In one of the letters of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, to her mother, Queen Victoria, she writes: "I try to give my children in their home what I had in my childhood's home. As well as I am able, I copy what you did."

There is something essentially British in this point of view. The English mother, whatever her rank, tries to give her children in their home what she had in her childhood's home; as well as she is able, she copies what her mother did. The conditions of her life may be entirely different from those of her mother, her children may be unlike herself in disposition; yet she still holds to tradition in regard to their upbringing; she tries to make their home a reproduction of her mother's home.

The American mother, whatever her station, does the exact opposite—she attempts to bestow upon her children what she did not possess; and she makes an effort to imitate as little as possible what her mother did. She desires her children to have that which she did not have, and for which she longed; or that which she now thinks so much better a possession than anything she did have. Her ambition is to train her children, not after her mother's way, but in accordance with "the most approved modern method." This method is apt, on analysis, to turn out to be merely the reverse side of her mother's procedure.

I have an acquaintance, the mother of a plump, jolly little tomboy of a girl; which child my acquaintance dresses in dainty embroideries and laces, delicately colored ribbons, velvet cloaks, and feathered hats. These garments are not "becoming" to the little girl, and they are a distinct hindrance to her hoydenish activities. They are not what she ought to have, and, moreover, they are not what she wants.

"I wish I had a middy blouse, and some bloomers, and an aviation cap, and a sweater, and a Peter Thompson coat!" I heard her say recently to her mother: "the other children have them."

"Children are never satisfied!" her mother exclaimed to me later, when we were alone. "I spend so much time and money seeing that she has nice clothes; and you hear what she thinks of them!"

"But, for ordinary wear, for play, wouldn't the things she wants be more comfortable?" I ventured. "You dress her so beautifully!" I added.

"Well," said my acquaintance in a gratified tone, "I am glad you think so. I had no very pretty clothes when I was a child; and I always longed for them. My mother didn't believe in finery for children; and she dressed us very plainly indeed. I want my little girl to look as I used to wish I might look!"

"But she doesn't care how she looks—" I began.

"I know," the child's mother sighed. "I can see how her little girls will be dressed!"

Can we not all see just that? And doubtless the little girls of this beruffled, befurbelowed tomboy—dressed in middy blouses, and bloomers, and aviation caps, and sweaters, and Peter Thompson coats, or their future equivalents—will wish they had garments of a totally different kind; and she will be exclaiming, "Children are never satisfied!"

If this principle on the part of mothers in America in providing for their children were confined to such superficialities as their clothing, no appreciable harm—or good—would come of it. But such is not the case; it extends to the uttermost parts of the child's home life.

Only the other day I happened to call upon a friend of mine during the hour set aside for her little girl's piano lesson. The child was tearfully and rebelliously playing a "piece." Her teacher, a musician of unusual ability, guided her stumbling fingers with conscientious patience and care. A child of the least musical talent would surely have responded in some measure to such excellent instruction. My friend's little girl did not. When the lesson was finished, she slipped from the piano stool with a sigh of intense relief.

She started to run out of doors; but her mother detained her. "You may go to your room for an hour," she said, gently but gravely, "and stay there all alone. That will help you to remember to try harder tomorrow to have a good music lesson." And the child, more tearful, more rebellious than before, crept away to her room.

"When I was her age I didn't like the work involved in taking music lessons any better than she does," my friend said. "So my mother didn't insist upon my taking them. I have regretted it all my life. I love music; I always loved it—I loved it even when I hated practising and music lessons. I wish my mother had made me keep at it, no matter how much I objected! Well, I shall do it with my daughter; she'll thank me for it some day."

I am not so sure that her daughter will. Her music-teacher agrees with me. "The child has no talent whatever," she told me. "It is a waste of time for her to take piano lessons. Her mother now—she has a real gift for it! I often wish she would take the lessons!"

American mothers are no more prone to give their children what they themselves did not have than are American fathers. The man who is most eager that his son should have a college education is not the man who has two or three academic degrees, but the man who never went to college at all. The father whose boys are allowed to be irregular in their church attendance is the father who, as a boy, was compelled to go to church, rain or shine, twice on every Sunday.

In the more intimate life of the family the same principle rules. The parents try to give to the children ideals that were not given to them; they attempt to inculcate in the children habits that were not inculcated in themselves.

