had given him an audience, he determined to carry out a long-cherished plan and write for the purpose of driving out of existence a class of bad private schools, of which certain schools in Yorkshire were the worst types. He drew a picture of low cunning, avarice, ignorance, imposture, and brutality in Squeers that astounded his audience, and led to the closing of most of the Yorkshire private schools and to the overthrow of tyranny in schools throughout the civilized world. Tyranny and corporal punishment still exist, but not in the best schools. Not one child weeps now on account of corporal punishment for every hundred who wailed bitterly for the same reason when Froebel and Dickens began their loving work. Year by year the good work goes on. Men are learning the better ways of guiding and governing childhood. We can not yet say when men and women in the homes and schools everywhere shall understand the child and their own powers so thoroughly that there shall be no more corporal punishment inflicted, but we do know that the abatement of the terrible brutality began with the revelations of Froebel and Dickens. Froebel taught the new philosophy, Dickens sent it quivering through the hearts and consciences of mankind.

Members of the highest classes in England have been imprisoned near the close of the nineteenth century for improper methods of punishing children that would have excited no comment when Dickens described Squeers a little more than half a century earlier. In the report to the British Government, at the close of his remarkable half-century of honourable and very able educational work, Sir Joshua Fitch said: “In watching the gradual development of the training colleges for women from year to year, nothing is more striking than the increased attention which is being paid in those institutions to the true principles of infant teaching and discipline. The circular which has recently been issued by your lordships, and which is designed to enforce and explain these principles, would, if put forth a few years ago, have fallen on unprepared soil, and would indeed have seemed to many teachers both in and out of training colleges to be scarcely intelligible. Now its counsels will be welcomed with sympathy and full appreciation.”

Dickens describes Squeers as a man “whose appearance was not prepossessing.”

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental: being of a greenish gray, and in shape resembling the fanlight of a street door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner.

He then proceeds to reveal the character of Squeers by a series of incidents:

Mr. Squeers was standing in a box by one of the coffee-room fireplaces. In a corner of the seat was a very small deal trunk, tied round with a scanty piece of cord; and on the trunk was perched—his lace-up half-boots and corduroy trousers dangling in the air—a diminutive boy, with his shoulders drawn up to his ears, and his hands planted on his knees, who glanced timidly at the schoolmaster, from time to time, with evident dread and apprehension.

“Half-past three,” muttered Mr. Squeers, turning from the window, and looking sulkily at the coffee-room clock. “There will be nobody here to-day.”Much vexed by this reflection, Mr. Squeers looked at the little boy to see whether he was doing anything he could beat him for. As he happened not to be doing anything at all, he merely boxed his ears, and told him not to do it again.

“At midsummer,” muttered Mr. Squeers, resuming his complaint, “I took down ten boys; ten twentys is two hundred pound. I go back at eight o’clock to-morrow morning, and have got only three—three oughts is an ought—three twos is six—sixty pound. What’s come of all the boys? what’s parents got in their heads? what does it all mean?”

Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a violent sneeze.

“Halloa, sir!” growled the schoolmaster, turning round. “What’s that, sir?”

“Nothing, please, sir,” said the little boy.

“Nothing, sir?” exclaimed Mr. Squeers.

“Please, sir, I sneezed,” rejoined the boy, trembling till the little trunk shook under him.

“Oh! sneezed, did you?” retorted Mr. Squeers. “Then what did you say ‘nothing’ for, sir?”

In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a couple of knuckles into each of his eyes and began to cry, wherefore Mr. Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of his face, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other.

“Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young gentleman,” said Mr. Squeers, “and then I’ll give you the rest. Will you hold that noise, sir?”

“Ye—ye—yes,” sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face very hard with the Beggar’s Petition in printed calico.

“Then do so at once, sir,” said Squeers. “Do you hear?”

The waiter at this juncture announced a gentleman who wished to interview Mr. Squeers, and the schoolmaster, in an undertone, said to the poor boy: “Put your handkerchief in your pocket, you little scoundrel, or I’ll murder you when the gentleman goes.”

Affecting not to see the gentleman when he entered, Mr. Squeers feigned to be mending a pen and trying to comfort the boy he had so grossly abused.“My dear child,” said Squeers, “all people have their trials. This early trial of yours, that is fit to make your little heart burst and your very eyes come out of your head with crying, what is it? Nothing—less than nothing. You are leaving your friends, but you will have a father in me, my dear, and a mother in Mrs. Squeers.”

Our indignation is still further aroused when we hear the conversation between Mr. Squeers and his visitor, who is named Snawley, and who was “a sleek, flat-nosed man, bearing in his countenance an expression of much mortification and sanctity.”

He had brought with him two little boys, whose stepfather he was. Their mother had a little money in her own right and he was afraid she might squander it on her boys, so he wished to dispose of them. Our blood runs cold as we hear the two scoundrels plotting against the unfortunate boys. They are to be kept by Squeers till grown up. No questions are to be asked “so long as the payments are regular.” “They are to be supplied with razors when grown up, and never allowed home for holidays, and not permitted to write home, except a circular at Christmas to say they never were so happy and hope they may never be sent for, and no questions are to be asked in case anything happens to them.”

We learn the unutterable selfishness of Squeers as he sits eating a sumptuous breakfast, while the five wretched and hungry little boys, who are to accompany him to Yorkshire to Dotheboys Hall, look at him. He had ordered bread and butter for three, which he cut into five portions, and “two-penn’orth of milk” for the five boys. While waiting for the bread to come he said, as he took a large mouthful of beef and toast, “Conquer your passions, boys, and don’t be eager after vittles. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur.”

Nicholas Nickleby had been engaged to teach under Squeers in Dotheboys Hall. He was shocked at many things he heard and saw the night he arrived in Yorkshire.But the school itself and the appearance of the wretched pupils completed his discomfiture.

The pupils—the young noblemen! How the last faint traces of hope, the remotest glimmering of any good to be derived from his efforts in this den, faded from the mind of Nicholas as he looked in dismay around! Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there were the bleared eye, the harelip, the crooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. There were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining; there were vicious-faced boys, with leaden eyes, like malefactors in a jail; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness. With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth, with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every revengeful passion that can fester in swollen hearts, eating its evil way to their core in silence, what an incipient hell was breeding here!

It was Mr. Squeers’s custom on the first afternoon after his return from London to call the school together to make announcements, and read letters written by himself, which he pretended had been written by the relatives of the boys. Accordingly, the first afternoon after the arrival of Nicholas, Squeers entered the schoolroom “with a small bundle of papers in his hand, and Mrs. S. followed with a pair of canes.”

“Let any boy speak a word without leave,” said Mr. Squeers, “and I’ll take the skin off his back.”

Two letters will serve as samples of the rest:

“Graymarsh. Stand up, Graymarsh.”Graymarsh stood up, while Squeers read his letter:

“Graymarsh’s maternal aunt is very glad to hear he’s so well and happy, and sends her respectful compliments to Mrs. Squeers, and thinks she must be an angel. She likewise thinks Mr. Squeers is too good for this world; but hopes he may long be spared to carry on the business. Would have sent the two pair of stockings as desired, but is short of money, so forwards a tract instead, and hopes Graymarsh will put his trust in Providence. Hopes, above all, that he will study in every thing to please Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, and look upon them as his only friends; and that he will love Master Squeers; and not object to sleeping five in a bed, which no Christian should. Ah!” said Squeers, folding it up, “a delightful letter. Very affecting indeed.”

“Mobbs” was next called, and his letter was read to him:

“Mobbs’s stepmother,” said Squeers, “took to her bed on hearing that he wouldn’t eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to know, by an early post, where he expects to go to, if he quarrels with his vittles; and with what feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow’s-liver broth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it. This was told her in the London newspapers—not by Mr. Squeers, for he is too kind and too good to set anybody against anybody—and it has vexed her so much, Mobbs can’t think. She is sorry to find he is discontented, which is sinful and horrid, and hopes Mr. Squeers will flog him into a happier state of mind; with this view, she has also stopped his halfpenny a week pocket-money, and given a double-bladed knife with a corkscrew in it to the missionaries, which she had bought on purpose for him.”

“A sulky state of feeling,” said Squeers, after a terrible pause, during which he had moistened the palm of his right hand again, “won’t do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept up. Mobbs, come to me!”

Mobbs moved slowly toward the desk, rubbing his eyes in anticipation of good cause for doing so; and he soon afterward retired by the side door, with as good a cause as a boy need have.

There are still school tyrants who talk with philosophic air of flogging children to make them happier, and others who say with hard tones and clenched hands that “the one thing they will not allow in their schools is a sulky boy or girl,” and they mean, when they say so, that if a boy is sulky they take no steps to find out the cause of his disease or the natural remedy for it, but they apply the universal remedy of the old-fashioned quack trainer and whip the poor boy, who is already suffering from some physical or nervous derangement. Squeers and such teachers are brother tyrants. They practise the Squeers’s doctrine—“A sulky state of feeling won’t do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept up. Mobbs, come to me”—to make children cheerful and contented.

One of the most heart-stirring cases in Dotheboys Hall was that of poor Smike. He had been sent to Squeers when an infant. He was a young man now, but he had been starved so that he wore still around his long neck the frill of the collar that loving hands had placed there when he was a little child. Ill treatment and lack of proper food had made him almost an imbecile, and he was the drudge of the institution. Nicholas was attracted by the anxious, longing looks of the boy, as his eyes followed Squeers from place to place on their arrival from London.

He was lame; and as he feigned to be busy in arranging the table, glanced at the letters with a look so keen, and yet so dispirited and hopeless, that Nicholas could hardly bear to watch him.

“What are you bothering about there, Smike?” cried Mrs. Squeers; “let the things alone, can’t you.”

“Eh!” said Squeers, looking up. “Oh! it’s you, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the youth, pressing his hands together, as though to control, by force, the nervous wandering of his fingers; “is there——”

“Well!” said Squeers.

“Have you—did anybody—has nothing been heard—about me?”

“Devil a bit,” replied Squeers testily.

The lad withdrew his eyes, and, putting his hand to his face, moved toward the door.

“Not a word,” resumed Squeers, “and never will be.”

This is one of the pathetic pictures that awoke the heart of humanity. Nicholas was the first person who had ever sympathized with Smike, so the poor fellow naturally gave to Nicholas the pent-up love of his dwarfed nature, and kept near him whenever it was possible to do so.

Dickens made Smike the centre of the terrible interest in Dotheboys Hall.

Poor Smike was so badly treated that he ran away, but, after a long chase, he was brought home in triumph by Mrs. Squeers, bound like an animal. Squeers, of course, determined to flog him before all the boys as an example, and this led to the first great step toward the overthrow of the power of Squeers in Dotheboys Hall.

The news that Smike had been caught and brought back in triumph, ran like wildfire through the hungry community, and expectation was on tiptoe all the morning. On tiptoe it was destined to remain, however, until afternoon; when Squeers, having refreshed himself with his dinner, and further strengthened himself by an extra libation or so, made his appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a countenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new—in short, purchased that morning, expressly for the occasion.

“Is every boy here?” asked Squeers, in a tremendous voice.

Every boy was there, but every boy was afraid to speak; so Squeers glared along the lines to assure himself; and every eye drooped, and every head cowered down, as he did so.

“Each boy keep his place,” said Squeers, administering his favourite blow to the desk, and regarding with gloomy satisfaction the universal start which it never failed to occasion. “Nickleby! to your desk, sir.”

It was remarked by more than one small observer that there was a very curious and unusual expression in the usher’s face; but he took his seat, without opening his lips in reply. Squeers, casting a triumphant glance at his assistant, and a look of most comprehensive despotism on the boys, left the room, and shortly afterward returned, dragging Smike by the collar—or rather by that fragment of his jacket which was nearest the place where his collar would have been had he boasted such a decoration.

In any other place the appearance of the wretched, jaded, spiritless object would have occasioned a murmur of compassion and remonstrance. It had some effect, even there; for the lookers-on moved uneasily in their seats, and a few of the boldest ventured to steal looks at each other, expressive of indignation and pity.

They were lost on Squeers, however, whose gaze was fastened on the luckless Smike, as he inquired, according to custom in such cases, whether he had anything to say for himself.

“Nothing, I suppose?” said Squeers, with a diabolical grin.

Smike glanced round, and his eye rested for an instant on Nicholas, as if he had expected him to intercede; but his look was riveted on his desk.

“Have you anything to say?” demanded Squeers again; giving his right arm two or three flourishes to try its power and suppleness. “Stand a little out of the way, Mrs. Squeers, my dear; I’ve hardly got room enough.”

“Spare me, sir!” cried Smike.

“Oh! that’s all, is it?” said Squeers. “Yes, I’ll flog you within an inch of your life, and spare you that.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Mrs. Squeers, “that’s a good ’un!”

“I was driven to do it,” said Smike faintly, and casting another imploring look on him.

“Driven to do it, were you?” said Squeers. “Oh! it wasn’t your fault; it was mine, I suppose—eh?”

“A nasty, ungrateful, pig-headed, brutish, obstinate, sneaking dog,” exclaimed Mrs. Squeers, taking Smike’s head under her arm, and administering a cuff at every epithet; “what does he mean by that?”

“Stand aside, my dear,” replied Squeers. “We’ll try and find out.”

Mrs. Squeers, being out of breath with her exertions, complied. Squeers caught the boy firmly in his grip; one desperate cut had fallen on his body—he was wincing from the lash, and uttering a scream of pain—it was raised again, and again about to fall—when Nicholas Nickleby suddenly starting up, cried: “Stop!” in a voice that made the rafters ring.

“Who cried stop?” said Squeers, turning savagely round.“I,” said Nicholas, stepping forward. “This must not go on.”

“Must not go on!” cried Squeers, almost in a shriek.

“No!” thundered Nicholas.

Aghast and stupefied by the boldness of the interference, Squeers released his hold of Smike, and, falling back a pace or two, gazed upon Nicholas with looks that were positively frightful.

“I say must not,” repeated Nicholas, nothing daunted; “shall not. I will prevent it.”

Squeers continued to gaze upon him, with his eyes starting out of his head; but astonishment had actually, for the moment, bereft him of speech.

“You have disregarded all my quiet interference in the miserable lad’s behalf,” said Nicholas; “you have returned no answer to the letter in which I begged forgiveness for him, and offered to be responsible that he would remain quietly here. Don’t blame me for this public interference. You have brought it upon yourself, not I.”

“Sit down, beggar!” screamed Squeers, almost beside himself with rage, and seizing Smike as he spoke.

“Wretch!” rejoined Nicholas fiercely, “touch him at your peril! I will not stand by and see it done. My blood is up, and I have the strength of ten such men as you. Look to yourself, for, by Heaven, I will not spare you, if you drive me on!”

“Stand back!” cried Squeers, brandishing his weapon.

“I have a long series of insults to avenge,” said Nicholas, flushed with passion; “and my indignation is aggravated by the dastardly cruelties practised on helpless infancy in this foul den. Have a care; for, if you do raise the devil within me, the consequences shall fall heavily upon your own head!”

He had scarcely spoken, when Squeers, in a violent outbreak of wrath, and with a cry like the howl of a wild beast, spit upon him, and struck him a blow across the face with his instrument of torture, which raised up a bar of livid flesh as it was inflicted. Smarting with the agony of the blow, and concentrating into that one moment all his feelings of rage, scorn, and indignation, Nicholas sprang upon him, wrested the weapon from his hand, and pinning him by the throat, beat the ruffian till he roared for mercy.

The boys—with the exception of Master Squeers, who, coming to his father’s assistance, harassed the enemy in the rear—moved not hand or foot; but Mrs. Squeers, with many shrieks for aid, hung on to the tail of her partner’s coat, and endeavoured to drag him from his infuriated adversary; while Miss Squeers, who had been peeping through the keyhole in expectation of a very different scene, darted in at the very beginning of the attack, and after launching a shower of inkstands at the usher’s head, beat Nicholas to her heart’s content: animating herself at every blow with the recollection of his having refused her proffered love, and thus imparting additional strength to an arm which (as she took after her mother in this respect) was, at no time, one of the weakest.

Nicholas, in the full torrent of his violence, felt the blows no more than if they had been dealt with feathers; but, becoming tired of the noise and uproar, and feeling that his arm grew weak besides, he threw all his remaining strength into half a dozen finishing cuts and flung Squeers from him, with all the force he could muster. The violence of his fall precipitated Mrs. Squeers completely over an adjacent form; and Squeers, striking his head against it in his descent, lay at his full length on the ground, stunned and motionless.

Having brought affairs to this happy termination, and ascertained, to his thorough satisfaction, that Squeers was only stunned, and not dead (upon which point he had had some unpleasant doubts at first), Nicholas left his family to restore him and retired to consider what course he had better adopt. He looked anxiously round for Smike, as he left the room, but he was nowhere to be seen.

After a brief consideration, he packed up a few clothes in a small leathern valise, and, finding that nobody offered to oppose his progress, marched boldly out by the front door and started to walk to London.

Near the school he met John Browdie, the honest corn factor.

John saw that Nicholas had received a severe blow, and asked the reason.

“The fact is,” said Nicholas, not very well knowing how to make the avowal, “the fact is, that I have been ill-treated.”

“Noa!” interposed John Browdie, in a tone of compassion; for he was a giant in strength and stature, and Nicholas, very likely, in his eyes, seemed a mere dwarf; “dean’t say thot.”

“Yes, I have,” replied Nicholas, “by that man Squeers, and I have beaten him soundly, and am leaving this place in consequence.”