I know a family in which are three small girls, between whom there is very little difference in age. These children all enjoy coming to take tea with me. For convenience, I should naturally invite them all on the same afternoon.

Both their father and mother, however, have requested me not to do this.
"Do ask them one at a time on different days," they said.

"Of course I will," I assented. "But—why?" I could not forbear questioning.

"When I was a child," the mother of the three little girls explained, "I was never allowed to accept an invitation unless my younger sister was invited, too. I was fond of my sister; but I used to long to go somewhere sometime by myself! My husband had the same experience—his brother always had to be invited when he was, or he couldn't go. Our children shall not be so circumscribed!"

There is not much danger for them, certainly, in that direction. Yet I rather think they would enjoy doing more things together. One day, not a great while ago, I chanced to meet all three of them near a tearoom. I asked them—perforce all of them—to go in with me and partake of ice cream. As we sat around the table, the oldest of the three glanced at the other two with a friendly smile. "It is nice—all of us having ice cream with you at the same time," she remarked, and her younger sisters enthusiastically agreed.

To be sure, they are nearer the same age and they are more alike in their tastes than their mother and her sister, or their father and his brother. Perhaps their parents needed to take their pleasures singly; they seem able quite happily to take theirs in company.

I have another friend, who was brought up in a household in which, as she says, "individuality" was the keynote. In her own home the keynote is "the family." She encourages her children to "do things together." Furthermore, she and her husband habitually participate in their children's occupations to a greater degree than any other parents I have ever seen.

[Illustration: THREE SMALL GIRLS]

Their friends usually entertain these children "as a family"; but not long ago, happening to have only two tickets to a concert, I asked one, and just one, of the little girls of this household to attend it with me. She accepted eagerly. During an intermission she looked up at me and said, confidingly, "It is nice sometimes to do things not 'as a family,' but just as one's self!"

Then, for the first time, it occurred to me that she was the "odd one" of her family. All its pleasures, all its interests, were not equally hers. She needed sometimes to do things as herself.

In matters of discipline, too, we find the same theory at work. Parents who were severely punished as children do not punish their children at all; and the most austere of parents are those who, when children, were "spoiled." Almost regardless of the natures of their children, parents deal with them, so far as discipline is concerned, as they themselves were not dealt with.

This implies no lack of love, no lack of respect, for the older generation. On the contrary, it is the sign and symbol of a love, a respect, so great as to permit of divergences of opinion and procedure, in spite of differences of age.

"I am not going to bring up the baby in the way I was brought up, mamma, darling," I once heard a mother of a month-old baby (her first child) say to the baby's grandmother.

"Aren't you, dear?" replied the older lady, with a smile. "Why not?"

"Oh," returned the daughter, "I want her to be better than I am. I think if you'd brought me up conversely from the way you did, I'd have been a much more worth-while person."

She spoke very solemnly, but her mother only laughed, and then fondly kissed her daughter and her granddaughter. "That is what I said to my mother when you were a month old!" she said whimsically.

Children in American homes, it might be supposed, would be affected by such diversity in the theories of their parents and their grandparents concerning their rearing. They might naturally be expected to "take sides" with the one or the other; or, at any rate, to be puzzled or disturbed by the principle of "contrariwiseness" governing their lives. From their earliest years they are aware of it. The small girl very soon learns that the real reason why she finds a gold bracelet in her Christmas stocking is that mother "always wanted one, but grandma did not approve of jewelry for children." The little boy quickly discovers that his dog sleeps on the foot of his bed mainly because "father's dog was never allowed even to come into the house. Grandpa was a doctor, and thought dogs were not clean."

This knowledge, so soon acquired, would seem to be a menace to family unity; but it is not—even in homes in which the three generations are living together. The children know what their grandparents wished for their parents; they know what their parents wish for them; but, most of all and best of all, they know what they wish for themselves. It is not what their parents had, nor what their parents try to give them; it is "what other children have."

Perhaps all children are conventional; certainly American children are. They wish to have what the other children of their acquaintance have, they wish to do what those other children do. It is not because mother wanted a bracelet, and never had it, that the little girl would have a bracelet; it is because "the other girls have bracelets." Not on account of the rules that forbade father's dog the house is the small boy happy in the nightly companionship of his dog; he takes the dog to bed with him for the reason that "the other boys' dogs sleep with them."