“What!” cried John Browdie, with such an ecstatic shout, that the horse quite shied at it. “Beatten the schoolmeasther! Ho! ho! ho! Beatten the schoolmeasther! who ever heard o’ the loike o’ that noo! Giv’ us thee hond agean, yongster. Beatten the schoolmeasther! Dang it, I loove thee for’t.”

And the world agreed, and still agrees, with John Browdie.

Squeers and Smike began the real movement against cruelty and corporal punishment not only in schools, but in homes. Dickens described both characters so admirably that the world hated Squeers and pitied Smike to the limit of its power to hate and pity, and unconsciously the world associated cruelty and corporal punishment with Squeers. This was exactly what Dickens desired. The hatred of Squeers led to a strong disapproval of his practices. Corporal punishment was associated with an unpopular man, and it lost its respectable character and never regained it. The dislike for Squeers was accentuated by the long-continued sympathy and hopefulness felt for Smike as he gradually succumbed to the terrible disease, consumption, induced by poor food, neglect, and cruelty.

Squeers and Smike are doing their good work still, and doing it well. They could do it much better if men and women when they have become acquainted with Squeers would candidly ask themselves the question, “In what respects am I like Squeers?” instead of yielding to the feeling of self-satisfaction that they are so very unlike him.

Just before writing about the coercive tyranny of Squeers in his school, Dickens had written Oliver Twist, in which he had made a most vigorous attack upon two classes of characters for their tyrannical treatment of children, and especially on account of their frequent use of corporal punishment. Bumble represented the officials in institutions for children, and “the gentleman in the white waistcoat” was given as a type of the advanced Christian philanthropy of his time. He meant well, gave his time freely to attend the meetings of the board, and supposed he was doing right; but Dickens wished to let philanthropists see that they were terribly cruel to the helpless children, and that their good intentions could not condone their harshness, even though it resulted from ignorance and lack of reverence for childhood, and not from deliberate evil intentions.

Poor, friendless little Oliver! His beautiful face and gentle spirit might have touched the hardest heart, but the institutional heart becomes hard easily, even two generations after the time of Bumble and “the gentleman in the immaculate white waistcoat.”

Dickens says:

It must not be supposed that Oliver was denied the benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious consolation in the workhouse. As for exercise, it was nice cold weather, and he was allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump, in a stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who prevented his catching cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his frame, by repeated applications of the cane. As for society, he was carried every other day into the hall, where the boys dined, and there sociably flogged as a public warning and example. And so far from being denied the advantage of religious consolation, he was kicked into the same apartment every evening at prayer time, and there permitted to listen to, and console his mind with, a general supplication of the boys, containing a special clause, therein inserted by authority of the board, in which they entreated to be made good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be guarded from the sins and vices of Oliver Twist.

After Oliver had been sent to work for Mr. Sowerberry he was goaded to desperation one evening by the disrespectful remarks of Noah Claypole about his mother, and bravely gave the mean bully the personal chastisement he so richly deserved. Noah was sent to complain to the parish board, and the gentleman in the white waistcoat said:

“Bumble, just step up to Sowerberry’s with your cane, and see what’s best to be done. Don’t spare him, Bumble.”

“No, I will not, sir,” replied the beadle, adjusting the wax end which was twisted round the bottom of his cane, for purposes of parochial flagellation.

“Tell Sowerberry not to spare him either. They’ll never do anything with him without stripes and bruises,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

The innocent, manly child was beaten unmercifully and abused cruelly by Sowerberry and Bumble, yet he bore all their taunts and floggings without a tear until he was alone. Then, “when there was none to see or hear him, he fell upon his knees on the floor, and, hiding his face in his hands, wept such tears as, God send for the credit of our nature, few so young may ever have cause to pour out before him!”

There are not many “gentlemen in white waistcoats” of the type described by Dickens now on charitable boards, and the enlightened sentiment of civilized countries turns the legal processes of nations upon officials who dare to treat children unkindly. Dickens made humane people everywhere sympathize with Mr. Meagles, who said: “Whenever I see a beadle in full fig coming down a street on a Sunday at the head of a charity school, I am obliged to turn and run away, or I should hit him.”

Ten years after Squeers began his good work Dickens produced Squeers’s associate, Mr. Creakle, the master of Salem House.

David Copperfield was sent to Salem House by his stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, because he bit his hand when he was punishing him unjustly. For this offence he was compelled to wear a placard on his back on which was written: “Take care of him. He bites.” This dastardly practice of labelling youthful offenders persisted until very recent times. Children in schools are even yet in some places degraded by inconsiderate teachers by being compelled to wear some indication of their misconduct. Dickens vigorously condemned this outrage in 1849.

David was sent to school during the holidays, and was soon brought before Mr. Creakle by Tungay, his servant with the wooden leg.

“So,” said Mr. Creakle, “this is the young gentleman whose teeth are to be filed! Turn him round.”

Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small and deep in his head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin, wet-looking hair that was just turning gray brushed across each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his forehead.

“Now,” said Mr. Creakle. “What’s the report of this boy?”

“There’s nothing against him yet,” returned the man with the wooden leg. “There has been no opportunity.”

I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin and quiet) were not disappointed.

“Come here, sir!” said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.

“Come here!” said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.

“I have the happiness of knowing your stepfather,” whispered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear; “and a worthy man he is, and a man of strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do you know me! Hey?” said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.

“Not yet, sir,” I said, flinching with the pain.

“Not yet! Hey?” repeated Mr. Creakle. “But you will soon. Hey?”

“You will soon. Hey?” repeated the man with the wooden leg. I afterward found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s interpreter to the boys.

I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I felt all this while as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.

“I’ll tell you what I am,” whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at last, with a screw at parting that brought the water to my eyes, “I’m a Tartar.”

Mr. Creakle proved to be as good as his word. He was a Tartar.

On the first day of school he revealed himself. His opening address was very brief and to the point.

“Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re about in this new half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up to the punishment. I won’t flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing yourselves; you won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy!”

When this dreadful exordium was over, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me that if I were famous for biting, he was famous for biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought of that, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe.

Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction, which only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar instances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the establishment was writhing and crying before the day’s work began; and how much of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.

I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am confident that he couldn’t resist a chubby boy especially; that there was a fascination in such a subject which made him restless in his mind until he had scored and marked him for the day. I was chubby myself, and ought to know. I am sure when I think of the fellow now, my blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I should feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in his power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held than to be Lord High Admiral or Commander-in-chief: in either of which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less mischief.Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless idol, how abject we were to him! what a launch in life I think it now, on looking-back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!

Twenty years after Dickens described Creakle a new teacher stood before a class in a large American city, and, holding a long rattan cane above his head, said in a fierce, threatening tone: “Do you see that cane? Would you like to feel it? Hey? Well, break any one of my forty-eight rules and you will feel it all right.” The tyrant in adulthood dies hard. No wonder. Tyranny has been wrought into our natures by centuries of blind faith in corporal punishment as the supreme agency in saving the race from moral wreck and anarchy in childhood and youth. Men sought no agency for the development of the good in young lives. As they conceived it, their duty was done if they prevented their children from doing wrong, and the quickest, easiest, most effective way they knew to secure coercion was by corporal punishment. The most successful tyrant, he who could most thoroughly terrorize children and keep them down most completely, was regarded as the best disciplinarian. Squeers and Creakle were fair exponents of the almost universally recognised theory of their day, and they had many successors in the real schools of the generation that followed them. No man could remain a week in a school now if he began on the opening day in the way Creakle did.

Dickens was right in revealing the position of the teacher as one of “great trust,” and he was right, too, in insisting that Creakle was no more fitted to be a teacher “than to be Lord High Admiral or Commander-in-chief, in either of which capacities it is probable he would have done infinitely less mischief.” This was another plea for good normal schools and for state supervision.

Dickens makes a good point in his remark about the degradation of abject submission to a man of such parts and pretensions as Creakle. Subordination always dwarfs the human soul, but when the child is forced to a position of abject subordination to a coarse tyrant the degradation is more complete and more humiliating. It does not mend matters for the child when the tyrant is his father. The tyranny of parenthood is usually the hardest to escape from.

In the same book in which Creakle is described—David Copperfield—Dickens deals with the tyranny of the home. David’s widowed mother married Mr. Murdstone, a hard, severe, austere, religious man, with an equally dreadful sister—Jane Murdstone.

Firmness was the grand quality on which both Mr. and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way that it was another name for tyranny, and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour, that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this: Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness.

There was no more depressing tyranny in the time of Dickens than the tyranny exercised in the name of a rigid and repressive religion.

The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black-velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says “miserable sinners,” as if she were calling all the congregation names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer book, and makes my side ache.

Mrs. Chillip said: “Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself and calls it the Divine Nature,” and “what such people as the Murdstones call their religion is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.” Mild and cautious Mr. Chillip observed, “I don’t find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament,” and his good wife added, “The darker tyrant Mr. Murdstone becomes, the more ferocious is his religious doctrine.”

When David first learned that Mr. Murdstone had married his mother he relieved the swelling in his little heart by crying in his bedroom. His mother naturally felt a sympathy for her boy. Mr. Murdstone reproved her for her lack of “firmness,” ordered her out of the room, and gave David his first lesson in “obedience.”

“David,” he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, “if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I beat him.”

I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now.

“I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, ‘I’ll conquer that fellow;’ and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do it.”

There are still a few schoolmaster tyrants who boast of their ability “to subdue children.” They are barbarians, who understand neither the new education nor the new theology, who have not learned to recognise and reverence the individual selfhood of each child, who themselves fear God’s power more than they feel his love.

When David was at home for the holidays he remained in his own room a considerable part of the time reading. This aroused the anger of Mr. Murdstone, and he charged David with being sullen.

“I was sorry, David,” said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head and his eyes stiffly toward me, “to observe that you are of a sullen disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must endeavour, sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I faltered. “I have never meant to be sullen since I came back.”

“Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!” he returned so fiercely, that I saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose between us. “You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own room. You have kept your room when you ought to have been here. You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there. Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know me, David. I will have it done.”

Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.

“I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing toward myself,” he continued, “and toward Jane Murdstone, and toward your mother. I will not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a child. Sit down.”

He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.

David’s lessons, which had been “along a path of roses” when his mother was alone with him, became a path of thorns after the Murdstones came.

The lessons were a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard—perfectly unintelligible.

Let me remember how it used to be. I come into the parlour after breakfast with my books, an exercise book and a slate. My mother is ready for me, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone, or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head all sliding away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by the bye?

I hand the first book to my mother. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over half a dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:

“Oh, Davy, Davy!”

“Now, Clara,” says Mr. Murdstone, “be firm with the boy. Don’t say ‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’ That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know it.”

“He does not know it,” Miss Murdstone interposed awfully.

“I am really afraid he does not,” says my mother.

“Then you see, Clara,” returns Miss Murdstone, “you should just give him the book back, and make him know it.”

“Yes, certainly,” says my mother; “that’s what I intended to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.”

I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be worked out when my other tasks are done.

There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling snowball. The bigger it gets the more stupid I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says in a deep warning voice:

“Clara!”

My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her brother’s attention to me by saying, “Clara, my dear, there’s nothing like work—give your boy an exercise.”

One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane—a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.

“I tell you, Clara,” said Mr. Murdstone, “I have been often flogged myself.”

“To be sure; of course,” said Miss Murdstone.

“Certainly, my dear Jane,” faltered my mother meekly. “But—but do you think it did Edward good?”

“Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?” asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.

“That’s the point!” said his sister.

To this my mother returned “Certainly, my dear Jane,” and said no more.

I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.

“Now, David,” he said—and I saw that cast again, as he said it—“you must be far more careful to-day than usual.” He gave the cane another poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it, laid it down beside him, with an expressive look, and took up his book.

This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lesson slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page. I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness there was no checking.

We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in, with an idea of distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.

“Clara!” said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.

“I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,” said my mother.

I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up the cane.

“Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her to-day. That would be stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can hardly expect so much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.”

They went upstairs. David was beaten unmercifully, notwithstanding his piteous cries, and in his desperation he bit the hand of Murdstone. For this it seemed as if Murdstone would have beaten him to death but for the interference of the women. “Then he was gone, and the door locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor.”

Oh! Blind, self-satisfied “child-quellers,” who so ignorantly boast of your ability to conquer children! Dickens described Murdstone for you. Think of that awful picture of the beautiful boy, created in the image of God, lying on the floor, “fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging,” with every element of sweetness and strength in his life turned to darkness and fury, and next time you propose to “conquer a child” who has been rendered partially insane, possibly by your treatment, and with whom you have unnecessarily forced a crisis, remember the Murdstone tragedy—a real tragedy, notwithstanding the fact that the boy’s life was spared.

Remember, too, that your very presence and manner may blight the young lives that you are supposed to develop.

When Mr. Murdstone was sending David away to work he gave him his philosophy of coercion as his parting advice:

“David,” said Mr. Murdstone, “to the young, this is a world for action; not for moping and droning in.”

—“As you do,” added his sister.

“Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the young, this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break it.”

“For stubbornness won’t do here,” said his sister. “What it wants is to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!”

First he fills the boy as full as possible of self-depreciation, and then trains him to expect that his leading experiences in life will consist of being forced into submission, conforming to the plans of others, bending to authority, the breaking of his will, and the crushing of his interests and purposes. What a depressing outlook to give a child!

John Willet, in Barnaby Rudge, is used as a means of convincing parents that they should respect the feelings and opinions of children. No two maxims relating to child training are more utterly wrong in principle, more devoid of the simplest elements of child sympathy and child reverence, than the time-honoured nonsense that “children should be seen and not heard,” and “children should speak only when they are spoken to.”

Dickens exposes these maxims to deserved ridicule in John Willet’s treatment of his son Joe. John kept the Maypole Inn. Joe was a fine, sturdy young man, but his father still ruled him with an unbending stubbornness that he believed to be a necessary exercise of authority. John was encouraged in his tyranny over his son by some of his old cronies, who were in the habit of sitting in the Maypole in the evenings and praising John for his firmness in training his son. One evening a stranger made a remark about a gentleman, to which Joe replied.

“Silence, sir!” cried his father.

“What a chap you are, Joe!” said Long Parkes.

“Such a inconsiderate lad!” murmured Tom Cobb.

“Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own father’s face!” exclaimed the parish clerk metaphorically.

“What have I done?” reasoned poor Joe.

“Silence, sir!” returned his father; “what do you mean by talking, when you see people that are more than two or three times your age sitting still and silent and not dreaming of saying a word?”

“Why that’s the proper time for me to talk, isn’t it?” said Joe rebelliously.

“The proper time, sir!” retorted his father, “the proper time’s no time.”

“Ah, to be sure!” muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.

“The proper time’s no time, sir,” repeated John Willet; “when I was your age I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and improved myself, that’s what I did.”

“It’s all very fine talking,” muttered Joe, who had been fidgeting in his chair with divers uneasy gestures. “But if you mean to tell me that I’m never to open my lips——”

“Silence, sir!” roared his father. “No, you never are. When your opinion’s wanted, you give it. When you’re spoke to you speak. When your opinion’s not wanted and you’re not spoke to, don’t give an opinion and don’t you speak. The world’s undergone a nice alteration since my time, certainly. My belief is that there an’t any boys left—that there isn’t such a thing as a boy—that there’s nothing now between a male baby and a man—and that all the boys went out with his blessed majesty King George the Second.”

On another occasion Joe had been hit with a whip by a stranger, and he expressed his opinion to Mr. Varden about the character of the man who hit him.

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said his father.

“I won’t, father. It’s all along of you that he ventured to do what he did. Seeing me treated like a child, and put down like a fool, he plucks up a heart and has a fling at a fellow that he thinks—and may well think, too—hasn’t a grain of spirit. But he’s mistaken, as I’ll show him, and as I’ll show all of you before long.”

“Does the boy know what he’s saying of!” cried the astonished John Willet.

“Father,” returned Joe, “I know what I say and mean, well—better than you do when you hear me. I can bear with you, but I can not bear the contempt that your treating me in the way you do brings upon me from others every day. Look at other young men of my age. Have they no liberty, no will, no right to speak? Are they obliged to sit mumchance, and to be ordered about till they are the laughingstock of young and old? I am a byword all over Chigwell, and I say—and it’s fairer my saying so now, than waiting till you are dead, and I have got your money—I say, that before long I shall be driven to break such bounds, and that when I do, it won’t be me that you’ll have to blame, but your own self, and no other.”

John never trusted his son, never entered into his plans, and treated even the most sacred things of Joe’s life with contempt.

Joe was about to start to London on business for his father, and he was to ride a mare that was so slow that a young man could not enjoy the prospect of riding her.

“Don’t you ride hard,” said his father.

“I should be puzzled to do that, I think, father,” Joe replied, casting a disconsolate look at the animal.

“None of your impudence, sir, if you please,” retorted old John. “What would you ride, sir? A wild ass or zebra would be too tame for you, wouldn’t he, eh, sir? You’d like to ride a roaring lion, wouldn’t you, sir, eh, sir? Hold your tongue, sir.” When Mr. Willet, in his differences with his son, had exhausted all the questions that occurred to him, and Joe had said nothing at all in answer, he generally wound up by bidding him hold his tongue.“And what does the boy mean,” added Mr. Willet, after he had stared at him for a little time, in a species of stupefaction, “by cocking his hat, to such an extent! Are you going to kill the wintner, sir?”

“No,” said Joe tartly; “I’m not. Now your mind’s at ease, father.”

“With a military air, too!” said Mr. Willet, surveying him from top to toe; “with a swaggering, fire-eating, biling-water drinking sort of way with him! And what do you mean by pulling up the crocuses and snowdrops, eh, sir?”