Even unto honors, if they must carry them alone, children in America would rather not be born. A little girl who lives in my neighborhood came home from school in tears one day not long ago. Her father is a celebrated writer. The school-teacher, happening to select one of his stories to read aloud to the class, mentioned the fact that the author of the story was the father of my small friend.

"But why are you crying about it, sweetheart?" her father asked. "Do you think it's such a bad story?"

"Oh, no," the little girl answered; "it is a good enough story. But none of the other children's fathers write stories! Why do you, daddy? It's so peculiar!"

It may be that all children, whatever their nationalities, are like this little girl. We, in America, have a fuller opportunity to become intimately acquainted with the minds of children than have the people of any other nation of the earth. For more completely than any other people do American fathers and mothers make friends and companions of their children, asking from them, first, love; then, trust; and, last of all, the deference due them as "elders." Any child may feel as did my small neighbor about a "peculiar" father; only a child who had been his comrade as well as his child would so freely have voiced her feeling.

We all remember the little boy in Stevenson's poem, "My Treasures," whose dearest treasure, a chisel, was dearest because "very few children possess such a thing."

Had he been an American child, that chisel would not have been a "treasure" at all, unless all of the children possessed such a thing.

Not only do the children of our Nation want what the other children of their circle have when they can use it; they want it even when they cannot use it. I have a little girl friend who, owing to an accident in her infancy, is slightly lame. Fortunately, she is not obliged to depend upon crutches; but she cannot run about, and she walks with a pathetically halting step.

One autumn this child came to her mother and said: "Mamma, I'd like to go to dancing-school."

"But, my dearest, I'm afraid—I don't believe—you could learn to dance —very well," her mother faltered.

"Oh, mamma, I couldn't learn to dance at all!" the little girl exclaimed, as if surprised that her mother did not fully realize this fact.

"Then, dearest, why do you want to go to dancing-school?" her mother asked gently.

"The other girls in my class at school are all going," the child said.

Her mother was silent; and the little girl came closer and lifted pleading eyes to her face. "Please let me go!" she begged. "The others are all going," she repeated.

"I could not bear to refuse her," the mother wrote to me later. "I let her go. I feared that it would only make her feel her lameness the more keenly and be a source of distress to her. But it isn't; she enjoys it. She cannot even try to learn to dance; but she takes pleasure in being present and watching the others, to say nothing of wearing a 'dancing- school dress,' as they do. This morning she said to her father: 'I can't dance, Papa; but I can talk about it. I learn how at dancing-school. Oh, I love dancing-school!'"

Her particular accomplishment maybe of minute value in itself; but is not her content in it a priceless good? If she can continue to enjoy learning only to talk about the pleasures her lameness will not permit her otherwise to share, her dancing-school lessons will have taught her better things than they taught "the other children," who could dance.

That mother was her little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been the basis of the child's happiness in the fulfillment of her desire? She wanted to go to dancing-school because the other children were going; but may she not have liked going because she felt that her mother understood and sympathized with her desire to go?

A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked, "But does that not make the children old before their time?"

So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer and fewer grandmothers who are "sweet old ladies," and more and more who are "charming elderly women." We hear less and less about the "older" and the "younger" generations; increasingly we merge two, and even three, generations into one.

Only yesterday, calling upon a new acquaintance, I heard the four-year- old boy of the house, mentioning his father, refer to him as "Henry."

His grandmother smiled, and his mother said, casually: "When you speak of father, dear, it would be better to say, 'my father,' so people will be sure to know whom you mean. You may have noticed that grandma always says, 'my son,' and I always say 'my husband,' when we speak of him."

"Does he call his father by his Christian name?" I could not resist questioning, when the little boy had left the room.

"Sometimes," replied the child's mother.

"He hears so many persons do it, he can't see why he shouldn't. And there really is no reason. Soon enough he will find out that it isn't customary and stop doing it."

This is a far cry from the days when children were taught to address their parents as "honored sir" and "respected madam." But, it seems to me, the parents are as much honored and respected now as then; and—more important still—both they and the children are, if not dearer, yet nearer one another.

In small as well as in large matters they slip into their parents' places—neither encouraged nor discouraged, but simply accepted. Companions and friends, they behave as such, and are treated in a companionable and friendly manner.

The other afternoon I dropped in at tea-time for a glimpse of an old friend.

Her little girl came into the room in the wake of the tea-tray. "Let me pour the tea," she said, eagerly.