“It’s only a little nosegay,” said Joe, reddening. “There’s no harm in that, I hope?”

“You’re a boy of business, you are, sir!” said Mr. Willet disdainfully, “to go supposing that wintners care for nosegays.”

“I don’t suppose anything of the kind,” returned Joe. “Let them keep their red noses for bottles and tankards. These are going to Mr. Varden’s house.”

“And do you suppose he minds such things as crocuses?” demanded John.

“I don’t know, and to say the truth, I don’t care,” said Joe. “Come, father, give me the money, and in the name of patience let me go.”

“There it is, sir,” replied John; “and take care of it; and mind you don’t make too much haste back, but give the mare a long rest. Do you mind?”

“Ay, I mind,” returned Joe. “She’ll need it, Heaven knows.”

“And don’t you score up too much at the Black Lion,” said John. “Mind that too.”

“Then why don’t you let me have some money of my own?” retorted Joe sorrowfully; “why don’t you, father? What do you send me into London for, giving me only the right to call for my dinner at the Black Lion, which you’re to pay for next time you go, as if I was not to be trusted with a few shillings? Why do you use me like this? It’s not right of you. You can’t expect me to be quiet under it.”

Dickens in this interview condemns several mistakes often made by parents in restraining instead of sympathizing with their children in the natural unfolding of their young manhood or womanhood. It was wrong for John Willet to ridicule Joe’s desire to ride a smart horse. It was wrong to bid him “hold his tongue.” It was wrong to criticise his method of dressing to look his very best. It was wrong to sneer at him because his consciousness of unfolding manhood and his hope of Dolly Varden’s love made him carry himself with a “military air.” What a difference it would make in the characters of young men if they all carried themselves with a military air, and walked with a consciousness of power and hope!

It was especially wrong to make fun of the nosegay Joe had pulled for Dolly Varden. What a pity it is that so few fathers or mothers can truly sympathize with their boys and girls during the period of courtship! Why should the most sacred feelings that ever stir the soul be made the subject of jest and levity by those whose hearts should most truly beat in unison with the young hearts that are aflame? If there is a time in the life of young men or women when father or mother may enter the hearts of their children as benedictions and form a blessed unity that can never be broken or undone it is surely when young hearts are hallowed by love. Yet there are few parents to whom their children can speak freely about the mysteries and the deep experiences of love that come into their lives.

It was wrong to treat Joe as if he was unworthy to be trusted with money.

Every wrong revealed by Dickens in this interview had its root in John’s feeling that it was his duty to keep Joe down, to prevent the outflow of his inner life.

Old John having long encroached a good standard inch, full measure, on the liberty of Joe, and having snipped off a Flemish ell in the matter of the parole, grew so despotic and so great, that his thirst for conquest knew no bounds. The more young Joe submitted, the more absolute old John became. The ell soon faded into nothing. Yards, furlongs, miles arose; and on went old John in the pleasantest manner possible, trimming off an exuberance in this place, shearing away some liberty of speech or action in that, and conducting himself in this small way with as much high mightiness and majesty as the most glorious tyrant that ever had his statue reared in the public ways, of ancient or of modern times.

As great men are urged on to the abuse of power (when they need urging, which is not often) by their flatterers and dependents, so old John was impelled to these exercises of authority by the applause and admiration of his Maypole cronies, who, in the intervals of their nightly pipes and pots, would shake their heads and say that Mr. Willet was a father of the good old English sort; that there were no newfangled notions or modern ways in him; that he put them in mind of what their fathers were when they were boys; that there was no mistake about him; that it would be well for the country if there were more like him, and more was the pity that there were not; with many other original remarks of that nature. Then they would condescendingly give Joe to understand that it was all for his good, and he would be thankful for it one day; and in particular, Mr. Cobb would acquaint him, that when he was his age, his father thought no more of giving him a parental kick, or a box on the ears, or a cuff on the head, or some little admonition of that sort, than he did of any other ordinary duty of life; and he would further remark, with looks of great significance, that but for this judicious bringing up, he might have never been the man he was at that present speaking; which was probable enough, as he was, beyond all question, the dullest dog of the party. In short, between old John and old John’s friends, there never was an unfortunate young fellow so bullied, badgered, worried, fretted, and browbeaten; so constantly beset, or made so tired of his life, as poor Joe Willet.

The end came at last. One evening Mr. Cobb was more aggravating than usual, and Joe’s patience could hold out no longer. He knocked the offending Cobb into a corner among the spittoons, and ran away from the unbearable tyranny of home.

What a moral catastrophe occurs when a young man leaves home with a feeling of relief! Dickens develops this thought in the case of Tom Gradgrind. With the best of intentions, with a single desire of training his son in the best possible way, Mr. Gradgrind had repressed his natural tendencies and robbed him of the joys of childhood and youth to such an extent that when he was about to go to live with Mr. Bounderby, and his sister, Louisa, asked him “if he was pleased with his prospect?” he replied, “Well, it will be getting away from home.” The boy is never to blame for such a catastrophe.

Dickens attacked another phase of the flogging mania in Barnaby Rudge, in a brief but suggestive scene. Barnaby and his mother were travelling, and were resting at the gate of a gentleman’s grounds, when the proprietor himself came along and demanded to know who they were.

“Vagrants,” said the gentleman, “vagrants and vagabonds. Thee wish to be made acquainted with the cage, dost thee—the cage, the stocks, and the whipping post? Where dost come from?”

Learning that Barnaby was weak-minded, he asked how long he had been idiotic.

“From his birth,” said the widow.

“I don’t believe it,” cried the gentleman, “not a bit of it. It’s an excuse not to work. There’s nothing like flogging to cure that disorder. I’d make a difference in him in ten minutes, I’ll be bound.”

“Heaven has made none in more than twice ten years, sir,” said the widow mildly.

“Then why don’t you shut him up? We pay enough for county institutions, damn ’em. But thou’d rather drag him about to excite charity—of course. Ay, I know thee.”

Now, this gentleman had various endearing appellations among his intimate friends. By some he was called “a country gentleman of the true school,” by some “a fine old country gentleman,” by some “a sporting gentleman,” by some “a thoroughbred Englishman,” by some “a genuine John Bull”; but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it was a pity that there were not more like him, and that because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day.

Dickens always enjoyed ridiculing the people who long for the good old times and approve of the good old customs. There are some who even yet deplore the fact that children are not repressed and coerced as they used to be, and who prophesy untold evils unless the good old customs are re-established. They long for the recurrence of the days when “lickin’ and larnin’ went hand in hand,” when “Wallop the boy, develop the man” was the popular motto, expressive of the general faith. Dickens pictured them in John Willet and this “country gentleman of the true school.” He also criticised them severely in the Chimes.

The depressing influence of another form of coercion is shown in Our Mutual Friend by the effect of Mr. Podsnap’s character on his daughter Georgiana. Mr. Podsnap was one of the absolutely positive people who know everything about everything, who never allow other people to express opinions without contradicting them, and who take every possible opportunity of expressing their own opinions in a loud, emphatic, dogmatic manner. Of course, no woman should hold opinions, according to Mr. Podsnap’s way of thinking, although Mrs. Podsnap, in her own way, did credit to her more Podsnappery master. It was therefore not to be dreamt of for a moment that a “young person” like their daughter Georgiana could have any views of her own regarding life or any of its conditions, past, present, or future. She was a “young person” to be protected, and kept in the background, and guarded from evil, and sheltered, so that she should not even hear of anything improper, and shielded from temptation to do wrong, or to do anything, indeed, right or wrong. Her father was rich; why should she wish to do anything but listen to him, and go away when he told her to do so, if he wished to speak of subjects that he deemed it unwise to let a “young person” hear discussed?

There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young rocking-horse was being trained in her mother’s art of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting on. But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother’s headdress and her father from head to foot—crushed by the mere dead weight of Podsnappery.

Georgiana explained the reason of her shyness to Mrs. Lammle, for, strange as it may seem, considering her heredity, Georgiana was shy. Podsnappery as environment is always much stronger than Podsnappery as heredity.

“What I mean is,” pursued Georgiana, “that ma being so endowed with awfulness, and pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere where I am—perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it—I say it very badly—I don’t know whether you can understand what I mean?”

Thoughtful people need no explanation regarding the influence of Podsnappery on children.

The time will come when in normal schools character analysis will be the supreme qualification of those who are to decide who may and who may not teach. When that time comes, as come it must, no Podsnaps will be allowed to teach.

It was no wonder that—

Whenever Georgiana could escape from the thraldom of Podsnappery; could throw off the bedclothes of the custard-coloured phaeton, and get up; could shrink out of the range of her mother’s rocking, and (so to speak) rescue her poor little frosty toes from being rocked over; she repaired to her friend, Mrs. Alfred Lammle.

Dickens fired another thunderbolt, in Our Mutual Friend, to set the world thinking about its method of teaching children, by his brief description of Pleasant Riderhood, the daughter of Rogue Riderhood.