[Illustration: THE BOY OF THE HOUSE]

"Very well," her mother acquiesced. "Be careful not to fill the cups too full, so that they overflow into the saucers; and do not forget that the tea is hot" she supplemented.

The little girl had never poured the tea before, but her mother neither watched her nor gave her any further directions. The child devoted herself to her pleasant task. With entire ease and unconsciousness she filled the cups, and made the usual inquiries as to "one lump, or two?" and "cream or lemon?"

"Isn't she rather young to pour the tea?" I suggested, when we were alone.

"I don't see why," my friend said. "There isn't any 'age limit' about pouring tea. She does it for her dolls in the nursery; she might just as well do it for us here. Of course it is hot; but she can be careful."

There are few things in regard to the doing or the saying or the thinking of which American parents apprehend any "age limit." Their children are not "tender juveniles." They do not have a detached life of their own which the parents "share," nor do the parents have a detached life of their own which the children "share." There is the common life of the home, to which all, parents and children, and often grandparents too, contribute, and in which they all "share."

This is the secret of that genuine satisfaction that so many of us grown-ups in America find in the society of children, whether they are members of our own families or are the children of our friends and neighbors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

American parents do not relinquish their authority over their children. As for government—like other wise parents, they aim to help it to develop, as soon as it properly can, from a government of and for their children into a government by them. Self-government is the lesson of lessons they most earnestly desire to teach their children.

Methods of teaching it differ. Indeed, as to methods of teaching their children anything, American fathers and mothers have no fixed standard, no homogeneous ideal. More likely than not they follow in this important matter their custom in matters of lesser import—of employing a method directly opposed to the method of their own parents, and employing it simply because it is directly opposed. This is but too apt to be their interpretation of the phrase "modernity in child nurture." But the children learn the lesson. They learn the other great and fundamental lessons of life, too, and learn them well, from these American fathers and mothers who are so friendly and companionable and sympathetic with them.

Why should they not? There is no antagonism between love and law. Parents are in a position of authority over their children; no risk of the strength of that position is involved in a friendship between parents and children anywhere. It is not remarkable that American parents should retain their authority over their children. What is noteworthy is that their children, less than any other children of the civilized world, rebel against it or chafe under it: they perceive so soon that their parents are governing them only because they are not wise enough to govern themselves; they realize so early that government, by some person or persons, is the estate in common of us all!

One day last summer at the seashore I saw a tiny boy, starting from the bath-house of his family, laboriously drag a rather large piece of driftwood along the beach. Finally he carefully deposited it in the sand at a considerable distance from the bath-house.

"Why did you bring that big piece of wood all the way up here?" I inquired as he passed me.

"My father told me to," the child replied.

"Why?" I found myself asking.

"Because I got it here; and it is against the law of this town to take anything from this beach, except shells. Did you know that? I didn't; my father just 'splained it to me."

American fathers and mothers explain so many things to their children! And American children explain quite as great a number of things to their parents. They can; because they are not only friends, but familiar friends. We have all read Continental autobiographies, of which the chapters under the general title "Early Years" contained records of fears based upon images implanted in the mind and flourishing there— images arising from some childish misapprehension or misinterpretation of some ordinary and perfectly explainable circumstance. "I was afraid to pass a closed closet alone after dark," one of these says. "I had heard of 'skeletons in closets'; I knew there were none in our closets in the daytime, but I couldn't be sure that they did not come to sleep in them at night; and I was too shy to inquire of my parents. What terrors I suffered! I was half-grown before I understood what a 'skeleton in a closet' was."

An American child would have discovered what one was within five minutes after hearing it first mentioned, provided he had the slightest interest in knowing. No American child is too shy to inquire of his parents concerning anything he may wish to know. Shyness is a veil children wear before strangers; in the company of their intimates they lay it aside— and forget it. In the autobiographies of Americans we shall not find many accounts of childish terrors arising from any reserve in the direction of asking questions. In American homes there are no closets whose doors children are afraid to pass, or to open, even after dark.

"American children are all so different!" an Englishman complained to me not long ago; "as different as their several homes. One can make no statement about them that is conclusive."

But can one not? To be sure, they do vary, and their homes vary too; but in one great, significant, fundamental particular they are all alike. In American homes the parents not only love their children, and the children their parents; their "way of loving" is such that one may say of them, "Their souls do bear an equal yoke of love." They and their parents are "chums."