Show her a christening, and she saw a little heathen personage having a quite superfluous name bestowed upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by some abusive epithet; which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and would be shoved and banged out of everybody’s way, until it should grow big enough to shove and bang. Show her a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a leather strap, and being discharged hurt her.

In Little Dorrit Dickens gives one of his most striking verbal descriptions of the effects of coercion in Arthur Clennam’s account of his own early training. He said to Mr. Meagles, when the kind old gentleman spoke of working with a will:

“I have no will. That is to say,” he coloured a little, “next to none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken, not bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which was never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my father’s death there, a year ago; always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me in middle life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished before I could sound the words.”

“Light ’em up again!” said Mr. Meagles.

“Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr. Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced had no existence. Strict people, as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next—nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere—this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.”

When he returned to the presence of his mother, after an absence of many years in China, “the old influence of her presence, and her stern, strong voice, so gathered about her son that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and reserve of his childhood.”

It was a terrible indictment of all coercive, child-quelling, will-breaking training that Arthur made when he said to his stern mother:

Speaking of her own training, Mrs. Clennam said: “Mine were days of wholesome repression, punishment, and fear,” and she frankly avowed her deliberate purpose of “bringing Arthur up in fear and trembling.”

Those were the dreadful ideals that Dickens aimed to destroy. Repression, punishment, fear, and trembling are no longer the dominant ideals of the Christian world regarding child training. They are rapidly giving way to the new and true gospel of stimulation, happiness, freedom, and creative self-activity.

Great Expectations was a valuable contribution to the literature of child training. Mrs. Gargery was a type of repressive, coercive, unsympathetic women, who regard children as necessarily nuisances, and who are continually thankful for the fact that by the free use of “the tickler” they may be subdued and kept in a state of bearable subjection.

Mrs. Gargery had no children of her own, but she had a little brother, Pip, whom she “brought up by hand.” Her husband, Joe Gargery, was an honest, affectionate, sympathetic man, who pitied poor Pip and tried to comfort him when his wife was not present. The dear old fellow said to Pip one evening, as they sat by the fire and he beat time to his kindly thoughts with the poker:

Poor Joe! His father had been a blacksmith, but he took to drink, and, as Joe said, “Hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil.”

Dickens gives an illustration of Mrs. Gargery’s training which reveals not only her coercive and unsympathetic tendencies, but points to other errors in training children that are yet too common. Pip was warming himself before going to bed one night, when a cannon sounded from the Hulks, or prison ships, near the Gargery home.

Mrs. Gargery’s training was bad because she refused to answer the boy’s questions, or abused him for asking them; and when she did condescend to answer she answered in a snappy, unsympathetic way. The cruelty of first scolding a child, then trying to terrify him from asking questions by telling him that “robbers, murderers, and all kinds of criminals began their downward career by asking questions,” then rapping him on the head, and finally sending him to bed without a light, is admirably described. All these practices are terribly unjust to children. Parents and teachers, in the picture of Mrs. Gargery, are warned against scolding, against threatening, against falsehood and misrepresentation in order to reduce children to submission, against corporal punishment with “the tickler,” against the more dastardly and more exasperating corporal punishment by snapping and rapping the head, and against sending children to bed in the dark. He was especially careful to make the retiring hour in his own home a period of joyousness and freedom from all fear. He made the crime of sending children to bed without light and without sympathy one of the practices of that model of bad training—Mrs. Pipchin; and one of the most dreaded of little Oliver Twist’s experiences was to be sent to sleep among the coffins in the dark at Sowerberry’s.

The hour of retiring is the special time when children most need the affectionate spirit of motherhood, and wise mothers try to use this sacred hour to form their closest unity with the hearts of the little ones, and to sow in their young lives the apperceptive seeds of sweetness, and joy, and faith.

The wrong of making children sensitive, and then blaming them for being sensitive, is admirably shown in Pip’s training.

The revelation of the child’s consciousness of the sense of injustice in the treatment of those who train it is worthy of most careful study and thought by parents and teachers. There can be no doubt that infants have a clear sense of wrongs inflicted on them, even before they can speak.

The comparison of the child’s rocking-horse with the big-boned Irish hunter reveals one of the most essential lessons for adulthood: that what may appear trifling to an adult may mean much to a child. Kind but thoughtless adulthood is often most grievously unjust to childhood, because it fails to consider how things appear to the child. However kind and good such adults are, they are utterly unsympathetic with the child. Many people are very considerate for childhood who are very unsympathetic with children. Consideration can never take the place of sympathy. An ounce of true sympathy is worth a ton of consideration to a child. Adulthood has measured a child’s corn in the bushel of adulthood. Mr. Gradgrind, for instance, was a good man, and he meant to be kind and helpful to his children. He was most considerate for them, and spared no money to promote their welfare and happiness. But he did it in accordance with the tastes and opinions of adulthood, and totally ignored the fact that children have opinions and tastes, and he ruined the children whom he most loved. “The rocking-horse and the big-boned Irish hunter” suggest rich mines of child psychology.

The pernicious habit of so many adults who fill the imaginations of children with bogies and terrors of an abnormal kind in order to keep them in the path of rectitude by falsehood, is exposed in Mrs. Gargery’s method of stopping Pip’s questions by telling him that asking questions was the first step in a career of crime. This habit leads parents insensibly into a most dishonest attitude toward their children. It leads, too, in due time, to a lack of reverence for adulthood. Falseness is certain to lead to the disrespect it deserves. Parents who make untruthfulness a basis for terror should not be surprised at the irreverence or the scepticism of their children.

In The Schoolboy’s Story, old Cheeseman was brought to school by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking him.

There is a great deal of pedagogical thought in Dombey and Son. At the period of its issue (1846-48) Dickens appears to have devoted more attention to the study of wrong methods of teaching than at any other time, so in Dr. Blimber, Cornelia Blimber, and Mr. Feeder he gave his best illustrations of what in his opinion should be condemned in the popular methods of teaching. But while this was evidently his chief educational purpose in writing the book, he gave a good deal of attention to wrong methods of training, especially to the most awful doctrine of the ages—that children must be coerced, and repressed, and checked, and subdued. He evidently accepted as his supreme duty the responsibility for securing a free childhood for children. Mrs. Pipchin is an admirable delineation of the worst features of what was regarded as respectable child training. Her training is treated at length in Chapter XI. It is sufficient here to deal with her coerciveness, and recall the epithet “child-queller” which Dickens applied to her. No more expressive term was ever used to describe the wickedness of the coercionists. It means more than most volumes. It has new meaning every day as our reverence for the divinity in the child grows stronger, and the absolute need of the development of his selfhood by his own self-activity becomes clearer. It reveals a perfect charnel house full of dwarfed souls and blighted selfhood, and weak characters that should have been strong, and false characters that should have been true, and wailings that should have been music, and tears that should have been laughter, and darkness that should have been light, and wickedness that should have been a blessing. The one awful word “child-queller” means all of evil that can result from daring to stand between the child and God in our self-satisfied ignorance to check the free, natural output of its selfhood which God meant to be wrought out with increasing power throughout its life. Our work is to change the direction of the outflowing selfhood when it is wrong, to direct it to new and better interest centres, but never to stop it or turn it back upon itself.

There are thousands of child-quellers teaching still. Would that they could see truly the dwarfed souls they have blighted, and the ghosts of the selfhood they have sacrificed on the altar of what they call discipline!

The term child-queller was the creation of genius.

Mrs. Pipchin disdained the idea of reasoning with children. “Hoity-toity!” exclaimed Mrs. Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazine skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. “If she don’t like it, Mr. Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.” She would “shake her head and frown down a legion of children,” and “the wild ones went home tame enough after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof.” She tamed them by robbing them of their power, as Froebel’s boy tamed flies by tearing off their wings and legs, and then saying, “See how tame they are.”

Teachers used to boast about their ability to tame children, when their ability really meant the power to destroy the tendency to put forth effort, to substitute negativeness for positiveness.

Susan Nipper, in her usual graphic style, expressed her views regarding the coercive practices of Mrs. Pipchin and the Blimbers.

One of Mrs. Pipchin’s favourite methods of coercing, or taming, or child-quelling was to send children to bed.

Another assault on coercion was made in Dombey and Son in the brief description of the Grinders’ school.

Poor Biler went wrong, and when he was taken to task for it by Mr. Carker he gave his theory to account for the fact that he had not done better at school.

When Mr. Dombey, by whose act of superior grace Biler had been sent to the Charitable Grinders’ school, upbraided the boy’s father for his failure to turn out well,

Sagacious teachers and parents often blame and punish children for being what they made them.

Still another illustration of the cruel coercion practised on children is found in Dombey and Son, in the training of Alice Marwood.

The picture of George Silverman’s early life is one of the most touching of all the appeals of Dickens on behalf of childhood. He lived in a cellar, and when he was removed at length he knew only the sensations of “cold, hunger, thirst, and the pain of being beaten.” The poor child used to speculate on his mother’s feet having a good or ill temper as she descended the stairs to their cellar home, and he watched her knees, her waist, her face, as they came into view, to learn whether he was likely to be abused or not. Many mothers realized their own cruelty by reading such descriptions of cruelty toward little children.The whole system of training of Mr. Gradgrind and his teacher, Mr. M’Choakumchild (the latter name contains volumes of coercion) was a scientific system of coerciveness and restraint, planned and carried out by a good man misguided by false ideas about child training and character building. Coercion was only one of several bad elements in his system, but he was terribly coercive. His children were lavishly supplied with almost everything they did not care for, and robbed of everything they should naturally be interested in.

The results were, as might be expected, disastrous. His son Tom became a monster of selfishness, sensuality, and criminality. Dickens uses the name “whelp” to describe him, and, in a satirical manner, accounts for his meanness and weaknesses in the following summary:

When Mr. Gradgrind became convinced that he had been altogether wrong in his educational ideals and was endeavouring to explain the matter to Mr. Bounderby, that gentleman gave expression to the views of many people of his time. Fortunately there are few Bounderbys now, but there are some even yet.

In his last book—Edwin Drood—Dickens pictured Mr. Honeythunder as a type of coercive philanthropists, whom he regarded as intolerable as well as intolerant nuisances—people who would use force to compel everybody to think and act as they are told to think and act by the Honeythunders.

In speaking of Mr. Honeythunder and his class of philanthropists, Rev. Canon Crisparkle said:

Neville Landless described his training to Canon Crisparkle in telling words:

There is a profound philosophy of one phase of the evils of coercion in this statement. Coercion does not always destroy power by blighting it. Often the power that was intended to bless turns to poison when it is repressed, and makes men hypocritical and tigerish. It is true, too, that a child who is brought up with the idea of dominating a servile class, or even servile individuals, can never have a true conception of his own freedom.

Dickens was not satisfied with his numerous and sustained attacks on the more violent forms of coercion and repression. He began in Edwin Drood to draw a picture of Mrs. Crisparkle, the mother of the Canon, to show that the placid firmness of her strong will had a baleful influence on character. Her character was not completed, but the outlines given are most suggestive. What could surpass the absolute indifference she showed to the slightest consideration for the individuality or opinions of other people when she spoke of her wards, who were grown up, it should be remembered, to young manhood and womanhood.

How exquisitely he reveals the character of the eminently dogmatic, though quiet, Christian lady by her remarking so definitely to her son, the Canon:

Dickens meant to show that whether the coercion partook of the nature of that exercised by Squeers or Mrs. Crisparkle, it resulted in forcing those compelled to submit to it to “give in,” and that all children who are regularly made to “give in” acquire the habit of “giving in,” and eventually become “give-iners” and hypocrites until circumstances make them rebels and anarchists. So he condemned every form of coercion, and taught the doctrine of true freedom for the child as a necessary element in his best development. When this doctrine is fully understood men will soon become truly free. All true education has been a movement toward freedom. All true national advancement has been toward more perfect freedom. The ideal of national, constitutional liberty has changed in harmony with the educational revelations of the broadening conception of freedom; and more progressive conceptions of national liberty have rendered it necessary for the educators to reveal truer, freer methods of training children in harmony with the higher national organization.

When the ideal of national organization was the divine right of kings to rule their subjects by absolute authority, the system of national organization required passive obedience on the part of the subject. To secure this coercive discipline the prompt submission of the child to the immediate authority over him was the ideal process. Passive submission was required as the full duty of the citizen, and passive obedience was the desired product of the school. But the new ideal of government is rule by the people through their representatives, and national citizenship means the intelligent co-operation of independent individuals; so the true educational ideal is a free selfhood, and a free selfhood in maturity demands a free selfhood in childhood. To secure this it is essential that schools shall become “free republics of childhood.”

“But a free selfhood in childhood must lead to anarchy,” say those who cling to the coercive ideal. Anarchy never springs from freedom. Anarchy is the foul son of coercion. True freedom does not include liberty to do wrong. The “perfect law of liberty” is the only basis for perfect happiness, because it is not freedom beyond law, but freedom within law, freedom because of law. Law should never be coercive to the child. When it becomes so the law is wrong and it makes the child wrong, and produces the apperceptive centres of anarchy in feeling and thought out of the very elements that should have produced joyous co-operation. Law should give the child consciousness of power, and not of restraint. Undirected selfhood, uncontrolled selfhood, is not true freedom. The exercise of power without limitations leads to confusion, indecision, and anarchy in everything except its spirit of rebellion. The guidance and control of adulthood and the limitations of law are necessary to the accomplishment of the best results in the immediate product of effort put forth by the child, in the effect on his character, and in the development of a true consciousness of freedom in his life.

The terrible blunder of the past in child training has been to make law coercive instead of directive. Law has been prohibitive, not stimulative. Law has defined barriers to prevent effort, instead of outlining the direction effort should take. The limitations of law have been used to define the course the child should not take; they should have defined the course he ought to take, and within the range of which course he should use his selfhood in the freest possible way. Law has said “thou shalt not” when it should have said “thou shalt”; it has said “don’t” when it should have said “do”; it has said “quit” when it should have said “go on”; it has said “be still” when it should have said “work”; it has stood in the way to check when it should have moved on to lead to victory and progress along the most direct lines; it has given a consciousness of weakness instead of a consciousness of power; it has developed moroseness instead of joyousness, self-depreciation instead of self-reverence; and children for these reasons have been led to dislike law, and the apperceptive centres of anarchy have been laid by a coercive instead of a stimulative use of law.

By false ideals of coercive law adulthood has been made repressive instead of suggestive, depressive instead of helpful, dogmatic instead of reasonable, tyrannical instead of free, “child-quellers” instead of sympathetic friends of childhood, executors of penalties instead of wise guides, agents to keep children under instead of helping them up; and so children have learned to dislike school, and work, and teachers, and often home and parents. And the children have not been to blame for their dislike of law and their distrust of adulthood.

And the children themselves by coercion have been made don’ters instead of doers, quitters instead of workers, give-iners instead of persevering winners, yielders to opposition instead of achievers of victory, negative instead of positive, apathetic instead of energetic, passive instead of active, imitative instead of original, followers instead of leaders, dependent instead of independent, servile instead of free, conscious of weakness instead of power, defect shunners instead of triumphant creative representatives of the God in whose image man was created.

Every agency that robs a child of his originality and freedom and prevents the spontaneous output of his creative self-activity destroys the image of God in him. Man is most like God when he is freely working out the plans of his own creative selfhood for good purposes. Coercion has been the greatest destroyer of the image of God in the child, and anarchy is the product of the perversion of the very powers that should have made man hopefully constructive. The seeds of anarchy are sown in the child’s life, when his selfhood is blighted and checked. The fountain that finds free outlet for its waters forms a pure stream that remains always a blessing, but the fountain that is obstructed forms a noisome marsh, wasting the good land it should have watered and destroying the plant life it should have nourished.

The great salt seas and lakes and marshes of the world have been formed by the checking of beautiful fresh-water streams and rivers and the prevention of their outflow to the ocean they should have reached. So when the outflow of the soul of the child is checked the powers that should have ennobled his own life and enriched the lives of others turn to evil instead of good, and make a dangerous instead of a helpful character. So far as coercion can influence selfhood it destroys its power for good and makes it a menace to civilization, instead of a beneficent agency in the accomplishment of high purposes. The reason that coercion does not more effectively blight and dwarf the child is that childhood is not under the direct influence of adulthood all the time. The blessed hours of freedom in play and work have saved the race.

The absurd idea that “anarchy will result from giving true freedom to the child” persists in the minds of so many people, partly through the strength of the race conception of the need of coercion, from which we have not yet been able fully to free ourselves; partly from a terrible misconception regarding the true function of law; partly through gross ignorance of the child and lack of reverence for him; and partly from failure to understand our own higher powers for guiding the child properly, or the vital relationships of adulthood to childhood.

The child should recognise law as a beneficent guide in the accomplishment of his own plans. In Froebel’s wonderful kindergarten system the child is always guided by law, but he is always perfectly free to work out his own designs, and in doing so he is aided by law, not kept back or down by law. Law is, to the truly trained child, a revealer of right outlets for power, and the supreme duties of adulthood in training childhood are to change the centre of its interest when from lack of wisdom its interest centre is wrong, and to reveal to it in logical sequence the laws of nature, of beauty, of harmony, and of life. With such training life and law will always be in harmony, and the seeds of anarchy will find no soil in human hearts or minds in which to take root.

Dickens uses the French Revolution, in A Tale of Two Cities, to show that anarchy results from coercion, from the unreasoning subordination of a lower to a higher or ruling class. Against the reasoning of wisdom the Marquis said: “Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip as long as this roof shuts out the sky.” The roof came off one wild night—burned off by an infuriated mob of the dogs who had been repressed and whipped into anarchy. Yet the aristocracy of France claimed, as coercionist educators claim, that the anarchy was the result of insufficient coercion, instead of the natural harvest of the seed they had sown.

When the Revolution was at its fearful height, and the repressed dogs were having their wild carnival of revenge, Dickens says:

This is the most profound and most ably written exposition of the philosophy of anarchy.

“But by coercion I can make the child do right, and in this way I can form habits of doing right that will control the child when he grows up.”

The habit that is really formed by coercion is the habit of submission, of passive yielding to authority, of subordination, and, in the last analysis, this means the degradation and enslavement of the soul. Two habits are thus wrought into the child’s nature by coercion: the habit of doing things because ordered to do them, which is slavery; and the habit of doing things he does not like or wish to do, which is the basis of hypocrisy. The meanest products that can be made from beings created in God’s image are slaves and hypocrites. One of the remarkable facts regarding coercionists is that they blame God for creating the monstrosities they have themselves produced by false methods of training.

“We should break the child’s will, if it is wrong, to set it right, just as we should break a crooked leg to make it straight.”

This is a statement that betrays a lack of modern surgical knowledge, and a carelessness of psychological thought. Modern treatment for the cure of deformity of body avoids harsh treatment whenever it is possible to do so. It has been found that many deformities of body may be cured by proper exercise of the undeveloped part or parts, and with wider knowledge of Nature’s laws will come a wiser use of the law of self-transformation, and a smaller and smaller use of the severer methods of treatment. But no good child psychologist now doubts that a child’s will possesses the power of self-development and self-adjustment under proper guidance, nor should any one be ignorant of the fact that all true will development comes from within outward.

It is only necessary that man should study the child more thoroughly, and learn how to change his interest centres from wrong to right, and how to surround him with an environment suitable to his progressive stages of development, in order to keep his own will in operation along productive lines of self-reformation and self-regulation by creative self-activity. Thus the will can be set to work truly with undiminished power. When a will is broken, however, it can never regain its full power; the breaking process blights it forever. More rational processes retain its tendency to act and its energy of action while changing the purpose and direction of its action.

One of the interesting anomalies of our language is the marvellous fact that the term “self-willed” should ever have been considered a term of reproach or a description of a defect in character. The child with strongest self-will may become the greatest champion for righteousness if properly trained. He needs a wise and sympathetic trainer, who will be reverently grateful for his strong self-will, and whose reverence will prevent him from doing anything that would weaken the strength or selfhood of the will. The attempt to break his will may make him a destroying force instead of a leader for truth and progress. If a strangled will ever regains vitality it rarely acts truly. There is perhaps no other relic of the theories of barbaric ignorance concerning child training still left that is so baneful and so illogical as the theory that justifies will breaking.

“But God punishes the child. The child who touches the fire gets burned, and therefore it is right that coercive punishment should be used by adulthood in dealing with the child.”

The punishments referred to are the revelation of natural laws. There is no personal element of the punishing agency manifest to the child. God does not appear to the child as a punisher, and it is an astounding error in training to reveal such a consciousness of God to the child. Responsibility for the consequences of their acts is a law of which all children approve. This appeals to their sense of justice, and there is no other sense to which we can appeal with success so universally in children as the sense of justice. “Squareness” is the highest quality named in the lexicon of childhood. A boy would rather be deemed “square” than receive praise for any other characteristic or accomplishment. So he recognises the justice of being held accountable for the directly resulting consequences of his acts quite as readily as he accepts the fact, without blaming any one else, that he will be burned if he touches fire. There is no element of coercion in the law of consequences. It is a just and universal law in harmony with his moral responsibility; therefore he will respect it. Coercion is directly contrary to the fundamental laws of his happiness and his true growth, and therefore he naturally and properly dislikes and disapproves of it, and of the individual who outrages justice by using it.

The wonderful stories of Dickens set the world thinking by first arousing the strongest feelings of sympathy for the child and then developing sentiment and thought against every form of coercion, more especially coercion by corporal punishment. The awakening has been most satisfactory in its results. When Dickens began his writing against corporal punishment the rod was the almost universal remedy for all defects in animals or human beings. Whatever the defect, the superior in the eyes of the law used the one agency to overcome it. Mothers used the rod to subdue their children. Husbands used the rod to keep their children and wives in order. Men whipped their horses with impunity, as they did their children or wives. They owned them, and their right to punish them as they chose was unquestioned. Men trained animals to perform tricks in menageries by beating them, and they trained dancing, or performing, or learning girls and boys quite as inhumanly. Ownership or subordination justified unspeakable cruelty. The weakness of the child, the helplessness of the animal, appealed to the hardness of human nature, and not to its chivalry or sympathy. Even the poor feeble-minded and idiotic, who were confined in asylums, were terribly flogged by the most advanced philanthropists of the highest Christian civilization. They were weak. It was the duty of the authorities to control them, and “stripes and bruises” were regarded as the only true agencies for securing obedience. The rod was the highest controlling and directing force in the world.

What a change has been wrought! Horses and children and wives are protected from brutal treatment now by law. The insane are not flogged to make them sane in any well-conducted institutions. More than half the children in the schools of the civilized world are free from the terror and degradation of corporal punishment by law, or by the higher consciousness of more intelligent teachers. Parenthood everywhere is studying the child and trying to become conscious of its own higher powers of guiding character so that it may be able to train the children in truer and more productive and less dangerous ways than formerly. And Charles Dickens was the great apostle of these grand reforms.We shudder now as we read of the outrages practised on helpless children and on the insane half a century ago not by the heathen, but by earnest, conscientious Christians. The men who live half a century hence will shudder when they read that in some schools at the close of the nineteenth century children who were partially or temporarily insane from hereditary taint, or imperfect nutrition, or cruel treatment, or anger, or from some other removable or remediable cause were whipped, and that men, some of whom occupied respectable positions, advocated the breaking of children’s wills! If these “will-breaking” educators were in charge of asylums they would resurrect the straitjacket and the whipping post for the insane.

The few who advocate corporal punishment openly claim that they have the authority of the Bible for their faith in the rod. They should remember that good men have stood with Bibles in their hands misrepresenting God and attempting to stop the progress of every great movement toward freedom and reform. Galileo was imprisoned by the Church because he taught that the earth turns round. Men had no difficulty in showing that the Bible approved of slavery, or that it prohibited woman from the exercise of the right or the performance of the duties of responsible individuality. So men still quote Solomon to show that corporal punishment is approved by God, though such a conclusion would be rejected by the highest interpreters.

“Whipping makes strong characters.” No, it makes hard characters, and hardness is but one element of strength, and not the best element of strength. The strength of the English character has not been developed, as is claimed by some, by the whipping done in English schools and homes. It comes partly by race heredity from the sturdiness of the Saxon and Norman founders of the race, partly from the general practice of working hard from youth up, and largely from the fact that the English playgrounds are so universally used, and are the scenes of the severest struggles for supremacy in skill and power that are witnessed in any part of the world. The winning half inch or half length, the valorous struggle for leadership on track or river—these are the things that have preserved and developed English force and bravery, in spite of the fact that England in her schools and homes has done fully her share of whipping. A boy or girl who spends as much time in free strong play as the English boy, works out the effects of a great many evils from his or her life. When men see the futility of dependence on flogging for developing energetic strength of character they will study the influence of play to the great advantage of racial vigour, and courage, and moral energy.

Corporal punishment, like all other forms of coercion, robs the child of joyousness, and joyousness is one of the most essential elements in the true growth of a child. Corporal punishment affects the nervous systems of children injuriously, and when applied to certain parts of the body it stimulates prematurely the action of the sexual nature, and leads to one of the worst forms of depravity.

Corporal punishment is ineffective as a disciplinary agency. In one American city during the generation after Dickens began his great crusade against corporal punishment it was the practice to whip with a rawhide all children who came late, but the lateness steadily increased in defiance of the rawhide. It was reduced to less than one one-hundredth part of its former proportion when whipping for lateness was entirely abolished and more rational means adopted.

The order and co-operation of pupils is best in those schools in which no corporal punishment is used. If in any school only one teacher relies on the rod as a stimulator to work and a restrainer of evil, her class is sure to be the most disorderly, the least co-operative, and the most defective in original power in the school. As the children throughout the school come from the same homes, play with the same companions, attend the same churches, and are subject to the same general influences, it is perfectly clear that the whipping is the distinctive feature of character training that deforms the children. They will become normal, reasonable children when they reach the next room. This illustration assumes that all the teachers are possessed of good natural ability to direct the child properly. The one who uses corporal punishment fails because she has been dwarfed by her faith in corporal punishment. She has believed in it so fully that she has not sought to understand higher and better means. She has studied neither the child nor her own powers of child guidance.

Dickens taught the inefficiency of coercion to accomplish what men hoped to accomplish by it in his criticism of the revolting use of capital punishment in former times. In A Tale of Two Cities he says:

Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson’s door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of crime were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention—it might always have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse.