NURSERY ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 FLORENCE HULL WINTERBURN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MERRIAM COMPANY 
 67 FIFTH AVENUE
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, 
 
 BY 
 THE MERRIAM COMPANY
 
 tfatbet.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT is about six years ago now since the 
 papers forming the nucleus of this little 
 book were written. Much of the work 
 was done with two little faces gazing 
 wonderingly at me from either side of my 
 desk, and whatever value it has is owing 
 as much to the inspiration drawn from 
 that living child presence as from the 
 long years of study and observation 
 which preceded the effort whose results 
 are now offered to the thoughtful public. 
 
 The principle underlying every line of 
 this book is that of justice to children. 
 The idea that there should be a code of 
 laws for the nursery as there is for com- 
 munities may be a novel one to persons 
 accustomed to entire unrestraint in their 
 control of their children. If arbitrary or 
 capricious methods were always attended 
 
 5
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 with happy results, and if by the exercise 
 of instinct only parents were able to rear 
 their children with perfect satisfaction, 
 then they would be justified in declining 
 to spend time reflecting upon their duties 
 or studying into the philosophy of parent- 
 hood. 
 
 But while there is scarcely one among 
 us who, upon looking backward, cannot 
 refer to some error in his own early train- 
 ing certain misadventures of his later life, 
 there would seem to be reason why we 
 should try to find out the perfect method, 
 if there is one, and hold that up to our- 
 selves as our working ideal. 
 
 The endeavor to find this ideal and to 
 present it intelligibly to the many con- 
 scientious, earnest parents who wish to do 
 their best for their children without quite 
 seeing the way clear before them, has 
 been my guiding motive through all my 
 work for the past half dozen years. As 
 editor of the magazine " CHILDHOOD " 
 and as a member of several parents' 
 societies I have been brought into per- 
 sonal contact with many of those it is my 
 desire to reach in this book. And if
 
 PREFACE. 7 
 
 through this they should receive an an- 
 swer to questions that have perplexed 
 them ; if their way should be made a little 
 easier, and the path of childhood brighter 
 and happier, I shall be thankful and con- 
 tent. 
 
 NEW YORK, Aag. 30, 1895.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The Right Attitude of Parents n 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Natural Limitations of Authority 24 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Sympathetic Relation 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 9 
 
 Demand Obedience to Circumstances, Not to 
 
 Personal Force 53 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 We should Associate Natural Consequences with 
 Acts 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Conflicting Authorities Ought to be Avoided 83 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Judicious Management of Emotional Out- 
 bursts... . 100
 
 10 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. PAGE 
 
 Prenatal Influences and the First Days of Life 1 16 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Mental Needs of Children Must be Con- 
 sidered 131 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Dealing with Little Faults 158 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Primary Object is the Development of Char- 
 acter 173 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Early Indications of Individuality 196 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Growth in Self-Government 208 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 The Evolution of Personal Conscience 224
 
 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE RIGHT ATTITUDE OF PARENTS. 
 
 "The ideal in education would be, to allow each 
 child scope for its own particular bent, while at the 
 same time setting our example before him." PEREZ. 
 
 TT is a most difficult and delicate matter 
 to lay down rules for domestic govern- 
 ment, because it involves admonitions to 
 the parents concerning their own con- 
 duct ; and while people acknowledge, re- 
 luctantly, that example is a more potent 
 force than precept in training the young, 
 they can scarcely be brought to admit 
 that faultiness in themselves unfits them 
 for the position of disciplinarians. The 
 current idea of the way to bring up a 
 child is to " tell him what he must do
 
 j 2 NURSE K Y THICS. 
 
 (mark the emphasis must) and enforce 
 obedience." The question seems to be 
 not so much the nature of the rule as that 
 there is a rule, a regimen, the prescribing 
 and carrying out of which vindicates the 
 dignity of the parent and shows him up 
 to the world as an admfrable drill-ser- 
 geant. Although modern usage has soft- 
 ened and modified the practice that ob- 
 tained in " the good old time " of keeping 
 children in a state of manifest subjection, 
 still, the change is one of necessity rather 
 than resolution, the tendency of modern 
 life setting so strongly toward individual 
 liberty that the iron-clad regulations that 
 used to prevail everywhere have every- 
 where insensibly relaxed. The old ideal 
 still exists, however. We see that it 
 holds its authority even with the most 
 gentle parents in such utterances as these : 
 " In my day children were seen and not 
 heard." " I would not have dared speak 
 that way to my mother." "Truly, things 
 have come to a pretty pass when mites 
 like you are to be asked what you like ! " 
 It seems that while they find it impossi- 
 ble to continue in their own families the
 
 WISDOM NEEDED. 13 
 
 measures that repressed their childhood, 
 they believe it right to be stern if they 
 could and reproach themselves for weak- 
 ness when they are indulgent. In face of 
 this fact that kindness is a sort of surrepti- 
 tious action that must be hid from Solo- 
 mon, one cannot wonder that a modern 
 philosopher closes some remarks upon 
 this subject with the dry conclusion : 
 " The general practice of any ideal system 
 of discipline is hopeless. Parents are not 
 good enough." 
 
 But I think that although half the fault 
 may lie in that direction, at least half lies 
 in the want of knowledge. Parents are 
 not wise enough. Egotism keeps them 
 ignorant. For, while every one will 
 readily confess that without special train- 
 ing he could not manage a steam-engine 
 or take charge of a parish where the grave 
 responsibility would fall upon him of 
 advising men as to the welfare of their 
 souls, the same people would unhesitat- 
 ingly assume the charge of a child. It 
 is a natural function. But it is no more 
 natural than marriage, and the disastrous 
 effects of trusting altogether to nature
 
 1 4 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 and disregarding reason here, is con- 
 stantly made manifest. When one re- 
 flects what exquisite tact is required by 
 two grown people living together in the 
 married relation to get along in harmony, 
 even when they possess an ordinary 
 amount of self-control and considerable 
 knowledge of human nature, it becomes 
 evident that it is even more difficult for 
 an adult to deal justly with a child whose 
 own point of view is consistently ignored, 
 and whose only chance of being under- 
 stood and sympathized with lies in the 
 accuracy and vividness of those recollec- 
 tions of his own childhood which a parent 
 occasionally brings to bear in his dealings 
 with his children. And even these recol- 
 lections may not be at all pertinent to 
 the case ; for the child may not be like 
 either parent in disposition or tempera- 
 ment, and so, what they would prefer for 
 themselves may be inherently distasteful 
 to the child. Knowing that our power 
 of sympathizing with another is limited 
 by our experience, since sympathy in-, 
 volves either the having passed through, 
 or possessing capacity to pass through
 
 CHILDREN ARE EMOTIONAL. 15 
 
 the state exhibited by him to us, we 
 should be very cautious of assuming that 
 we understand our children, and have the 
 right to disregard their preferences as 
 childish whims. Even if they are whim- 
 sical that is a perfectly logical consequence 
 of their stage of mental development. 
 Reason has its infancy, but emotions 
 seem to be born full-grown. Children 
 are emotional, and so often apparently 
 eccentric, but while allowances are made 
 for the eccentricities of an adult, it is 
 considered most naughty for a child to 
 be peculiar. Yet, even if nature had dis- 
 posed them to be ideally reasonable, the 
 training they are commonly subjected to 
 would unsettle their wits. 
 
 The prevailing fear with many con- 
 scientious parents is that they shall be 
 too mild ; that their policy shall not be 
 repressive enough ; and as no humane per- 
 son can consistently maintain an attitude 
 of harshness throughout, they waver be- 
 tween lenient impulses and scruples tend- 
 ing toward severity, so that their children 
 are brought up as on a border-land be- 
 tween conflicting powers, alternately capt-
 
 1 6 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 ured and released, until they come to 
 have a philosophical contempt forauthor- 
 ity of any sort. 
 
 Small blame to them. When the im- 
 pulse of the moment makes the law, and 
 nothing is stable, when they see their 
 parents change like the weather-cocks, it is 
 quite natural, and, in fact, only doing 
 justice to the situation, for them to count 
 upon the variability of the parental mind, 
 and calculate upon having their own way. 
 Children, being so susceptible, are quickly 
 made aware of every change of mood in 
 their elders, and when they are surrounded 
 by impulsive people, who are swayed in 
 their treatment of them by the feeling of 
 the moment, they learn to take advantage 
 of the favorable period, and by warily 
 humoring the whims of those in authority, 
 get from favor what they could not hope 
 from justice. Nature gives her small 
 creatures cunning, to pit them against the 
 destructive force of her monsters, so we 
 should rather inquire into the reason of 
 the development of cunning in children, 
 when they display it, than blame them 
 for possessing what may be their sole
 
 A FOOLISH MOTHER. 17 
 
 weapon of defense against hard circum- 
 stances. 
 
 I have heard people cry out bitterly at 
 being outwitted by their own children. 
 A boy, subject to irregular government, 
 rushes into the parlor where his mother 
 is entertaining company, and begs loudly 
 for the doughnuts cook is frying. And 
 in the majority of instances his demand 
 is granted, even if it would be denied were 
 no one present. Let the mother ask her- 
 self why. Sometimes to prevent an ex- 
 hibition of temper from the child which 
 would betray the fact that she was not 
 able to restrain him ; and sometimes, in 
 the foolish fear lest the visitor should 
 think her harsh or mean. There really 
 are mothers of this sort, and in refined cir- 
 cles. Some who, in an affected display of 
 lavishness, will give their children expen- 
 sive bon-bons that others may see they 
 can afford to do so ; or will permit the 
 wearing of best clothes upon an ordinary 
 occasion lest the person who is standing 
 by should suppose they are obliged to be 
 careful. Yet, after company has gone, 
 and the " company manners " which marks
 
 l8 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 the moral as well as the social parvenue, 
 are relaxed, there is an avalanche of blame 
 for " that child who always takes advan- 
 tage of me when visitors are present." 
 
 Well, the child knows her for a moral 
 coward, one whose " no " means that she 
 does not want to, and whose " yes " means 
 that she is obliged to. Courtiers know 
 that a weak monarch is the worst of ty- 
 rants, because one can never be sure of him, 
 and they are subtle and deft in their man- 
 ipulations of his moods, their place de- 
 pending upon their adroitness. So 
 the child who loves doughnuts to ex- 
 cess, and believes, arguing from his gen- 
 eral knowledge of her character, that 
 his mother refuses this gratification as 
 she does others, merely for her conven- 
 ience, is by no means criminal in pursu- 
 ing his wishes when the conditions are 
 obviously upon his side. Her indecision 
 and vanity are the means of educating 
 him in diplomacy. For, naturally, chil- 
 dren are straightforward and would prefer 
 to go frankly to the point if it was safe 
 to do so. And usually they are too 
 straightforward for their own advantage.
 
 THE BOOKS THEY READ. 19 
 
 Are they not perpetually rebuked for 
 " sauciness " when they blurt out some 
 opinion that may have more than a germ 
 of truth in it, but would create a domes- 
 tic revolution if attended to ? It is a 
 very difficult thing for a parent who is 
 even a little unworthy, to keep the re- 
 spect of his children. They see other 
 parents, they hear the talk of other chil- 
 dren about their fathers and mothers, and 
 their pride and affection are both wounded 
 when they are made to feel that their 
 own are less gentle, less companionable, 
 less lovely altogether than those of their 
 friends. And another way in which their 
 faculty of comparing and criticising is ed- 
 ucated is through the books they read. 
 In the nice little Sunday-school books we 
 give them, to teach them what model chil- 
 dren are like, they learn something about 
 pattern parents : self-denying mothers 
 who smilingly play with their little boys 
 when they would rather go visiting or sew 
 lace in their gowns ; and generous fathers 
 who don't buy cigars and liquors with 
 their money, but say, when a birthday 
 comes : " Here, Tom, here is the bicycle
 
 2 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 you have been dying for ; take it and be 
 happy ! " 
 
 Do you suppose that their eyes do not 
 water sometimes, and their little hearts 
 grow heavy as they contrast the parental 
 character in story-books with the conduct 
 they have daily experience of? They 
 find out even where the error lies in their 
 own training. A scolding mother, fond 
 but high-tempered, was once electrified 
 by her twelve-year-old daughter telling her 
 gravely that she was not "judicious." 
 The truth was too much a home-thrust, 
 and nothing was to be done but to si- 
 lence the girl with a charge of imperti- 
 nence. Yet that child felt within her own 
 mind all the weight of the misfortune of 
 her position. She knew herself to be con- 
 scientious and desirous to have absolute 
 confidence in her mother, yet she was, 
 unhappily for herself, too logical not to 
 trace out the inconsistencies and selfishness 
 that were all too apparent. The little, 
 helpless Cassandras, that sit among us as 
 witnesses and would utter true sayings 
 if they dared how little their instincts 
 are attended to !
 
 PARENTAL CONSISTENCY. 21 
 
 One of the most importunate needs of 
 a child is for invariability in treatment. 
 It is indeed difficult for an adult to keep 
 in mind what he very well knows, that the 
 ignorance of a new-born infant is absolute, 
 that it has no preference in favor of either 
 good or bad conduct, and that its moral 
 nature will be developed, as will its intel- 
 lectual nature, entirely through association. 
 How very important it is, then, that this 
 dawning intelligence should not be con- 
 fused by inconsistent representations 
 that the partial statements made to it 
 from day to day should " hang together," 
 so that one may naturally correlate itself 
 with another, thus establishing a chain 
 of facts capable of being embraced under 
 a general law. Sometimes the moral 
 balance of a child may depend upon its 
 parents' power of consistency ; and the 
 want of it is always disturbing and sure 
 to create confusion and distrust. People 
 are often very rash in their generaliza- 
 tions with children, not reflecting that as 
 their utterances are made oracularly they 
 will sink deep into young minds and be 
 given wide application. A child is told,
 
 2 2 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 for instance, that because his mother 
 is older and more experienced than 
 he she knows that a certain kind of 
 conduct is wrong. Perhaps the same 
 day his father, or his grandmother, con- 
 tradicts this, and affirms that it is harm- 
 less. They are equally old and experi- 
 enced, more so. The doctors disagree, 
 and the young pupil turns critic. His 
 mother has based her affirmation upon 
 untenable grounds, and it falls through. 
 She essayed to seem infallible and is 
 justly found out. Suppose, instead of as- 
 serting positively that which she had only 
 reason for believing true, she had, recol- 
 lecting that all knowledge is relative, ex- 
 pressed a qualified opinion, or given ad- 
 vice with the avowal that her affection 
 and interest made her solicitous that the 
 child should do thus and so. There are 
 no weak points in this armor. A child 
 never seeks to pick flaws in love. He 
 will cling loyally to it, even if it cannot 
 give a conclusive answer to all his ques- 
 tions. And true love, always unselfish, 
 finds it possible to be consistent, because 
 being simple and frank it makes no pre-
 
 SELF-SACRIFICING LOVE. 23 
 
 tenses, and being without egotism, it is 
 not anxious to appear perfect, and is 
 saved from the consequence of becoming 
 absurd. 
 
 But, despite all the talk of, and all the 
 belief in, parental affection, the fact is 
 that a perfectly unselfish parental love is 
 very rare. It had need exist, for the re- 
 lations existing between parents and child 
 demand the exercise upon the part of the 
 stronger of extraordinary self-restraint so 
 that they may be enabled to think con- 
 stantly of the feelings of those who are 
 subject to them, and prevented from 
 yielding to the temptation that besets 
 every one who is invested with authority : 
 the tendency to abuse it. 
 
 When one thinks of the immense power 
 residing in the parents, and perceives how 
 easily a whim or caprice may mar or 
 wreck the career of the individual under 
 their charge, one needs great confidence in 
 the natural right instinct of humanity and 
 the most profound trust in the self-sacri- 
 ficing love of the parental heart to be able 
 to believe that this relation can be carried 
 out with any approach to ideal perfection.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE NATURAL LIMITATIONS OF 
 AUTHORITY. 
 
 " A careful study of general moral laws will reveal 
 the fact that hitherto in the world too much relative 
 stress has been laid upon the duties of children to 
 parents, while too little attention has been given to the 
 duties of parents to their children ; this for the reason 
 that books upon duty have been written by parents and 
 the childrens' side of the question has been quite 
 ignored." JOHONNOT. 
 
 DOWER has ordinarily no other reason 
 for being than the inclination of the 
 person possessing it to continue in its pos- 
 session. The habit of controlling a thing 
 induces the belief that it belongs to one, 
 and even a right gained originally by 
 usurpation may finally come to be held by 
 conscientious conviction. This is true in 
 great national affairs, and true in the 
 affairs of every-day life. Does not our 
 great English satirist, Dickens, whose
 
 A USURPATION. 25 
 
 graphic pictures reveal far-reaching mean- 
 ings to the student of human nature, tell 
 us how Miss Betsy Trotwood had firmly 
 persuaded herself that she owned the field 
 under her window, and was perfectly 
 justified in waging war upon trespassing 
 donkeys ? 
 
 How did the excessive power formerly 
 possessed by parents over their children 
 grow up ? It is something peculiar to 
 human beings, and unknown to the lower 
 species, where the relation maintained is 
 simply protective on the part of the par- 
 ents. There is no doubt that it is a usurp- 
 ation, as all excessive power of one 
 person over another is. It comes down 
 from the terrible days when " might made 
 right," and has in a great measure main- 
 tained its existence, because man has not 
 yet made such a mental advance as en- 
 ables him to feel that acute sympathy 
 with his children that is necessary before 
 he can understand their feelings in the 
 situation in which he has placed them. 
 Sympathy is the accompaniment of civil- 
 ization, and the voluntary resignation of 
 power is only possible from those persons
 
 26 W17RSER Y E THICS. 
 
 whose organizations are so sensitive that 
 they themselves suffer from inflicting 
 pain upon others. This is an attribute of 
 the highest moral nature, and should be 
 cultivated, not resisted, as some parents 
 resist it, from a stern sense of duty. 
 Many of our ideas of duty are still bar- 
 baric. In our hearts we still sacrifice to 
 Moloch. There are times when we are 
 conscious of this and wish that we were 
 more enlightened. It is possible to be- 
 come so ; not by studying books upon 
 ethics which persistently represent one 
 side, but by cultivating both our sym- 
 pathy and our perception ; by studying 
 children and striving to understand them, 
 for only through understanding their 
 needs and their tendencies shall we be 
 able to arrive at any just ideas of the 
 government it is our duty to exercise over 
 them. 
 
 Theorizing is, in questions of discipline, 
 of very little value. There are a few 
 general principles that are firm ground on 
 which to build a superstructure of family 
 government that must be varied accord- 
 ing to the special needs of each family.
 
 ADULTS CLAIM THE WORLD. 27 
 
 First and foremost, a parent must ask him- 
 self what is the extent and what the pur- 
 pose of his natural authority over his 
 child. Janet, in his " Elements of Morals," 
 states it absolutely : " Parental authority 
 has no other origin than the actual interest 
 of the children, and the mission of the 
 parent is to represent it." 
 
 What a marvelous power of self-abne- 
 gation is demanded of a parent who is 
 thus called upon to represent to himself 
 as judge and legislator, the interests of 
 another individual often seemingly at va- 
 riance with his own. Is it easy for him 
 to adjust all affairs with an eye to their 
 proper relations and degrees of impor- 
 tance ; to balance against his own comfort 
 his child's enlightenment, or the child's 
 chances of innocent enjoyment against 
 his own conveniences, or the child's ulti- 
 mate and permanent welfare against his 
 own tastes and preferences ? There is no 
 idea more settled than that the world be- 
 longs to adults. Children are admitted on 
 good behavior. They may force their way 
 in if nature has gifted them rarely with 
 beauty or brains, as in that case the weight
 
 28 NURSE R y THICS. 
 
 of abstract power is pitted against physi- 
 cal force. But their existence is kindly 
 tolerated. They are looked upon as ad- 
 juncts sometimes as necessary evils in- 
 cidental to marriage, and to be endured, 
 as mosquitoes are in summer. It seldom 
 enters the head, even of a fond and indulg- 
 ent parent, that there is an inevitable 
 obligation upon him to be kind. His 
 kindness is a concession, and he secretly 
 takes a certain credit to himself for ex- 
 ercising it. No one would hold him to 
 account if he were otherwise. Frequent- 
 ly a child is told to " get out of the 
 way," as if his presence littered up the 
 world ! Large affairs must go on ; there 
 are factories to be run, railroads to be 
 built, social duties to be attended to, and 
 all the concerns bearing upon bodily com- 
 fort necessarily receive the first attention. 
 So far as regards the animal needs of a 
 child he is usually not neglected. He is 
 fed, clothed, and taken out of doors to get 
 the air. In fact he is viewed as a young 
 animal with the one exception that he is 
 not allowed liberty. The clothes he wears 
 are loaned him by his parents, who exact
 
 ONL Y A MONGREL. 29 
 
 that this young animal, with the instinct 
 to frolic and be careless, shall have the 
 prudence of a- being in a high state of 
 civilization. Perhaps there is a latent 
 possibility within him to become such a 
 being. But the conditions are not favor- 
 able. There is a restriction against his 
 being either the animal he is called or the 
 highly developed creature he is expected 
 to act like. He is condemned to be a 
 mongrel. Sitting in their little carriages, 
 or pattering along beside nurses either 
 taciturn or engaged in congenial chat 
 with friends, these children of our modern 
 families have scarcely more freedom in 
 reality than the sons of the ancient 
 Egyptian kings who walked behind their 
 father carrying his fans. With the rarest 
 exceptions they live a silent life, shut up 
 like sleeping beauties behind their hedge 
 of ignorance and wonder which no one at- 
 tempts to penetrate to effect their release. 
 Their education, instead of being a de- 
 velopment of what is internal and individ- 
 ual to themselves is external, a teaching 
 of behavior and manners. So a child be- 
 haves well who inquires what he thinks
 
 3 o NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 and believes ? He often grows up with 
 the most singular views of morality, and 
 which would surely have been corrected 
 if any one had taken the trouble to draw 
 out his ideas. If the right relations ex- 
 isted between parents and their child, he 
 would, instead of being an alien, be an in- 
 dispensable member of their little commu- 
 nity, his interests and theirs harmonizing 
 through the existence of mutual under- 
 standing and sympathy. It is possible to 
 bring a child up to our level, socially and 
 morally, if ceasing from the first to look 
 upon him as a being of inferior or diverse 
 nature, we regard him rather as undevel- 
 oped man, with propensities as tenacious 
 and exacting as our own, capable of being 
 influenced, but not of changing their char- 
 acter. 
 
 We realize very little of the intensity 
 and force of our children's tastes and 
 desires, because we are seldom in a suffi- 
 ciently disinterested condition to take 
 account of them. They fall in outwardly 
 with our ways and pass a great part of 
 their lives in subjection to our opinions. 
 This is, in a measure, inevitable. But it
 
 A GRAVE RESPONSIBILITY. 31 
 
 surely is enough, that in matters of con- 
 scientious conviction we must impose the 
 law of our own being upon our offspring. 
 Even our right to do this is very re- 
 stricted. Every human being has certain 
 needs of his nature to which there is a 
 corresponding agency in the physical or 
 mental sphere ; to interfere with this 
 natural harmony, is to deprive him of a 
 part of his life. Yet, to some degree, 
 this interference is bound to take place. 
 We have a thousand excuses for inducing 
 others to do as we do, not because it is 
 the only right course, but because it saves 
 us the trouble of weighing the right 
 and wrong of some other course. In 
 affairs of real importance, it is sometimes 
 essential to sacrifice the happiness of one 
 member to that of the others, and of 
 securing uniformity of action at the cost 
 of pain and inconvenience. But it is a 
 grave responsibility thus to assume 
 charge of the destiny of another, and it 
 cannot but be looked upon as a most un- 
 pleasant necessity, never to be sought. 
 So far as possible, children should be left 
 at liberty to develop their own peculiar-
 
 3 2 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 ities. They may seem strange to us and 
 different from what we should have pre- 
 ferred in our offspring, but we, who are 
 apt to look upon ourselves as the primary 
 authors of their being, are but a single 
 pair in the long line of parents. So far 
 as inheritance is concerned, our child may 
 belong far more to some great grand- 
 father, many times removed, than he 
 belongs to us, and an inherent necessity 
 rests upon him to grow into the likeness 
 of his real, near progenitor. It is our 
 duty to guide and instruct, but rather by 
 example than through argument. For 
 the child will gladly adopt from us those 
 ideas and ways that he has an affinity 
 for, and when he shows refractoriness 
 it is not infrequently either because we 
 have been awkward or brutal in attempt- 
 ing to force our ways upon him, and so 
 have aroused his antagonism ; or else, 
 because conformity is simply, from his 
 diverse nature, impossible to him. 
 
 We should respect individuality in our 
 children as a mark of their value. A 
 passive, phlegmatic disposition is not the 
 evidence of superior virtue that it is often
 
 SELF-RESTRAINT NEEDED. 33 
 
 considered. Neither do these people do 
 the work of the world. A horse-trainer 
 does not grudge the pains he bestows 
 upon a spirited animal, and is not so un- 
 reasonable as to resent the restlessness 
 of a creature with sensitive nerves. But 
 parents are given to suppressing all un- 
 pleasant ebullitions of character, without 
 inquiring into the cause of them. May 
 it be hoped that this severity proceeds 
 from thoughtlessness. What is needed 
 is more serious reflection upon the duty 
 parents owe to their children, to aid them 
 in the development of their own essential 
 individuality. It is not a duty easy of 
 performance, for self-restraint must pre- 
 cede the exercise of justice. A man must 
 govern his temper and subdue his selfish 
 impulses before he can ever perceive that 
 another person has rights he is bound to 
 respect ; particularly if the said party 
 is under his authority and incapable of 
 making any resistance. Perhaps the very 
 hardest thing in the world is to avoid 
 being a tyrant when the temptation is 
 offered. The only safeguard is to en- 
 tirely dispossess the mind of the fallacy 
 3
 
 3 4 MURSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 that power in itself, is a divine right. 
 The power of parents over children is an 
 incident of the situation, not the reason 
 of it. It is essential to recollect that 
 nature has established relations with a 
 view to the benefit of the children, and 
 only secondarily to our own. 
 
 As the child can set up no standard 
 and interpose no limitations to the exer- 
 cise of authority, the first duty of the 
 parent is to set up a strict standard for 
 himself, founded on the natural law of 
 equity, admirably laid down by Janet. 
 The difficulty is not in setting up the 
 standard but in conforming to it. Far 
 rather would we show others their duty 
 than subscribe to the regulation ourselves ! 
 It would be well if every one would 
 remind himself what Cyrus, one of the 
 wisest rulers that ever controlled a great 
 nation, said to his counsellors, that " no 
 one had any business with government who 
 was not himself better than the governed." 
 
 A common observation excusing auto- 
 cratic measures with the young is that 
 " children do not know what is good for 
 them."
 
 A DANGEROUS HABIT. 35 
 
 True ; but do their parents always know 
 what is good for them do they make an 
 impartial study of every question and 
 decide always for the welfare of the 
 governed ? Are they totally disinterested 
 in their conclusions ? Unless they pos- 
 sess this patience and foresight, as well as 
 generosity, they are not qualified for the 
 responsible position they hold. Some 
 one has rightly remarked that we expect 
 more perfection of our children than we 
 are capable of ourselves. I think that we 
 often feel it a point of duty to enjoin upon 
 others ideals we have ourselves failed to 
 attain. But it is a dangerous habit, both 
 because there is a tendency in human 
 nature to imagine that it has itself more 
 than half-performed duties it has advo- 
 cated, and because to make requirements 
 too stern and strict for performance engen- 
 ders hopelessness in the unfortunate one 
 so admonished. 
 
 The endeavor, then, of a parent should 
 be, first, to make stern demands of him- 
 self ; to be fair-minded, sympathetic, and 
 patient. Next, having established such 
 proper sentiments in his own mind toward
 
 36 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 his child, to bring about the correct rela- 
 tion of the child toward himself. If suc- 
 cess has followed the attempt in the first 
 instance, the second will be far easier than 
 it appears at the instant of approaching 
 the subject. In family government the 
 difficulty far more often lies with us than 
 with our children. Impulse is the com- 
 mon guide where the nicest reasoning and 
 the most accurate judgment are really 
 required. Mere spontaneons affection is 
 not to be relied upon, for, as we have seen, 
 natural fondness is a variable quantity 
 and subject to disturbances of temper. 
 Of all things a parent should have perfect 
 control of his temper, and avoid all dis- 
 position to hasty and one-sided conclu- 
 sions. The old Egyptian proverb wisely 
 cautions: " Let bitterness not enter into 
 the heart of a mother."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SYMPATHETIC RELATION. 
 
 " Those who are compelled by us hate us as if de- 
 spoiled of something, while those who are persuaded 
 by us, love us as if they had received a favor." 
 
 XENOPHON'S Anabasis. 
 
 OTANDING toward his child in the 
 ^ position of a special Providence, the 
 guide of his ignorance, the guardian of his 
 helplessness, the parent has a right to 
 demand obedience to the seemingly un- 
 bounded but really restricted authority 
 with which he is, through the nature of 
 their relations, invested. It is his duty to 
 exercise this solely with a view to the 
 welfare of his charge. He should be as 
 honest in taking care of the young per- 
 sonality entrusted to his care as he would 
 be in managing funds belonging to his 
 bank. Character is far more precious than 
 lucre, and more easily injured. When a
 
 38 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 parent has been able to so far divest him- 
 self of his egotism as to recognize that 
 children are to be viewed from the first as 
 belonging to themselves, and not as prop- 
 erty, he will understand that obedience is 
 not a natural attribute. Children have no 
 spontaneous instinct for it. They come 
 into the world not knowing what it is any 
 more than how to practice it. Herein 
 one perceives the desirability of not mak- 
 ing the first lessons unduly harsh and 
 severe. Upon calm and deliberate reflec- 
 tion is there not something monstrous in 
 beginning a child's education by the use 
 of brute force? The one certain factor to 
 be depended upon in making life conform 
 to a standard is the power of habit, and 
 over this efficient method we possess en- 
 tire control. The child is already, through 
 his helplessness, subject to us ; we may de- 
 prive him at will of comfort and the satis- 
 faction of his instincts. There is no doubt 
 that this will be done inadvertently, 
 through not understanding him. There 
 are many involuntary punishments in- 
 flicted upon these dumb creatures which 
 it might appall one to know. Is it, then,
 
 RESTRAINT IS REPUGNANT. 39 
 
 necessary to hammer in the spike his sen- 
 sitive flesh already feels, and impress, by 
 the employment of bodily torments, the 
 lesson apparent on the very face of it, 
 that we are master and that he must sub- 
 mit ? A parent may, by merely remain- 
 ing inattentive to insubordination in in- 
 fants, make them realize the futility of 
 resisting. He may become to them a 
 fate, something unchangeable. There is 
 no reason why he should aim to appear 
 a monster. Restraints are repugnant to 
 all human beings, and those which are in- 
 evitable should be imposed gradually and 
 gently. There ought to be a certain sym- 
 pathy with the baffled, disappointed feel- 
 ing that possesses even the youngest 
 being when prevented from carrying out 
 an impulse. " Temper," observes Dr. 
 McCosh, " springs fundamentally from 
 disappointed appetences." The young 
 creature is stirred by impulses and in- 
 stinct speaks in the demands he makes. 
 For the nature of these demands he is not 
 responsible ; heredity is. We are here to 
 educate him through his instincts, not to 
 try to crush them. There is a strange
 
 40 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 way of talking which even kindly disposed 
 people sometimes fall into, as if the child 
 was, from the outset, " bound to have his 
 own way;" he "must be taught that 
 other people have rights as well as he;" 
 brought up to " mind upon the instant," 
 blindly, automatically, as if he was a ma- 
 chine possessing an innate bias toward a 
 particular motion not in harmony with 
 the motion of his guardians, and thereby 
 provoking in them a desire to propel him 
 in their own direction, or to break the 
 machinery. 
 
 But a thoughtful person will scarcely 
 accredit a new-born infant with this willful 
 premeditated antagonism. His cries are 
 protests against ill-usage ; his sin is that 
 he wants to be comfortable ! He wants 
 it very much indeed ; more than he wants 
 to please his guardians. How should he 
 know anything about pleasing ? And 
 here, at this instant, is the time to ask the 
 question : What sentiment do we wish to 
 inspire in this young mind toward our- 
 selves, love, or fear ? Few parents would 
 hesitate when the question is thus directly 
 put, to declare in favor of love. But they
 
 TWO SORTS OF OBEDIENCE. 41 
 
 must be obeyed. Let us then recognize 
 that there are two sorts of obedience; 
 deference, or the desire to please, and 
 servility, or fear of pain. And they are 
 not interchangeable. Where the last has 
 been established it is very difficult for the 
 first to be substituted. There is some- 
 thing so awe-inspiring in the idea of hu- 
 man individuality, the expression of some 
 unique part of the universal spirit of life, 
 that one should be deeply touched when 
 there is a free surrender of any portion of 
 this individuality to us. There is some- 
 thing mysteriously beautiful in such a 
 yielding. Should so lovely a thing be 
 lightly sacrificed to harsh egotism ? The 
 great duty we should rather enjoin upon 
 ourselves is to make obedience pleasur- 
 able, to prevent the feeling of humiliation 
 and pain that is the essential accompani- 
 ment of an enforced yielding, and culti- 
 vate, at any trouble, the grace of an affec- 
 tionate docility, which is very far removed 
 from the " absolute obedience " usually 
 commended. 
 
 There are many respects in which our 
 civilization is so unnatural and so difficult
 
 42 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 that a child's life is from the beginning a 
 constant series of checks. Many instinct- 
 ive desires that could be gratified under 
 other circumstances must be thwarted be- 
 cause conditions forbid. But let us be as 
 gentle as we can in initiating this young 
 creature into worldly usages. At first 
 only such impulses as tend to his own in- 
 jury should be thwarted, that the check 
 may stand out in sharp contrast with his 
 usual freedom of movement, and also that 
 there may grow up in his mind an idea 
 that a command is not an arbitrary ex- 
 ertion on the part of the stronger, but a 
 kindly ordinance, having in view his own 
 welfare. " Issue as few edicts as possi- 
 ble " is a good rule for a parent to follow. 
 All the most cautious and learned guard- 
 ians of youth from Socrates down to 
 Rollin, advocate environing a child with 
 silent care, keeping him out of the way of 
 temptation, and aiming to preserve in him 
 innocence and purity of mind as long as 
 it is in our power to so shield him. 
 
 In that remarkable Edgeworth family 
 where the children of one father by three dif- 
 ferent mothers dwelt together in harmony,
 
 GO VERNMENT BY LOVE. 43 
 
 and where, according to the daughter's 
 record, "not one tear was shed a month," 
 there was carried out systematically the 
 government by love. The children felt 
 themselves free, because the government 
 was protective, and not aggressive. They 
 were guided, but never interfered with. 
 From their earliest years they were taught 
 the reason why certain requirements were 
 necessary. If it was requisite for them to 
 preserve certain boundaries in their play- 
 ground, it was solely that the rights of 
 others might not be infringed upon. 
 Children appreciate the principle of " fair 
 play," and if the aim of our training is, as 
 it should be, the development in them of 
 the power of self-control, they cannot be 
 too early imbued with the sentiment of 
 justice. It may almost be asserted that 
 this feeling is innate with children spring- 
 ing from a race of self-governing men. 
 This very quality is what makes them so 
 difficult to deal with after arbitrary 
 methods. It is in their blood to perceive 
 things for themselves and to reason. 
 But at the same time it cannot be ex- 
 pected of them that they should them-
 
 44 NURSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 selves always be reasonable. They are 
 more amenable to logic than the infant 
 Chinaman would be, or the young Rus- 
 sian or the young Italian, who are respect- 
 ively inclined to be stolid, submissive, and 
 emotional. But reason exists only in the 
 germ, and it must be carefully developed. 
 Rousseau asserts that" reasoningtoo early 
 checks a child's physical growth," but that 
 is one of the instances where the great 
 philosopher is empirical without due re- 
 gard to facts. Cyrus, one of the most ro- 
 bust of boys, was taught to reason from 
 a very early age, and in the " schools of 
 justice " in Persia, where the greatest re- 
 gard was paid to the physical development 
 of youth, the government was conducted 
 entirely upon the plan of making the boys 
 themselves the judges of conduct. That 
 celebrated system has been followed in 
 part by some modern educators, and with 
 great success. Pestolozzi improved upon 
 it in aiming to inspire in his pupils a per- 
 sonal attachment both to himself and to 
 each other, so that they should feel a 
 pleasure in witnessing the enjoyment 
 of another, to which their own acts had
 
 PESTALOZZPS UNSELFISHNESS. 45 
 
 contributed. In view of his wonderful 
 self-abnegation the great affection his pu- 
 pils entertained for him was not extraor- 
 dinary. All know what privations he en- 
 dured ; how he shared the poverty and 
 discomforts of his " children " and lived 
 with them day by day in such intimate 
 relations that his personal existence, all 
 that egotism which separates a man from 
 a child and which he is usually unable to 
 conquer, was lost in the great-hearted 
 love which he poured out upon these little 
 waifs of humanity. 
 
 It is not worth while merely to tell a 
 child that we mean well toward him and 
 work for his happiness. He must feel 
 the truth of the assertion must see it 
 borne out in the conditions of his life. 
 It is necessary to recollect that to chil- 
 dren one grain of the present is worth a 
 mountain of the future ; lacking fore- 
 thought and prevision, living in their sen- 
 sations, eternity is comprised with them 
 in the pleasure or pain of the moment. 
 That far-away " sometime " of which we 
 talk so sagely conveys no definite im- 
 pression, and they are not able to appre-
 
 46 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 ciate the kind of care that requires of 
 them perpetual sacrifices that good may 
 come of it " one day." That this care is 
 necessary is unquestionable, so, too, is the 
 admission readily made that we must ex- 
 ercise for them the prudence that exacts 
 a deferring of gratification that the meas- 
 ure of it may be greater. But how long 
 it has taken the human race to develop 
 the prudential motive as a law of con- 
 duct ! How comparatively few fully 
 accept it now! It is an unpleasant doc- 
 trine at times to all, and one that only 
 education and experience reconcile one to 
 adopting. So it cannot be expected that 
 children will view it with anything but 
 dismay. Grateful for a care of which 
 they realize nothing of the meaning, and 
 suffer, therefore, without compensation 
 all the discomforts ! It is asking too 
 much. A child is not grateful for the 
 ordinary comforts of life ; food, clothes, 
 and shelter are part of his natural envi- 
 ronment and excite no comment. Only 
 in those pitiful cases where such absolute 
 necessities are lacking and hardship has 
 prematurely educated the judgment, are
 
 APPRECIATED KINDNESS. 47 
 
 little ones likely to understand that these 
 things are not supplied save at the cost 
 of real exertion on the part of guardians. 
 We are grateful only for the unexpected, 
 and especially for the superfluous ; that 
 which is not essential to bare existence, 
 but is a brightener and beautifier of our 
 lives. How perfectly natural, therefore, 
 that children should be indifferent toward 
 our efforts to supply them with an equip- 
 ment that aids their success in after life ; 
 that they shrink from the difficulties of 
 learning and are impatient under depriva- 
 tions of present freedom and enjoyment 
 which they understand, for the sake of 
 some distant benefit which they do not 
 understand. 
 
 But they are by nature keenly appre- 
 ciative of kindness, of that extra effort 
 which consists in ministering to their 
 need for pleasure. When not spoiled 
 they have a delightful capacity for being 
 pleased with simple things ; the sense 
 that their friends have tried to indulge 
 them and supply what is wanted is most 
 likely to evoke gratitude. But a careless 
 and condescending favor does not pro-
 
 48 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 duce this effect any more than it would 
 produce it upon ourselves. The whole 
 beauty and grace of an indulgence, as of 
 a gift, consists in the appropriateness, 
 which shows a thoughtful study of their 
 disposition and tastes. I cannot agree 
 with those persons who consistently dis- 
 regard a child's natural preferences and 
 aversions. To do so indicates a great 
 lack of knowledge of the laws of human 
 development. A predisposition to some 
 particular article of food, or some special 
 form of recreation, frequently has its 
 origin in an organic need. It may, of 
 course, be merely an inherited whim, but 
 no one has a right to so decide without 
 first attempting to acquaint himself with 
 his child's disposition, giving time enough 
 to determine as far as possible whether 
 the trait in question is a superficial char- 
 acteristic, or whether it has its spring 
 deep in those hereditary transmissions 
 which it is useless and hurtful to try to 
 dominate. Even some habitual acts that 
 have the appearance of willfulness may 
 often be traced to a physical defect of 
 which the individual is himself uncon-
 
 INHERITED PECULIARITIES. 49 
 
 scious. Idiosyncracies are always un- 
 pleasant, but they are not always crim- 
 inal. Many stories are told of inherited 
 peculiarities against which the whole 
 force of early education has battered 
 without the slightest result. Ribot men- 
 tions a girl whose loquacity nearly dis- 
 tracted her associates, but who only 
 reproduced her father in this respect. 
 And I heard recently of a woman who is 
 and has always been totally unable to 
 recognize by their countenances even her 
 nearest relatives, when she meets them 
 away from home. Yet she underwent 
 much discipline in childhood for what 
 seemed persistent rudeness. There are 
 children whose eyes are bright yet who 
 cannot see distinctly, whose ears do not 
 catch certain sounds easily, while readily 
 hearing others ; in whom certain muscles 
 are weak, certain nerves diseased from 
 birth, but these facts are usually only 
 discovered after the victims have suffered 
 repeated corrections and perhaps endured 
 years of miscomprehension. 
 
 Some one remarks, " Penetrate the bot- 
 tom of their hearts before correcting 
 4
 
 5 o NURSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 them." And it ought to be added : Pen- 
 etrate their natures ; inquire into the 
 reason of what seems odd and unman- 
 ageable. Heredity is often to blame in- 
 stead of the child. We must first of all 
 things give ourselves time to study and 
 investigate him, for if we do not discover 
 the key to unlock the door of his confi- 
 dence he will ever remain an inscrutable 
 mystery. It ought to be realized that 
 children seldom consciously reveal them- 
 selves. Seemingly spontaneous and 
 transparent, there are yet reserves that 
 ordinary intercourse does not overcome. 
 This is in large measure due to the fact 
 that their vocabulary is almost wholly ob- 
 jective. Their inner life is like a pictorial 
 representation, often dazzling to their own 
 minds. And their feeble attempts at 
 self-explanation are so often laughed at 
 that they soon learn that this realm of 
 fancy and feeling is uninteresting to their 
 grown-up acquaintances. Whoever has 
 power to discern something of what is 
 going on behind all their physical activity 
 can establish delightful sympathetic rela- 
 tions with the little creatures who love to
 
 SYMPATHETIC INSIGHT. 51 
 
 be friendly if they are encouraged by feel- 
 ing that they give pleasure to their elders 
 by their companionship. To win a 
 child's affection and confidence is not 
 easy, because it requires not only real 
 virtue but sympathetic insight. A cer- 
 tain animal magnetism attracts them too. 
 Everything that is picturesque or pos- 
 sessed of great vitality is fascinating at the 
 sensuous period of life, and virtue ought 
 to make itself beautiful and charming to 
 win their adherence. But their taste is 
 not classical, and they care neither for 
 perfection of form or coloring, if the one 
 essential quality is present sympathy. 
 Our whole power of gaining their affec- 
 tion lies in that. They will fondly cher- 
 ish what is homely if it is good, that is 
 good to them. Feeling with them is not 
 so much primary as responsive. We 
 must put forth something of the kind we 
 wish to evoke in order to exert an in- 
 fluence. An infant responds in a remark- 
 ably short time to the tenderness lavished 
 upon it, and his budding affection should 
 be carefully cherished, for from this is 
 to be developed trustfulness and docility.
 
 5 2 PURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 It is a mission for which the parents 
 would do well to prepare themselves by 
 the practice of a rigid self-control, and 
 the cultivation of a patience and tact 
 far beyond what they have ever needed 
 in any other relation in life.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEMAND OBEDIENCE TO CIRCUMSTANCES, 
 NOT TO PERSONAL FORCE. 
 
 " The child has a keen feeling, a very clear apprehen- 
 sion, and rarely fails to distinguish whether what the 
 father or teacher says is arbitrary or personal, or 
 whether it is expressed by him as a general law and 
 a necessity." FRCEBEL'S Education of Man. 
 
 T^HE first idea which we should seek to 
 establish in the child's mind, then, is 
 the belief that his parents are his sympa- 
 thetic, considerate friends not, as has been 
 remarked by one writer : " friend-ene- 
 mies." Rousseau says, " The child ought 
 to love his mother before he knows that 
 it is his duty to do so." If what ought 
 to be spontaneous and natural waits to 
 become a matter of conscience, it is to be 
 feared that the filial affection will be of a 
 most perfunctory sort. And there is much 
 of it in the world. Children are naturally
 
 5 4 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 loyal, and tenacious of family ties. Even 
 when most affronted they rarely complain 
 to outsiders of treatment received at home, 
 and this not always so much from fear as 
 from a sense of dignity ; they comprehend 
 without reasoning about it that anything 
 that reflects upon their family hurts 
 themselves. But if we could be made 
 aware how much of this faithfulness comes 
 from mere consanguinity and how alloyed 
 it often is with doubt and mistrust, we 
 should be less complacent in our accept- 
 ance of the view that our children love us. 
 The warm and genuine affection of a child 
 is a dear flattery. What word of com- 
 pliment or regard can ever awaken in our 
 hearts the exquisite satisfaction evoked 
 by the honest, voluntary exclamation of a 
 tiny being who throws himself into our 
 arms saying, " Good mother, dear mother ! " 
 And who can help being humbled at a 
 tribute only half deserved, or avoid recol- 
 lecting that it comes far less often than it 
 would if she were truer to her ideals and 
 a more perfect mother to her child ! 
 
 Good government depends upon getting 
 a child to so love and trust his parents
 
 A CONSIDER A TE FRIEND. 55 
 
 that the pleasing them shall of itself give 
 him pleasure. There is, from the neces- 
 sity of the case, he being impulsive and 
 heedless, and they being prudent and judi- 
 cious, a certain amount of force essential. 
 But it should be latent, not wantonly 
 exhibited ; felt, rather than seen. Unkind 
 feelings must arise if there is anything 
 that looks like caprice or harshness upon 
 the part of the guardians. Their author- 
 ity should appear to be, in a way, involun- 
 tary, as if they were the medium for trans- 
 mission of force, rather than the originat- 
 ors of it. It is natural and inevitable that 
 hostility should be excited towards what 
 opposes the carrying out of our desires, 
 so there should, in all necessary opposi- 
 tion, be as little exhibition of personality 
 as possible. A sympathetic parent really 
 feels the grief and irritation of his child, 
 and he should not, from a false idea that 
 it is dignified to remain unmoved, be too 
 reticent and laconic. If he has succeeded 
 in creating the impression that he really 
 is a considerate friend, capable of entering 
 into the feelings of his child, the young 
 creature falls into the habit of deference
 
 s g NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 towards his elder, just as a mature mind 
 comes to submit to the mysterious decrees 
 of a Providence believed to be benevolent. 
 But no more readily than that. What 
 human being but first rebels and strives 
 to have his own way when fate seems 
 against him ? Submission only follows 
 when one feels that his will is beating 
 against a rock, that there is a great, im- 
 movable Power behind the human agencies 
 fighting him ; so that what he would have 
 refused to a fellow-being he yields to Law. 
 There are a few exceptional natures and 
 by no means the most excellent ones so 
 docile and meek as to submit without 
 pain to personal coercion. They are ca- 
 pable of that spaniel-like affection which 
 bows itself under abuse and clings help- 
 lessly after self-respect has been destroyed. 
 But these make a type by themselves, 
 and general remarks must be directed to 
 the great average class. A self-respecting 
 creature finds it impossible to completely 
 give up to mere brute force ; any such 
 submission is transient and accompanied 
 by an intention to get even at a future 
 time. But a victory achieved by moral
 
 A WASTE OF AUTHORITY. 57 
 
 force is permanent ; the most independent 
 natures, which are also the noblest, feel a 
 real pleasure in giving up to something 
 manifestly superior to themselves. It is 
 as if an advance had been made, enlighten- 
 ment gained ; there is, not a blind obe- 
 dience to autocratical authority, but an 
 adoption of some principle of action com- 
 mon both to the mentor and themselves. 
 This is the secret of making power endur- 
 able : to have it appear that even authori- 
 ties themselves are not exempt from law. 
 Parents are ordinarily fond of that very 
 semblance of power which they ought, of 
 all things, to avoid. We do not want 
 to excite our children's animosity for the 
 purpose of conquering them. The ideal 
 would be to preserve always that calm, 
 amicable relation which would make it 
 seem that affairs flow on guided by some 
 invisible agency. There ought never to 
 be a waste of authority ; to display it is 
 to abuse it ; and the great object is to 
 train a child into necessary submission 
 without exciting bad feeling. The honest 
 truth is that it is circumstances which ex- 
 act obedience, not only from children, but
 
 5 g NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 from all. Why should parents pose as 
 independent personages from whom law 
 emanates, when such assumption only 
 draws odium down upon them ? The 
 reason of a deal of wretchedness in fam- 
 ilies is not so much that children are diso- 
 bedient to law, as that there is no real law, 
 but only impulse. Richter tells a story 
 of a soldier bearing a bundle of papers 
 under each arm, who was asked, " What 
 have you there under your right arm ? " 
 " Orders." "And what under the other 
 arm ? " " Counter-orders." And in the 
 application of this anecdote to education 
 he observes : " A mother may be com- 
 pared to a giant Briarius, with a hundred 
 arms, and a bundle of papers under each." 
 A child cannot feel safe with such a petu- 
 lant guardian. In self-defense he becomes 
 watchful and suspicious, and comes soon 
 to openly question the judgment so often 
 at fault. Yet it is not so much the falli- 
 bility which engenders contempt, as the de- 
 ceit. A mother constantly repeats that 
 she loves her child, and yet she hectors 
 him ; envelops him in an atmosphere of 
 fault-finding and wearies him by a thou-
 
 FUSSINESS. 59 
 
 sand useless little restraints. He is often 
 reproved when walking with her, for skip- 
 ping instead of moving along demurely, 
 for asking questions, for being too much 
 a live thing with independent motive 
 power, and too little of a machine. This 
 is a certain way to weaken affection and 
 destroy desire for obedience. Interfer- 
 ence, however forceful, can be borne, 
 when it relates to important affairs ; but 
 interference with little things, which 
 every one recognizes as trivial, is intoler- 
 able, both because it destroys all liberty 
 of action and because it plainly shows a 
 fault-finding, domineering spirit in the 
 person exercising the restraint. 
 
 Sometimes not selfishness, but that 
 over-solicitude called " fussiness " leads a 
 parent astray. Of course a small child 
 must be protected daily and hourly from 
 harm, but such interposition should not 
 be thrust upon his notice until he can see 
 the sense of it. It must not only be con- 
 ceded, as it sometimes is with a sigh of 
 despair, as if one wished for a remedy for 
 the dreadful fact ; but it must be borne 
 in mind at all times, as a permanent rule,
 
 60 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 that the child's life being at first nearly 
 altogether objective, incessant bodily 
 activity is natural to him. His dwelling 
 is a laboratory, in which he carries on all 
 sorts of experiments. The grown person 
 sits still and cognizes the properties of all 
 things through the sense of sight, past 
 experience supplying him with data from 
 which to form a judgment. But the child 
 depends mainly for information upon the 
 sense of touch ; all other senses being 
 comparatively untrustworthy. Some nat- 
 uralists assert that all other senses have 
 developed from the sense of touch. This 
 would furnish a sufficient explanation of 
 the primary dependence placed upon it 
 by the inexperienced investigator. The 
 natural order of education is to begin with 
 the concrete and proceed to the abstract, 
 and touch being the least abstract sense, 
 it is the first natural avenue to knowledge. 
 Not only is the child to gain information 
 through this means, but he is so to achieve 
 his moral education. A judicious parent, 
 instead of impulsively interfering with all 
 those bodily activities which seem to his 
 sober mind dangerous and useless, will re-
 
 EXPERIENCE IS ENOUGH. 6 1 
 
 late to these experiments his own advice 
 and friendly caution, standing aside and 
 letting nature have her way with the child, 
 while he makes it apparent that he is 
 ready to be called upon in case of need 
 and glad to give required help. 
 
 In all cases where a slight hurt will 
 educate interference should be withheld. 
 Herbert Spencer demonstrates in the 
 clearest manner that a warning of danger 
 followed by sympathy, when the warning 
 has been verified, is the most effective 
 way of inspiring a child with confidence 
 in his parents and fixing in his mind an 
 impression of actions to be avoided. And 
 it ought to be borne in mind that the 
 experience is enough, without tiresome 
 iterations on the part of the parent that 
 it has suffered for disobedience. That 
 fact is known already, and the effort to 
 impress it more deeply is revolting, and 
 arouses an animosity which is, most of all 
 things, to be avoided. 
 
 " Do not," advises Richter, " indulge in 
 that after punishment women are so 
 prone to, of coldness or anger." These 
 are circumstances in which unreflecting
 
 6 2 NURSE J? Y E TlflCS. 
 
 relatives and more especially, ignorant 
 servants, frequently work great mischief. 
 On the street, when a little child falls down 
 in running, one hears such an exclamation 
 from the nurse as : " There, miss ! I told 
 you so ! What a naughty child ! I am 
 going to tell your mother ! " Instead of 
 the lesson of carefulness that would other- 
 wise have been learned, there springs up 
 defiance that becomes indifference to re- 
 proof felt to be unmerited. Suppose a 
 child does soil its clothes by careless trip- 
 ping, where does the fault lie ? Not in 
 the tripping, perfectly harmless in itself : 
 he might trip along for blocks and never 
 be checked did not some accident occur. 
 The fault, then, lies in his want of balance : 
 an excusable defect, it might seem, in a 
 creature just learning the use of its legs! 
 There is far too much thoughtless expost- 
 ulation, too much placing the blame 
 where it does not belong. A large pro- 
 portion of the offenses of children occur 
 accidentally ; their motives may be excel- 
 lent, yet their actions bear the appearance 
 of naughtiness. One cannot be too cau- 
 tious in charging home an offense. It is
 
 LA TENT HOSTILITY. 63 
 
 far better to err on the side of neglecting 
 correction than on the side of unjust pun- 
 ishment. This last is something that a 
 child never recovers from. The memory 
 of it may even embitter his feelings to- 
 ward his parents after he has reached 
 maturity. Love, confidence, and obedi- 
 ence should grow up side by side in a 
 childish heart ; it must be won, not co- 
 erced. Where obedience exists alone 
 there is either a lamentable want of char- 
 acter in the child, as well as unnatural 
 coldness on the part of the parents ; or 
 else, there is a latent feeling of hostility in 
 the bottom of the child's heart which 
 surely will some day come to the surface 
 and nullify all the good of restraints ex- 
 ercised over him. 
 
 The combative instinct is a natural one, 
 and is necessary to our preservation. All 
 possess it to a greater or less extent, and 
 as it is a blind, indiscriminate instinct, it 
 has to be trained, so that it shall come to 
 exercise itself only in the proper direction. 
 A child does not at first distinguish the 
 opposition of his parents from that of any 
 other hostile force ; it is perfectly repug-
 
 64 NURSE R y THICS. 
 
 nant to him. How is he to be recon- 
 ciled to it how is a parent to reveal 
 himself so as to make the child feel, 
 long before he can reason about it, that 
 he is the guardian and protector of his 
 interests ? Only by associating the nec- 
 essary authority with his welfare, in ways 
 so plain that the young mind can see the 
 connection. For instance, suppose a 
 child creeps toward a hot stove, intent on 
 putting his hand upon it. If a mother 
 can exercise such restraint over herself as 
 to permit him to barely touch it before 
 she draws him away, she will have taught 
 him a lesson, for the baby, whose sensa- 
 tions are acute, will realize that the stove 
 is his foe and the mother his friend, and 
 he never could have comprehended that 
 if he had been withdrawn before he had 
 felt for himself that the stove hurt him. 
 The mother may then strive to make him 
 understand the two words " don't, " and 
 " hot," and then the next time he is in 
 danger from such a source the repetition 
 of those two words will bring the affair 
 to his memory, and he will associate 
 " don't" with safety. But mere words mean
 
 IGNORE THE TRIVIAL. 65 
 
 nothing to a child, and all the tender lan- 
 guage that could be uttered would not 
 impress him without the smile and caress 
 accompanying them ; nor all the warn- 
 ings without his associating them with 
 some past experience. As the child's 
 whole education, moral as well as intel- 
 lectual indeed, the two cannot be di- 
 vorced is to proceed upon the idea 
 of association, it is especially requisite 
 never to create a confusion in his mind 
 by crowding lessons upon him. Select 
 what is most important and dwell upon 
 that, in order to produce a clear impres- 
 sion, ignoring for the time many other 
 matters of conduct that may have to be 
 noticed in the future. It is a great mis- 
 take to reprove a child for everything he 
 does that is wrong : life will then become 
 to him a monotonous burden of one song. 
 Some old philosopher remarked that in 
 dealing with children he found it well to 
 "be a little deaf, a little dumb, and a 
 little blind." 
 
 To have in mind a distinct plan and 
 compel ourselves to defer to it is the only 
 way to succeed in dealing justly with our 
 5
 
 66 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 children. " We need an ideal to work 
 toward." And although this ideal can 
 never be wholly realized, because we can 
 never carry into the heat and hurry of 
 active life accurate recollections of our 
 calmly reasoned-out views" yet we should 
 aim to advance /0w#n/perfection not away 
 from it." Disinterestedness and self- 
 control on the part of the parent ; love, 
 confidence, and obedience on the part of 
 the child how is the relation to be sus- 
 tained when once happily begun ?
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WE SHOULD ASSOCIATE NATURAL CON- 
 SEQUENCES WITH ACTS. 
 
 " Nothing tends so much to prevent the healthful 
 development of the moral sense as the infliction of 
 punishment which the child feels to be unjust; and 
 nothing retards the acquirement of the power of direct- 
 ing the intellectual processes so much as the emotional 
 disturbance which the feeling of injustice provokes." 
 
 DR. CARPENTER. 
 
 IN dealing with the young we are apt to 
 greatly over-estimate the amount of 
 force necessary to produce the desired 
 effect upon them. The organization of 
 a child is naturally as sensitive as the 
 strings of an ^olian harp, and he feels 
 acutely every change in looks, manners, 
 and voice of those about him. The 
 slightest manifestation of moodiness in 
 his parent is as depressing as clouds pass- 
 ing over the sun. Without comprehend- 
 ing the source of the mental disturbance,
 
 68 NURSERY ETHICS, s 
 
 children are moved to reflect the emotions 
 of their parents, particularly when the 
 relations existing between them are inti- 
 mate and tender. They are excited to 
 anger against persons they hear cen- 
 sured, and treat with deference those ap- 
 parently preferred. The participation in 
 the parental feelings of preference and 
 aversion is so general that people can 
 usually gauge with accuracy the degree 
 of estimation in which they are held by 
 their friends from the manner of their 
 children toward them. Unversed in hy- 
 pocrisy they frankly betray their real sen- 
 timents, and to hear their impulsive talk 
 is often like listening to a phonograph 
 which has registered the private opinions 
 of its confidant. This close resemblance 
 does not arise so much from mental sim- 
 ilarity as from the faculty of imitation, 
 which leads children to adopt the very 
 trifling habits of their elders, even to 
 seasoning their food in the same fashion. 
 When the age of reason comes such 
 habits are often so confirmed as to be 
 unchangeable. We wield a vast influ- 
 ence, therefore, over young minds invol-
 
 ADVICE VS. PRACTICE. 69 
 
 untarily, and our daily conduct shapes 
 their character and moulds their opinions. 
 We instruct and guide them in this way 
 unceasingly and with far more effect 
 than when our efforts to do so are di- 
 rectly put forth, for when moved to 
 admonish their children parents are 
 often affected and pedantical, assuming a 
 degree of virtue which is unnatural and 
 contrary to their ordinary practice, and 
 consequently lacking in that ring of hon- 
 esty and earnestness which makes advice 
 impressive. It is proper that parents 
 should, as they usually do, wish their 
 children to be an improvement upon 
 themselves, that they should be better 
 educated and in every way more virtuous 
 and worthy. But this is not to be 
 brought about through the means com- 
 monly undertaken. The comparatively 
 few times in which we climb to a moral 
 height and surpass ourselves in the giving 
 wise advice cannot offset the numberless 
 lapses we make every day from the 
 standard we advocate for them, and there 
 is no way to compel them to see only 
 what we want them to see, to make them
 
 7 o NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 alive to good impressions, and impervious 
 to bad ones. They take us all in all, as 
 we are, and follow pretty closely the ex- 
 ample we set where we are least desirous 
 and most unconscious of setting any at 
 all. 
 
 Much of the severity parents sometimes 
 find necessary is doubtless an indispensa- 
 ble leverage away from their own very 
 fallible example, toward their theoretical 
 standard of goodness. They think by a 
 forcible and sudden jerk to twitch chil- 
 dren in the right direction, and against 
 their own laxity and carelessness they pit 
 stern control, partly as an instinctive 
 effort to save their offspring from repeat- 
 ing their own mistake, and partly, it must 
 be confessed, because the more imperfect 
 people are themselves the less able are 
 they to endure imperfections in others. 
 Nothing is more exasperating than to see 
 one's own fault repeated, and this is why 
 a high-tempered person loathes an exhib- 
 ition of temper, why pride is mortally 
 offended at meeting pride, and a man 
 prone to deceit is desperately incensed 
 when some one lies to him. My own
 
 DESPOTIC PARENTS. 71 
 
 observation inclines me to think that 
 there is " a reason for being " occasion- 
 ally in the despotically repressive meas- 
 ures imperious and high-tempered parents 
 use to prevent similar explosions on the 
 part of their children. As there is often 
 " a soul of good in things evil " even 
 tyranny has its indirect use. Where 
 judicious management is totally lacking, 
 children would inevitably grow up to be 
 public terrors were it not for the restraint 
 offered by fear. Although the whole 
 tendency of this age is toward mildness 
 in the administration of public and private 
 government, it is not to be supposed that 
 all the members of the community, nor 
 even the majority, have reached such a 
 stage of enlightenment as renders it likely 
 that they are ready to bestow, nor their 
 children ready to be benefited by a 
 system of ideally perfect government. 
 There is enough of the savage element 
 present to make it apparent in instances 
 here and there that harsh and cruel par- 
 ents sometimes rear worthy children. By 
 the exertion of a force amounting to sav- 
 agery they succeed in compelling their
 
 7 2 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 offspring to suppress their faults, and by 
 the practice of a rigid obedience acquire 
 that indifference to the promptings of 
 their individual nature which bears the 
 semblance of self-command. But every 
 one who has made observations in this 
 field must acknowledge that the educa- 
 tive influence of fear, while not wholly 
 productive of ill-consequences in the case 
 of persons whose mental organization is 
 of a low order, and who are not very 
 sensitive, is altogether pernicious when 
 applied to beings of a higher type. In- 
 creased sensitiveness to external impres- 
 sions accompanies complexity of nervous 
 structure, and the children of refined and 
 cultured parents naturally require a com- 
 paratively slight stimulus to influence 
 them to the desired action. If this fact 
 was not so commonly overlooked there 
 would be far less trouble involved in 
 managing them. But as the opinion pre- 
 vails that a child is a stupid and willful 
 being who has to be perpetually admon- 
 ished and reminded, there is an overflow 
 of reproof and caution, frequently coming 
 not from the parents themselves, but
 
 KINDNESS WINS. 73 
 
 from the coarser minds of hirelings, who 
 treat their charges as they were treated 
 themselves in infancy, thus injuring and 
 warping their susceptible nature and in- 
 ducing an artificial callousness which 
 never should exist. Where such injur- 
 ious influences have been absent the most 
 high-spirited child is tractable because 
 sensitive. Authority is able to exert 
 itself in subtle ways. I once heard a 
 little one, accustomed to a certain pitch 
 of voice, ask anxiously, " What is the 
 matter, mamma?" when the mother had 
 unconsciously spoken lower than usual. 
 An affectionate child will watch the 
 countenance of his mother and detect 
 weariness and grief almost before she 
 realizes it herself. But this sympathy, so 
 delicious and soothing, is the outcome 
 only of tender and intimate relations. 
 Neglect is a frost-bite from which there 
 is no recovery. Many seemingly remark- 
 able transformations of character which 
 children undergo would be comprehensi- 
 ble if parents had that acquaintance with 
 the principles of psychology which is 
 really essential to good government.
 
 74 NURSER y E TH1CS. 
 
 The patient tracing back of effects to 
 their primary causes would often lead to 
 such a surprising fact as that a child's 
 confidence, repelled at some moment con- 
 stituting a crisis in his life, converted him 
 from a frank, generous creature into a 
 moody little skeptic ; or that an act of 
 unmerited harshness on the part of his 
 guardians, brooded over in silence, pro- 
 duced an entire alteration in his senti- 
 ments and feelings. We should also, by 
 knowing something of motive and will 
 and the emotions, be able to induce right 
 states of feeling in our pupils simply by 
 judicious direction of their thoughts in 
 certain lines, leading them to do the work 
 of thinking for themselves and so benefit- 
 ing them a thousand-fold more than if 
 we simply made the statement that such 
 a thing is right or wrong. A baby of 
 two or three can have its conduct so pict- 
 ured to its eyes as to be able to realize 
 something of its intrinsic nature through 
 the effect it produces upon other people. 
 The whole dependence must be placed 
 at first upon bringing about in a child's 
 mind the right association. Upon the
 
 WHEN CHANCE RULES. 75 
 
 delicate, plastic fiber of the little brain we 
 must work gently and patiently until the 
 associations we aim to bring about are 
 wrought naturally by repeated slight ex- 
 periences. The consequences of different 
 sorts of conduct must be always clear 
 and manifest ; pleasure and pain, which 
 are the great educative moral influences 
 should be inseparably connected with 
 their proper antecedents. What must a 
 child think who suffers one time from 
 naughtiness and the next time escapes 
 " scot-free? " He thereafter believes that 
 chance is the ruling factor in this matter, 
 and if the temptation is sufficient he will 
 take the risk of following his own im- 
 pulse, rather than surfer a disagreeable 
 restraint. 
 
 Professor Bain observes that ideas of 
 right and wrong have grown up through the 
 association of the one sort of conduct 
 with pleasure, and of the other sort with 
 pain. " Actions that have long been con- 
 nected in the mind with pains and penal- 
 ties, come to be contemplated with disin- 
 terested repugnance ; they seem to give 
 pain on their own account." Children
 
 7 6 NUJtSER Y E THICS. 
 
 know that certain experiences are disa- 
 greeable long before they are capable of 
 comprehending such abstract ideas as 
 right and wrong. When the conditions 
 are natural, and they have been gently 
 treated, the slightest correction makes a 
 profound impression. A baby will pucker 
 up its face and betray considerable dis- 
 comfort upon being quietly taken out of 
 his mother's lap and placed in a crib or 
 chair by himself, after he has been unrea- 
 sonably cross. I use the adjective advis- 
 edly, for very much of the crossness of 
 infants has adequate cause. Few people 
 realize how absolutely indispensable to 
 the comfort of these young creatures is 
 an equable temperature, in every sense. 
 As the room should not be one day warm 
 and the next day cool, nor clothing and 
 diet subject to caprice ; so there should 
 be avoided all unnecessary excitements, 
 confusing to tender minds, and all fluct- 
 uations of management. There are per- 
 sons so lacking in scientific perception as 
 to contest that children should not be per- 
 mitted to form invariable habits, lest it 
 should be a source of inconvenience
 
 FORMA TION OF HABITS. 77 
 
 when traveling, or some other disturbance, 
 interferes with regular routine. They 
 might just as well object to their own 
 breakfast or bath on the same principle. 
 But it does not make the slightest differ- 
 ence whether the formation of habits is 
 convenient or inconvenient. Nature's 
 mode of development lies along this line. 
 Intellect and the moral sense have grown 
 up through the law of association. Un- 
 less there exists the desire to make life 
 difficult for children and subject them 
 over and over again to unnecessary hard- 
 ships of discipline the attempt ought to 
 be made from the first to establish that 
 harmonious adjustment between them- 
 selves and their environment which grows 
 up solely through habit. 
 
 This is the advice most earnestly given 
 by all moral educators ; that repeated 
 slight experiences in the right direction 
 is the only natural and rational way of 
 developing in children a knowledge of 
 morality ; that is, of arousing in them a 
 conscience. What caution must be exer- 
 cised then, to make disagreeable experi- 
 ences coincide only with acts that must
 
 7 g NURSE R Y E TH1CS. 
 
 always be avoided, that such acts may 
 come to be distasteful in themselves. 
 
 The first rule that a parent should bind 
 himself to follow is that of certainty ; of 
 the unvarying fulfillment of whatever mode 
 of correction he has settled upon for the 
 offense. Jacob Abbott says : " It is sur- 
 prising how slight a punishment will prove 
 efficacious if it is only certain to follow the 
 transgression." A penalty has to be often 
 repeated, because the child's mind retains 
 sensations more readily than ideas ; and 
 there are great individual differences in 
 sensibility. Some children have a tactile 
 insensibility which makes them unaware 
 of changes of temperature and prevents 
 their suffering much from such ordinary 
 hurts as bruises and burns. This does 
 not necessarily indicate lack of feeling of 
 the higher sort. I know one child who, 
 from earliest infancy, exhibited an aston- 
 ishing power of bearing pain, so that fre- 
 quently quite serious scars were discov- 
 ered upon his body, showing some hurt 
 which had provoked no complaint. Yet he 
 was of a peculiarly affectionate, clinging 
 disposition, greatly dreading to be left
 
 STUDY THE CHILD. 79 
 
 alone, and loving to nestle close to his 
 mother and nurse. As he grew older he 
 displayed an unusual capacity for sym- 
 pathy and showed keen susceptibilities, 
 yet there has remained withal a certain 
 bodily unimpressionability, so that in- 
 fliction of corporal punishment, which 
 was sometimes injudiciously employed, 
 had the effect of moving him to laugh- 
 ter, partly hysterical, no doubt. It is 
 notable that when this was wholly discon- 
 tinued, and the effort made to deal with 
 him through appeal to his affections, that 
 he became not only more docile, al- 
 though naturally of an obstinate and will- 
 ful disposition, but all his mental proc- 
 esses began to grow more normal. From 
 being subject to gusts of passion and ca- 
 price which frequently excited grave fears 
 as to his sanity, he settled down to a ra- 
 tional demeanor, though remaining emo- 
 tional and impulsive. Only careful study 
 of the peculiar nature of this child, and 
 inquiry into the reason for the existence 
 of certain traits that proved to be congen- 
 ital, would have enabled his guardians to 
 deal with him intelligently. It is evident
 
 8 o NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 that children must be considered sepa- 
 rately and their native oddities taken in- 
 to account. Hasty generalizing is often 
 cruelly unjust, and so is the habit of believ- 
 ing that many acts which are offensive 
 show moral depravity. 
 
 A writer remarks : " It is frequently 
 found that a defect which appears to be 
 simply intellectual or moral is connected 
 with a morbid or imperfect state of the 
 body. Indolence is so unnatural that it 
 usually depends upon some physical de- 
 fect. Mind-wandering is frequently con- 
 nected with nervous debility. These are 
 only to be remedied by attention to health, 
 and to the degree and methods of occupa- 
 tion. Irritation and impatience often arise 
 from the same cause." 
 
 Children who, unfortunately, inherit 
 very nervous organizations, usually accom- 
 panied by great irritability, suffer more 
 than their just share of punishment, while 
 the child possessed of a placid, gentle dis- 
 position gets credit for the intentional 
 practice of virtue, which is in nowise de- 
 served. In proportion to the strength of 
 the feelings is the difficulty of controlling
 
 SELF-CONTROL. 8l 
 
 them. Obstinacy does not indicate a de- 
 sire to displease so much as a tenacious 
 grasp, a fixity of purpose, which is often 
 called, in after life, when it no longer op- 
 poses us, perseverance and courage. A 
 high-spirited, strong-willed child should 
 by no means be exempt from control, but 
 the control should be in a way subtle and 
 tender, not of the sort which humiliates 
 him. A cheerful, pleasing environment, 
 by soothing and interesting him, has a 
 beneficial influence. All external aids, 
 such as diverting his mind by a funny 
 story, or exhibiting some pleasant little 
 surprise, should be employed, rather than 
 throwing the burden of self-command en- 
 tirely upon the child himself. This is too 
 hard, because the motive power is insuffi- 
 cient. Sully observes : " The acquisition 
 of the power of controlling feeling is a 
 difficult and slow process. Children's 
 feelings are characterized by great inten- 
 sity, and their complete possession and 
 mastery of the mind. Hence, the effort to 
 check the outgoings of passion is a severe 
 one." 
 
 Wherever tact can be employed it 
 6
 
 82 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 should be substituted for force. We 
 want to help our children to acquire mas- 
 tery over themselves, instead of dominat- 
 ing them. But parents who aim to develop 
 the individuality of their children, and to 
 educate them in harmony with the higher 
 and more enlightened modern methods, 
 must be prepared to see them, in their 
 tender years, contrast unfavorably, in 
 point of docility, with children reared 
 after the old-fashioned, repressive system. 
 It is necessary to bear in mind the aim of 
 our efforts, otherwise we may be tempted 
 to renounce in some moment of impulse 
 and discouragement, better but more diffi- 
 cult methods, for the government by force, 
 which appears, when viewed from the point 
 of view of our own egotism, desirable.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONFLICTING AUTHORITIES OUGHT TO 
 BE AVOIDED. 
 
 " It is equitable not to estimate errors and injuries 
 as deserving equal punishment, nor errors and misfort- 
 unes : misfortunes happen, not from depravity, but 
 contrary to expectation. Errors do not happen con- 
 trary to expectation, and are not from depravity ; but 
 injuries are such things as are not effected contrary to 
 expectation, but proceed from depravity." 
 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 A PARENT must keep constantly be- 
 ** fore his eyes the fact that his authority 
 is restricted. It relates to two different 
 sorts of action : that which is right or 
 wrong, and that which is simply a matter 
 of propriety or impropriety. These dis- 
 tinctions are never entirely clear to us, 
 even in affairs relating to our larger world, 
 and how vague and fluctuating they be- 
 come when we are called upon to decide
 
 84 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 the character of all the little affairs of the 
 nursery. Yet, in justice to our children, 
 we should make a great difference between 
 acts that are always wrong, independently 
 of anybody's wishes or convenience, and 
 those that are only wrong because they 
 are personally offensive to us or untimely. 
 Children are much scolded merely for 
 being inopportune. But it is most injudi- 
 cious to find fault with a thing simply 
 because it happens to annoy you at that 
 particular minute, when it would not annoy 
 you if you were feeling differently. Wise 
 government necessitates a certain power 
 of diagnosis of conduct. Superficial judg- 
 ments can take no account of motive, and 
 it is the motive which gives the character 
 to the act. We should take great pains 
 to find out why children act so and so. 
 Often inquiry reveals that there is no pur- 
 pose underlying their behavior, and that 
 their headlong rush against some prefer- 
 ence of their elders comes from awkward- 
 ness or ignorance. Parents often act as 
 if the common transgressions of children 
 were deliberate insults to themselves, 
 which they are bound to avenge, instead
 
 OVER GOVERNED. 85 
 
 of considering that they are usually the 
 result of bad judgment in young persons ; 
 of impulse ; curiosity ; and where they 
 " have been trained to disobedience," of 
 willfulness. 
 
 The latter unfortunate result is brought 
 about sometimes by the characteristic in- 
 consistency of one parent, and sometimes 
 from there being too many authorities in 
 a household, probably holding different 
 views, and either accidentally or carelessly 
 betraying this lack of harmony in the 
 presence of the child. I always pity a 
 child who lives in a house with several 
 of his relations, especially if they have a 
 genius for management. It recalls the 
 story of a southern regiment where all the 
 gentlemen in the county joined as officers, 
 and but one man would consent to be a 
 private soldier. And the officers drilled 
 him to death. Mrs. Stowe, in her delight- 
 ful " Oldtown Folks " relates how " Aunt 
 Keziah," " Aunt Lois," and " Grandma " 
 would utter simultaneously their separate 
 commands, and " Harry " would then 
 stand, " with a droll look upon his face, 
 waiting until they had settled it among
 
 86 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 themselves " who was to be mistress. 
 Harry was an exceptional, not to say an 
 ideal, boy. The ordinary boy would be 
 likely to perceive more of the perplexity 
 than the humor of such a situation. I 
 know of one child, naturally straightfor- 
 ward and conscientious, and, being rich in 
 relations, each possessed of a singularly 
 opposite individuality, and while mutually 
 affectionate, yet holding each other's opin- 
 ions in contempt, she used often to go 
 about with an expression of settled de- 
 spair, asking of her own mind, " What is 
 right ? One person says one thing, and 
 one person says another, and whatever I 
 do seems to be wrong." The consequence 
 of this training was to set the girl in a 
 measure at variance with the world. 
 Forced constantly to make decisions in- 
 volving contempt for some natural author- 
 ity, her tender heart became embittered, 
 and there was developed an obstinate 
 pride and unyieldingness which had its 
 origin entirely in the idea that every one 
 desired to impose upon and subordinate 
 her. 
 
 Dissension between father and mother
 
 BICKERINGS. 87 
 
 constitutes one of the most dangerous 
 atmospheres to which a child can be sub- 
 jected. Where there are radical differ- 
 ences of opinion and sentiment, it is inev- 
 itable that he should take one side and 
 plume himself upon becoming a supporter. 
 And even when the bickerings are trivial 
 in amount and character, they exert a 
 deleterious influence, particularly if they 
 have a bearing upon the child's conduct. 
 I trace the subsequent insubordination 
 and disrespect of one child for whose will- 
 fulness nobody seemed able to account, 
 to a little scene at the breakfast-table, 
 when he was but sixteen months old, 
 where his mother objected to his waste- 
 fully crumbling up several biscuits, and 
 his father, happening to be in an irritable 
 frame of mind, asserted that he should 
 "have all the biscuits he wanted " and 
 handed the baby the plate, to help himself. 
 The mother would have been wise to let the 
 matter drop, under the circumstances, but 
 she was high-spirited, and feeling insulted, 
 " showed fight," and a lively argument en- 
 sued which ended in a screaming baby 
 being removed from the table with a con-
 
 88 NUKSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 firmed impression that he was thereafter 
 to have his own way since his papa was 
 his champion. 
 
 Such incidents as this are by no means 
 uncommon. Controversies between moth- 
 ers and grandmothers frequently occur, 
 and the charge is often made, " His grand- 
 mother spoiled him," or, " I cannot do 
 anything with him, his father indulges 
 him so." Where is the fault, oh, parent ? 
 Not with any one person, but with the 
 pair, with the trio, with the whole family. 
 Too many guardians have been the ruin 
 of fine natures. It is seldom that the 
 views of two persons in the same family 
 entirely agree as to the proper rearing of 
 a child, and if every one is to have his own 
 way in turn there will not only be im- 
 mense confusion, but the carrying out of 
 any systematic rule of conduct by the 
 person most concerned is rendered impos- 
 sible. The person most concerned is the 
 father and mother. They must be uni- 
 fied. If essentially separable, then, for 
 the child's sake, one should be the author- 
 ity, and the other consent to be merely 
 passive. In America this often happens,
 
 FAMIL Y UNITY. 89 
 
 not so much from incapacity or indiffer- 
 ence, as through the preoccupation of 
 the father. Men often observe good-nat- 
 uredly, " I leave the management of the 
 youngsters entirely to the care of my wife, 
 I never interfere." This may or may not 
 be for the best. It is not the ideal. 
 Rousseau speaks of " the father being the 
 true teacher as the mother is the true 
 nurse," but the cases are rare where the 
 father is able to be all to his child 
 that the relation demands. The best 
 government obtains in those exceptional 
 families where the parents are always to 
 one another " like a pair of lovers," united 
 in aim and wish, and upholding each 
 other faithfully in private as before the 
 world. Where this atmosphere of repose 
 exists children seldom manifest restless- 
 ness or rebellion. Disaffection among the 
 ruling powers is what most frequently 
 gives rise to their ebullitions of temper, 
 and quite naturally, for cheerful compli- 
 ance with the wishes of others can only 
 occur when there is unshaken confidence 
 in their wisdom and consistency ; and the 
 least show of bickering destroys this.
 
 90 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 There are parents who have so little re- 
 gard for the individuality of their children 
 that they require them to be submissive 
 on general principles ; " to mind anybody." 
 This cannot but produce a subserviency 
 destructive to the best interests of the 
 child. While approving a respectful de- 
 meanor towards elders simply on the score 
 of superiority in age and experience, 
 thoughtful observers must be led to re- 
 mark that justice demands that only his 
 natural guardians should be privileged to 
 exercise authority over the child, and that 
 this should be restricted, as far as possible, 
 to one person. Either the two parents 
 acting in harmony, or one acting alone. 
 This is the only authority which extends 
 itself over a long period of time, or can be 
 regarded as having permanent weight and 
 influence. Any other is transitoiy and 
 relates to the needs of the hour, and in 
 general, to the superficial observances of 
 life. And it is only equitable to require 
 of a child a certain consideration and def- 
 erence for the wishes of his relatives and 
 elder friends, not to exact of him the obe- 
 dience he owes only to his parents, and
 
 A WORKING IDEAL. 91 
 
 which they have no right to transfer to 
 others while they live. 
 
 It may be that the above opinion, 
 being contrary to the general easy-going 
 practice, will seem unnecessarily precise, 
 but it will, I think, stand investigating. 
 We are proceeding upon the basis of there 
 being in the parent's mind " an ideal to 
 work toward ; " an ideal only formulated 
 after painstaking study of the principles 
 of natural equity and the laws of human 
 development. Hard as he himself finds 
 it to keep ever in view the welfare of his 
 child, and to act in each case deliberately 
 and conscientiously, with due regard to 
 his convictions, how can he impart to 
 others such a complete conception of this 
 " working ideal " as may prevent the clash- 
 ing of their opinions and ways with his 
 own ? It is practically impossible. Usu- 
 ally the less people know the more 
 tenaciously they know that, and the more 
 incapable they are of entering into the 
 plans and ideas of others the more obsti- 
 nately they are bent upon procedures 
 which have no method in them but self- 
 will. A parent will find himself contra-
 
 9 2 
 
 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 dieted and set at naught by his own fam- 
 ily, by his child's teachers, and by nurses, 
 if he permits it. Each of them may be 
 doing what they believe right and proper, 
 but the result is unfortunate. As regards 
 family, a parent must use tact to avert a 
 superfluity of advice and control ; as re- 
 gards teachers, he has comparatively little 
 to apprehend if his child has been trained 
 in that self-command which makes it pos- 
 sible for him to quietly take his place 
 among others, as the member of a little 
 civic community. But this cannot always 
 be. Without being in the least vicious, 
 the child may possess traits which makes 
 individual consideration indispensable. 
 He may be restless, nervous, volatile, or 
 prone to dive to the bottom of every 
 topic and ask many questions. Or he may 
 have a real incapacity forgetting informa- 
 tion in routine ways and hate text-books. 
 This distaste to study should by no 
 means be taken as a sign of invincible 
 stupidity, as it sometimes is. One recol- 
 lects with comfort that Daniel Webster 
 was repeatedly expelled from school; that 
 Napoleon was only reported to be " very
 
 PERSONAL PECULIARITIES. 93 
 
 healthy " and that some of the finest intel- 
 lects of all periods have shown a decided 
 aversion to the discipline imposed by 
 others, and have been unable to learn much 
 or do anything important until they 
 reached the age to impose the necessary 
 mental discipline upon themselves. When 
 a child shows himself rebellious to the 
 rules of a school, the teacher is compelled, 
 from the nature of his position, to treat 
 him as an offender. Individual consider- 
 ation, leniency toward personal peculiar- 
 ities, is out of the question. But this is, 
 while seemingly a necessary condition of 
 the schools, as at present managed, a very 
 undesirable state of affairs. Some prin- 
 cipals of private institutions, recognizing 
 the need of reform in school-government, 
 have had the courage to adopt some 
 original methods, which they deem more 
 in harmony with nature. Advertisements 
 appear from time to time, for " pupils who 
 have been unfortunate in other schools or 
 have been mis-managed at home." And 
 sometimes the most surprising transforma- 
 tion of character takes place in a child by 
 removing him from a regular school to an
 
 94 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 institution of this sort, where the prime 
 object is not learning, but the develop- 
 ment of character, which is, slow as 
 people are to recognize the fact, the only 
 education having any value. 
 
 One encounters at every turn some 
 dogmatical sentence meant to be death to 
 progress. People often uphold the ma- 
 chine methods which have so long pre- 
 vailed in all institutions of learning, and 
 are being gradually abandoned, by the 
 argument that children should be early 
 habituated to harsh discipline that they 
 may be fitted to endure the after-disci- 
 pline of the world. It is true that birds 
 born in captivity are less apt to pine for 
 freedom than those caught and tamed. 
 But is the world as bad as it is represented, 
 in this respect is it really a prison ? On 
 the contrary, there never was a time when 
 character and talent had such an oppor- 
 tunity to create for itself a happy destiny. 
 Originality is at a premium, and one 
 touch of personal power goes farther than 
 tons of learning. The person having the 
 original power will get the learning neces- 
 sary to him, though he should be reared
 
 NURSEMAIDS. 
 
 95 
 
 where there are neither schools nor 
 teachers. But the point is that unhappi- 
 ness is not a necessary part of the prepara- 
 tion for life, since the world will let even 
 grown people be happy if they can. And 
 children should not be suppressed upon 
 the principle of getting them used to sup- 
 pression. We should avoid " over-gov- 
 ernment " which produces slaves, much 
 out of place in our enlightened age. 
 
 Among the most serious adverse in- 
 fluences working against model govern- 
 ment must be reckoned the authority and 
 companionship of servants. Many chil- 
 dren are left almost entirely in charge of 
 nurses who are trusted with a power so 
 unlimited that it can only be accounted 
 for by ignorance or thoughtlessness of 
 parents. It is inconceivable that they 
 would permit it if they realized its extent. 
 The nurse who is with her charge all day, 
 who is the first person to see him in the 
 morning and who puts him to rest at night, 
 not only is the custodian of his health and 
 happiness, but she exercises an influence 
 which moulds his moral character, and so 
 she has in her keeping not only the pres-
 
 96 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 ent, but the future. Is not this a trust be- 
 yond the capacity, not only of the ordinary 
 girls who are most often invested with it, 
 but even of an exceptionally well-trained 
 and conscientious maid ? What stranger, 
 springing necessarily from a less refined and 
 cultured ancestry, and lacking, therefore, 
 that innate perception of differences es- 
 sential to the sympathetic comprehension 
 of even an average child, can come into 
 a family and, taking the place of a mother, 
 adequately perform a mother's duties? 
 It is certain that, even with the best inten- 
 tions, she will make grave mistakes, for 
 she will lack knowledge of all those an- 
 tecedent circumstances which play so 
 large a part in governing a child's conduct. 
 It is continually necessary to take many 
 remote factors into account, to study 
 children, not only as they are, but as they 
 cannot help being, from their hereditary 
 tendencies and their environment. 
 
 In America nurses are seldom allowed 
 positively to punish their charges, but they 
 are not restricted from threatening them, 
 and this is very nearly as bad. A perpetual 
 little rain of denunciations and scoldings
 
 HECTORING. 97 
 
 is almost as evil an atmosphere as a child 
 can be subjected to. He then soon loses 
 his sensitiveness and becomes hardened 
 to reproof. They become more and more 
 a matter of course until he attaches 
 no importance to them. Consequently, 
 when he really needs correction it has 
 to be severe in order to be impressive. 
 Higher authority is called in and harsh 
 measures resorted to, of which the most 
 pitiful thing is, that when once begun they 
 are apt to be continued. For unkind 
 thoughts follow each severe punishment 
 and widen a breach between parent and 
 child. 
 
 I have heard it remarked among experi- 
 enced parents, that those of their children 
 who had had nurses were far more trouble- 
 some than the ones who had been raised 
 without. Naturally, the latter being more 
 with their mothers had arrived at a better 
 mutual understanding, as well as having 
 been exempt from alien legislation. But 
 there is another fact to be taken into ac- 
 count, and this is, that in all probability, 
 they had more liberty of action. People 
 do not realize the extent of the " hector- 
 7
 
 9 g NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 ing " which children under the constant 
 care of servants, undergo. Only intelli- 
 gent, self-controlled minds have the capac- 
 ity for silent watchfulness, which is the 
 sort of care desirable for a child. Gener- 
 ally there is far too much talking, the 
 greater part of which is unintelligible to 
 the ears it is directed to. One clear-cut 
 sentence, timely and appropriate, conveys 
 more than the discussion of an hour. So 
 one avoids curtness, the fewer words the 
 better. 
 
 Many little faults for which children 
 are chided are not worth noticing: they 
 are inevitable to their period of life and 
 will be outgrown, if we have patience to 
 wait. How often we are guilty of the 
 folly of digging up the seeds in our human 
 garden to see if they have sprouted ! It 
 is easy, too, to overcrowd the soil. One 
 temptation ever presents itself to a parent ; 
 to substitute his own experience and 
 knowledge for the natural education of 
 time and opportunity, and by saving his 
 child all mistakes, enable him to arrive at 
 something near perfection. He inclines 
 to believe that the mere telling and show-
 
 PARENTAL AMBITION. 99 
 
 ing will enlighten. But alas, each mortal 
 has to work out his own salvation, and 
 vicarious experience is of little account. 
 
 Our offspring are " an unknown quan- 
 tity," and viewing them in the cradles we 
 think that with opportunity they may be- 
 come anything. Parental ambition is 
 satisfied with nothing less than what the 
 despairing gardener told his exacting cus- 
 tomer she wanted " everything in one 
 rose." But not only is child-nature faulty, 
 but all human nature has its natural lim- 
 itations. As a mild suggestion upon this 
 point I quote the following cautious sen- 
 tence : " I would venture to remind parents 
 of the necessity of practicing on them- 
 selves that fortitude and patience they 
 desire to cultivate in their young charges."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE JUDICIOUS MANAGEMENT OF EMO- 
 TIONAL OUTBURSTS. 
 
 " Remember that the chaos of unreason in childhood 
 is itself, in some measure, an incapacity of a relatively 
 diseased sort, and that the wise teacher is a sort of 
 physician who is to help the child toward gaining that 
 sort of health we call maturity." ROYCE. 
 
 ""THE great difficulty in the path of 
 parents is that while children uni- 
 formly unfold in character in the natural 
 order of development, the traditional 
 methods of management, and such as are 
 customarily employed, not only take no 
 account of this order, but invert it, aim- 
 ing to make the child develop in a way 
 contrary to his powers and possibilities. 
 Life is, in its first manifestation, purely 
 sensuous, and as feeling thus belongs 
 wholly to the present moment, there 
 being no recollections of the past, there
 
 NE W EXPERIENCES. j 01 
 
 is lacking that modification and restraint 
 which palliates suffering. So a child's 
 feelings are intense in proportion to the 
 narrowness of his experience ; for all that 
 he knows, pain may last forever, and the 
 passionate revolt he makes is his instinct- 
 ive protest, uncontrollable, because it is 
 the blind, frightened instinct of self- 
 preservation. 
 
 We know how appalling is a novel sort 
 of catastrophe, whose limitations we are 
 not able to estimate, and that therefore falls 
 upon us with crushing power. What is 
 called " getting used to a thing " is nothing 
 but the growth of representation, which 
 recalls to mind the degree of discomfort 
 formerly endured, and so there is con- 
 veyed the reassurance that as we were 
 able to survive that much we will very 
 probably come unscathed through what 
 we are undergoing now. But to children 
 many new and startling experiences 
 occur every day, startling because un- 
 paralleled, and so exciting outbursts of 
 emotion resembling anger, but which are 
 often compounded of aversion and fright. 
 It is a common observation among people
 
 ! 02 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 watching a crying child " Oh, she is only 
 crying from temper nothing is the 
 matter with her." Is that degree of 
 mental disturbance which leads to tears 
 and sobbing, sometimes convulsive, so 
 slight a thing as to demand no special 
 investigation and make no call upon our 
 sympathy ? Disapproval should be in 
 proportion to the amount of intention in 
 the act, not in proportion to the disagree- 
 able effect produced upon beholders. 
 And summary punishment for the pas- 
 sionate outbursts of children is simply 
 cruelty. There are two ways of managing 
 such natural and inevitable fits : by the 
 exhibition in ourselves of more extreme 
 violence ; and by the exercise of such self- 
 command as will enable us to detect the 
 quality of the disturbance and through the 
 employment of tact, bring the demented 
 one to his senses. A sober judgment 
 can hardly hesitate which choice to make. 
 But the trouble is that the right way is 
 troublesome. It takes intelligence as 
 well as virtue to appreciate the character 
 of something which offends and distresses 
 us. The long way in this case is, how-
 
 DIVERSIONS. 103 
 
 ever, the shortest in the end. When we 
 have learned how to deal with a child 
 once we have the key to all future 
 management. 
 
 The primary characteristic of all child- 
 ish emotions is their transitoriness. 
 Grief, anger, fear, yield quickly to the 
 succeeding feeling excited by a new 
 cause. Diversion of mind is the natural 
 way of pacifying wrong feelings. They 
 should be prevented expression by making 
 expression of the opposite feeling neces- 
 sary. Soothing wounded feeling is the 
 stimulating of pleasing emotions in an- 
 other direction, as when a child is led to 
 forgetfulness of a lost toy by the recital 
 of an interesting story. But it is so easy 
 for all general rules to be abused that 
 even the most commonplace idea, which 
 this idea of the diversion of a child's 
 mind from grief is, may be absurdly inter- 
 preted. Yesterday I saw a mother, 
 holding an intelligent-looking baby in a 
 crowded railway station, try to calm its 
 crying, which quite apparently arose from 
 excitement at the noise and confusion 
 by trotting it roughly on her knees.
 
 1 04 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 Looking away and talking animatedly to 
 an acquaintance, she gave the baby not 
 an instant's attention, but finally thrust- 
 ing a bottle of milk into its mouth, con- 
 tinued her mechanical trotting until the 
 bottle was shaken out of its mouth, and 
 its low, bewildered crying recommenced. 
 Such intelligent management as this may 
 be expected to bring on" tantrums" later 
 on. 
 
 It is a radical error to be careless of 
 provoking children. All emotions are 
 latent, and it is desirable that those we 
 wish to remain weak should be allowed 
 to remain latent. The longer they re- 
 main unexercised the less forceful they 
 will be ultimately. Sully remarks in his 
 Handbook of Psychology : " In the 
 matter of feelings it is emphatically true 
 that prevention is better than cure. We 
 must take care that children with a strong 
 disposition to violent temper should not 
 be exposed to circumstances likely to in- 
 flame their passions. An envious child 
 ought not to be placed in a situation 
 which is pretty certain to excite this feel- 
 ing. An emotional susceptibility may to
 
 SELF-CONTROL. 105 
 
 some extent be weakened and even 
 ' starved out ' by want of exercise." 
 
 The advantage of aiding a child to sup- 
 press emotional susceptibilities is that we 
 thus give him time to develop those 
 superior mental faculties which offset and 
 control feeling. But for the " saving 
 grace " of such knowledge as we possess 
 and which keeps up always a certain 
 amount of intellectual activity, few adults 
 would be able to exercise more control 
 over their feelings than children do. 
 Plato thought ignorance the real vice and 
 knowledge the real virtue. Idiots mani- 
 fest, in the violence of their passions, how 
 excessive is the tyranny of mere sensa- 
 tion. We cannot reason with a young 
 child, but we can use our own reason for 
 him ; we can stimulate mental activity 
 by furnishing some object to his percep- 
 tion, or by introducing some pleasing 
 excitant of emotion which may replace 
 the disagreeable one. It is said that 
 children under three or four are not ap- 
 preciative of musical harmony, but it is 
 certain that even if lacking at this age in 
 the musical sense, they are susceptible to
 
 ! 06 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 musical sounds. I was once witness of a 
 scene in the country where a little boy of 
 eighteen months, an excessively nervous, 
 excitable child, fell into an unaccountable 
 " furor " which nothing could appease. 
 He threw himself on the grass and 
 screamed, until his parents withdrew in 
 despair, thinking to let the paroxysm ex- 
 haust itself. A young lady at this junct- 
 ure was inspired to go to the piano and 
 play some of her usual airs. The soft 
 strains of the music wound through the 
 house, and reaching the excited child pro- 
 duced an instant effect. Gradually his 
 screaming ceased, he got up and, after a 
 little hesitation, ran toward the house 
 and made straight for the piano, his little 
 frame trembling violently, and his crying 
 now being subdued to a low sobbing which 
 presently ceased altogether. After listen- 
 ing for a few moments he went over to 
 his mother and fell asleep in her arms, 
 exhausted, but at peace. The parents of 
 this child were themselves exceptionally 
 nervous, sensitive people, and the circum- 
 stances surrounding his birth had been 
 so peculiar as to affect the mental organ-
 
 FOLLOW NA TURE. 
 
 107 
 
 ization of the child adversely. He need- 
 ed the most delicate and sympathetic 
 management, and it would have been im- 
 possible for strangers to have had patience 
 with him. No outsider can see beyond 
 the " trying " traits of a child, the con- 
 fusing and contradictory impulses to 
 which he may be subject from his inheri- 
 tance. Philosophy must reinforce affec- 
 tion, for however strong the mere " sense 
 of duty" it can never stand the strain 
 one small human being, a reproduction 
 of our own faults and more beside, can 
 make upon it in a single day. 
 
 But the one wisdom that never fails, 
 that is present from the beginning to the 
 end, is the wisdom that we most seldom 
 have in mind and to which we trust the 
 least. Nature is the first, the true 
 mother and educator. She governs rig- 
 idly, but without harshness or partiality ; 
 with wordless justice. Says Rousseau 
 sagaciously, " We must follow and assist 
 nature." This happens when we relate 
 the penalty of an offense to itself. Thus, 
 When a child has been cross to his com- 
 panions, leave him to play by himself
 
 1 08 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 until such time as he asks to be allowed 
 the privilege of being with them again. 
 The least show of parental anger should 
 be avoided, for that will increase the 
 child's irritation and prevent his regaining 
 control of himself. A good-humored re- 
 buke, such a reminder as the question, 
 " Do you think you can make yourself so 
 pleasant now that they will want you ? " 
 will be far more efficacious than frown or 
 sermon. There is nothing that a child is 
 so sure to suffer from among his compan- 
 ions, as temper. With the little ones it 
 is a heinous social impropriety, and a 
 young Hotspur learns prudence and ami- 
 ability much more certainly through com- 
 panionship with other children than his 
 parents could teach him. " The desire to 
 keep the good opinion of others," observes 
 Dr. McCosh, " often makes the tyranny 
 exercised over boys by their companions, 
 in workshops, in schools, and colleges, 
 more formidable than any wielded by the 
 harshest masters or rulers." 
 
 We may save our children much by 
 observing wherein lies their tendency to 
 err, and kindly pointing it out to them.
 
 PUNISHMENTS. 109 
 
 But leave them free to choose, and to 
 enjoy or suffer, as may be. When 
 punishment is certain to follow in due 
 course, as it will in the case of nearly all 
 social offenses, it is better for us to leave 
 the matter alone. We have a large 
 jurisdiction, and a heavy responsibility ; 
 no need to try to extend it. It is well 
 to make punishment distinctive. An in- 
 genious parent can readily devise some 
 new penalty for every conspicuous wrong 
 action ; the slighter the better, for its 
 effect depends not upon its severity but 
 upon its certainty. Some little irksome 
 restraint or task is enough. In every 
 case the parent must control his own feel- 
 ings, so as not to entertain for an instant 
 the idea that his child has offended him, 
 and therefore punishment follows. This 
 is to make it retributive, revengeful, and 
 not remedial, as it should be. A great 
 mistake too, is to make punishment 
 cumulative for general naughtiness. It 
 is wrong to let a child go on doing 
 many trivial acts, each in itself insufficient 
 to constitute an offense, and then ad- 
 minister correction on general principles.
 
 1 1 o NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 If a wrong act is not noticed at the ajx 
 propriate time it should not be noticed 
 later. A parent is not a Nemesis, to keep 
 account of misdemeanors and bear down 
 heavily upon the offender in the course of 
 time. He cannot safely express either 
 anger or revenge ; only sorrow. And 
 even that guardedly. He must take care 
 not to make the effect out of proportion 
 to the cause, and throw a gloom over the 
 child's life by an exaggerated show of grief. 
 A look, a sigh, sometimes makes a wonder- 
 fully lasting impression. In Alice Gary's 
 beautiful poem, " An Order for a 
 Picture," the man, recalling his mother's 
 sorrowful gaze into his guilty little face 
 when his baby lips had lied to her, cries 
 out : 
 
 " But, oh, that look of reproachful woe ! 
 High as the heavens your name I'll shout 
 If you'll paint me the picture and leave that out ! " 
 
 How gentle must have been that 
 mother's ordinary look, when her grief 
 sank so deeply into the memory of her 
 erring child. 
 
 Lying is, perhaps, the most difficult of 
 all faults to visit with its adequate and
 
 SCOLDING, 1 1 1 
 
 appropriate punishment. Wrong manage- 
 ment may so easily confirm it into a 
 habit, and when this is established it is 
 well-nigh incurable. An appeal to the 
 child's moral sense is the only safe 
 measure : sternness must absolutely be 
 avoided, for, as lying shows fear, anything 
 which increases this sentiment only drives 
 the culprit further away from truth. The 
 tendency toward falsehood should be 
 counteracted by strengthening the child's 
 mind, imbuing him with courage and 
 confidence ; making him in a way, master 
 of himself. Children are often driven to 
 deceit by mere habits of fretfulness in 
 their elders. They will begin by conceal- 
 ing little accidents and end by trying to 
 keep everything out of sight which is 
 likely to induce a " scolding." This 
 " scolding " is the dread of childhood. 
 I have heard little girls talking the matter 
 over amongst themselves and vowing that 
 it was the worst thing in the world ! 
 Fretfulness is too common. The nervous, 
 overburdened mother frowns unconsciously 
 when her little ones get in her way and 
 interfere with her work ; and when she
 
 1 1 2 NURSE R Y THICS. 
 
 loses control of her face, her tongue slips 
 the leash too, and a sharp word brings 
 untimely dismay to a thoughtlesss but 
 not naughty child. 
 
 It is a good rule never to reprove a 
 child for causing inconvenience unless he 
 has done so maliciously. I was once 
 greatly impressed in witnessing an in- 
 stance of self-restraint in a mother who 
 had the reputation of being an admirable 
 disciplinarian, on an occasion when her 
 little girl broke a bracelet she had let her 
 take in her hand. There was not a shade 
 of impatience, not any allusion to care- 
 lessness, but the subject was instantly dis- 
 posed of with the smiling remark, " I 
 should not have let her have it." 
 
 Respecting all the minor affairs of life 
 influence alone should be used to bring 
 about the attitude we desire. Thinking, 
 with Mandeville, that " the laws of good 
 manners are a kind of lesser morality, for 
 the better securing our pleasure in so- 
 ciety," we ought to realize that there is a 
 wide difference between offending the 
 proprieties and deliberate wrong-doing. 
 And no devious reasoning should lead to
 
 ETIQUETTE. 113 
 
 the elevating a venial fault to the dignity 
 of an offense by making it an object of 
 distinct command. Some parents will 
 think they have a right to punish a child 
 for mis-using fork or spoon at the table, 
 when, in fact, they had no right to issue 
 commands concerning these matters at all. 
 The only rule here must be suggestion 
 and example. 
 
 We wish, above all, that our children 
 should grow up honest and upright. 
 Well, then, we must be content to let 
 many little things slip. I have observed 
 that some of the finest spirits, those bent 
 on high aims, have a real distaste to mat- 
 ters of mere etiquette. Such natural 
 aversions should be respected. We 
 want our little boys to doff their caps to 
 ladies, and to have our girls gentle and 
 deft in their ways ; but if the male scion 
 of the house is a born Quaker, and the 
 girl a second edition of Miss Alcott's 
 " Jo " we ought to make up our mind to 
 patient endurance of their idiosyncracies 
 until our influence and example have 
 brought about something of the desired 
 reform. And it will be none the slower
 
 1 1 4 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 for our not attempting to force it. Chil- 
 dren have so much to learn and are 
 obliged to listen to so many admonitions 
 that sometimes they close their weary 
 ears to everything. Their moral nature 
 grows while resting, and they often sur- 
 prise us by beginning to do of their own 
 accord what we have despairingly given 
 over advising. 
 
 General advice is always useless. It is 
 best to follow the plan of Frcebel and in- 
 culcate the lesson at the time it is needed, 
 by an appropriate anecdote or practical 
 illustration, and let the moral have refer- 
 ence to past conduct. Or, better still, let 
 the child puzzle out the moral for himself 
 and explain it to you. In the delight of 
 driving home the fault of an imaginary 
 person a child learns speedily to form a 
 distaste for the fault itself. As Hoare 
 says : " If we desire to perform our duty 
 toward our children it is not to their out- 
 ward conduct but to the heart that we 
 must direct our chief attention." 
 
 The most difficult position is that of a 
 parent who has begun wrong, and attempts 
 at length to introduce a reform into the
 
 PATIENCE. 115 
 
 nursery. Particularly if he has been lax 
 and careless and suddenly resolves to take 
 the reins. Haste and severity are ruinous 
 measures. Everything should be done 
 gradually and gently, and " One must be 
 prepared for a lengthened trial of patience 
 with children who have been wrongly 
 dealt with," as a great writer observes : 
 " Seeing that that which is not easy where 
 a right state of feeling has been established 
 from the beginning becomes doubly diffi- 
 cult when a wrong state of feeling has set 
 in."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PRE-NATAL INFLUENCES AND THE FIRST 
 DAYS OF LIFE. 
 
 " Deformities of character in the pupil should be 
 traced back to their origin. Only by comprehend- 
 ing the historic growth of an organic defect are we 
 able to prescribe the best remedies. Such deformities 
 are often symptoms of deeper evils." ROSEN KRANZ. 
 
 JVA EN and women in whom the parental 
 * * instinct is strong enough to subdue 
 transient impulses for the benefit of their 
 offspring can furnish an impetus in the 
 right direction to the souls of their unborn 
 children. But while people are contin- 
 ually warned to " prepare for death," that 
 thing which no preparation serves to de- 
 prive of its awful, immutable character, 
 seldom is there any allusion made to the 
 duty which is even more manifest and 
 far more natural, prepare for birth. 
 A mother's preparation for the coming of
 
 PRENATAL INFLUENCE. 117 
 
 her child usually consists in making a 
 "layette." Perhaps into the tiny gar- 
 ments, as they grow beneath her fingers, 
 she sews some tender, maternal fancies, 
 some broodings, reflections, and hopes 
 upon the young life soon to be ushered 
 into this world. Well for the child 
 if this is so ; if there is affection and 
 contentment in the mother's heart. 
 " The child," warns Michelet, " should 
 not come before the cradle is prepared 
 for him," meaning, not that article of rose- 
 wood and lace which stands in the corner 
 of the chamber donated to the child who 
 is to be " born with a silver spoon in its 
 mouth," but the invisible home of the 
 spirit created in the mother's mind. In 
 his mystical, sentimental way the kindly 
 French philosopher talks of "moral incuba- 
 tion " where the man imbues the mind of 
 his wife with great ideas and leads her up- 
 ward from the commonplace to the higher 
 realm of thought and feeling. Women 
 must always read this with a sad and skep- 
 tical smile. Men are not wont either to 
 feel or to assume this responsibility. The 
 feminine mind which aspires to ideals
 
 ! 1 8 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 above the sordid matters of every day, us- 
 ually dreams and hopes alone, knowing 
 that to confide such visions would bring 
 ridicule and impatience from the " partner 
 of her sorrows and joys." Yet it is a 
 beautiful ideal, never relinquished without 
 sorrow, and the women who see in 
 " L'Amour" much nonsense and impracti- 
 cality, will forgive Michelet for all for the 
 sake of the exquisite grace of this one 
 chapter. 
 
 If they cannot depend upon their hus- 
 bands to be guide and companion in the 
 pursuit of this high duty, how shall 
 women fulfill it? Alone, if it must be. 
 This is not the place to dwell upon those 
 strange, sad, spiritual " incompatibilities " 
 which are the ruin of so many ideals of 
 happiness. "Then," sings Tennyson, 
 " reign the world's great bridals, chaste and 
 fair." But the world must wait awhile for 
 its ideal race. That comes only through 
 complete union between the parents, when 
 love will mean a companionship abso- 
 lutely inseparable, of life, mind, and spirit. 
 In the midst of the practical solicitations 
 of our pitifully commonplace living, and
 
 INHERITANCE. 
 
 119 
 
 the " dragging-down cares " that beset us 
 every hour, something still may be done 
 for our coming children, if we wish it. 
 We need not limit our preparation to 
 material things, but give some attention 
 to influencing, by means of our own occu- 
 pations and thoughts, the character which 
 will one day give us the greatest concern. 
 This power is, withal, limited by the law 
 of inheritance, which makes parents only 
 agents for the transmission of certain 
 fixed qualities. Emerson would have the 
 grandparents of the child undergo the pre- 
 liminary education, which would certainly 
 not be amiss, if it were possible. Our- 
 selves, as future grandparents, we may 
 control, yet there is, even here, a fatalism 
 in our movements. How frequently 
 people find themselves doing and saying 
 precisely that which they had resolved not 
 to do and say, as if some impulse overruled 
 their judgment and intention. This is the 
 momentum of all the past bearing down 
 our individually acquired ideas. Yet we, 
 in turn, help to roll up the momentum of 
 a future period, and every victory of ours 
 of reason and conscience over impulse
 
 ! 2 NUKSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 make stronger and more positive the 
 moral nature of our offspring. So the re- 
 sponsibility of a parent begins long before 
 there is a tangible, living fact before him 
 in the shape of a baby. What the man is 
 at the time when, most unrecking his 
 awful power, he indulges, perhaps, some 
 momentary caprice, he imparts to his 
 child. And the whims of the mother, her 
 habits, and her desires, have an influence 
 which it is impossible to estimate but 
 whose effects can often be traced, even by 
 the least reflective parent. Scientists dif- 
 fer greatly in their judgment of the capac- 
 ity for mental assimilation possessed by 
 the fcetal organism. That it is affected 
 by such sentiments as fear, anger, and 
 joy, is on all sides admitted, and while 
 withholding coincidence with such ex- 
 treme views as those advanced by some 
 enthusiasts, that through the fluid in 
 which the foetus floats is transmitted every 
 impression made upon the mothers, there 
 can be no objection to the statement that 
 all the mental and physical faculties of 
 the child, while not alterable in their 
 primary nature, by any intention or action
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 121 
 
 on the mother's part, are subject to con- 
 siderable modification. Such an astute ob- 
 server as Schopenhauer warns us that the 
 mysterious element he calls the " genius 
 of the genus " has a certain will-power be- 
 fore it has actually entered into what we 
 call life. Perez appears to endow it with 
 a faculty that seems like conscious selec- 
 tion, the power of taking up some mental 
 aliment and rejecting other. By this apt- 
 itude for selection may be meant nothing 
 more than the propensity possessed also by 
 the lowest species of plant to appropriate 
 what is necessary to its existence : or, it 
 may be that germ of tendency, the out- 
 come of all the united ancestral proclivi- 
 ties, which, now latent, is to constitute, 
 when developed, the individuality of the 
 child. 
 
 In so slight a treatise as this it is the 
 aim to exclude everything of a theoreti- 
 cal nature, and it is sufficient for the pur- 
 pose to admit that the action of the out- 
 ward world in the impression thereby made 
 upon the mother has a distinct effect upon 
 the child, beneficial and adverse. But as 
 positive opposed to negative is the supe-
 
 1 2 2 NURSE K y THICS. 
 
 rior potency of a mother's acts over her 
 sensations. The habit which prevails 
 among the ignorant of humoring all the 
 mother's passing whims, lest an ungrat- 
 ified desire should " mark " the child is a 
 remnant of barbaric superstition. Self- 
 indulgence does indeed " mark " it by the 
 transmission of the tendency, and a 
 mother who requires everything to give 
 way to her and selfishly arrogates every 
 attention will probably give birth to a 
 child with a decided bias toward selfish- 
 ness. Proper self-control of impulses and 
 appetites, the maintenance of a rational, 
 equable tone of mind, and the cultivation 
 in herself of such qualities as she would 
 prefer to have her offspring possess, should 
 be the rule for the pregnant woman. 
 Healthful occupation, never carried to the 
 point of fatigue, cheerful recreation, by 
 giving her something to think about, is 
 far preferable to idleness. So far as one 
 may choose there ought to be a cheerful, 
 pleasant environment, the society of sym- 
 pathetic friends who are not sentimentally 
 lugubrious ! Excitement and worry ought 
 to be removed far from her, and particu-
 
 THE UNBORN. 123 
 
 larly solicitude concerning both her family 
 and her affairs should not be permitted to 
 intrude upon her thoughts. Yet it is not 
 desirable for her to shut herself away from 
 contact with suffering to the extent of 
 shunning the performance of duties. 
 Some women are peculiarly sensitive and 
 sympathetic at this time, and it is notice- 
 able that their offspring are apt to be re- 
 markable for the absence of that thought- 
 less cruelty common to many children. 
 Moral faculties are, it is said, transmitted 
 from the father and mental faculties from 
 the mother. But no such invariable rule 
 can be admitted. So far as pre-natal influ- 
 ences can be traced, character is inherited 
 quite as much from the maternal as from 
 the paternal side, with perhaps a prepon- 
 derance in favor of the former, since her 
 influence is direct and that of the father, 
 in all of that long period of gestation 
 when the foetus is registering impressions, 
 indirect, acting through her. 
 
 The education of the coming child con- 
 stitutes too large a field of discussion to 
 be more than glanced at here. But, in 
 general, it may be said that the conscien-
 
 1 2 4 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 tious and wisely-directed efforts of the 
 mother are not only effective in influenc- 
 ing beneficially the character of her off- 
 spring, but also in establishing such in- 
 timate and sympathetic relations with 
 the child as will be of the greatest assist- 
 ance in governing him. There are re- 
 markable natural attachments and antag- 
 onisms, disregarded by the stolid and un- 
 imaginative, but of interest to people who 
 desire to understand from the scientific 
 basis, the origin of qualities. 
 
 There is on record the case of a child, 
 born healthy and normal in all respects, 
 who evinced from the first such an obsti- 
 nate aversion for his own mother, that, 
 although there existed in the opinion of 
 physician and attendants no reason for it, 
 he refused to suckle her, and went five 
 days without food, when it was supplied 
 to him from a bottle. But he died at the 
 age of two months, presumably from the 
 effects to his constitution of this willful 
 starvation. The relations between the 
 parents of this child had been singularly 
 unhappy, and the mother had none of the 
 maternal instinct in her nature.
 
 THE FIRS T DAY. 1 25 
 
 A nursling has much more fondness 
 for its mother than a child who is denied, 
 either from intention or incapacity, this 
 natural sustenance. And although we 
 must adopt Sully 's appellation to this 
 sort of fondness, of " cupboard love," 
 there grows out of it a more elevated 
 feeling; a familiar tenderness that other- 
 wise is not nearly so apt to exist. 
 
 Our real and deliberate legislation be- 
 gins with the day of birth. But who 
 thinks of it then ? While the infant is 
 like the tender petals of a rose, almost 
 ethereal in its delicacy, grown people hold 
 their breath in looking at it, fearful lest 
 their utmost tenderness should not be 
 gentle enough. They forget themselves, 
 and do not give an instant's thought" to 
 their own peace and comfort so long as 
 the tiny mortal continues frail and help- 
 less. The young mother and the expe- 
 rienced nurse are alike in their anxiety, 
 although it proceeds in them from differ- 
 ent causes, the desire of the one being to 
 promote the well-being of the child, so 
 far as she knows how, and the other is 
 usually instigated by the wish to secure
 
 1 26 NURSE K Y E THICS. 
 
 peace and quiet, at all hazards, for her 
 patient. The old practice of dosing 
 babies with catnip, soothing-syrups, and 
 paregoric has now happily become almost 
 obsolete in intelligent communities, and 
 yet it is singular how many absurd notions 
 survive and exert an influence. The 
 mother should be well-informed, having 
 acquainted herself beforehand with the 
 necessary information from books and 
 from the advice of her physician, who, it 
 is to be hoped, will be possessed of both 
 the scientific knowledge and the humanity 
 to enlighten her upon the most essential 
 points. But it is unsafe to trust entirely 
 to any one. Some physicians pay no at- 
 tention to a baby after it has been brought 
 into the world, but deliver up the little 
 captive, bound and suffering, to the tender 
 mercies of nurse and relatives. If there 
 has been no wish expressed previously 
 by the mother the one friend who is 
 bound to understand something of the 
 situation of her new-born child no stip- 
 ulations made as to the kind of treatment 
 it is to be subjected to, there may be mis- 
 takes made which a lifetime cannot undo.
 
 WARMTH A ND REPOSE. 1 2 7 
 
 One case that I can never recall without 
 pity and indignation is where a baby, 
 making its entrance into the world early 
 in the dawn of an autumn day, was 
 taken in hand by the much-lauded and 
 trusted professional nurse, a colored 
 " Mammy " of the old school, and after 
 being washed, dressed, and its head wet 
 and hair brushed into curls, was handed 
 about for inspection and tortured and ex- 
 cited for a long time before being per- 
 mitted to drop off into that deep sleep 
 which is the first necessity of a young in- 
 fant. The result of this absurd ignorance 
 was a nervous catarrh which developed 
 when the child was three days old and 
 continued for years. 
 
 The first two requirements of an infant 
 are warmth and repose. Bathing and eat- 
 ing should both be deferred until after 
 that first long nap by which nature seeks 
 to restore its exhausted vitality. I refer 
 the reader to Perez's little work "The 
 First Three Years of Childhood " for a 
 vivid description of the sufferings of a 
 newly-born child. They are greatly ag- 
 gravated by the ignorance and thoughtless-
 
 ! 2 8 NUKSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 ness of attendants, and there is no doubt 
 that the foundation of much subsequent 
 temper and impatience is laid in these 
 early and unhappy days. I borrow a sug- 
 gestion from a little treatise of an experi- 
 enced obstetrician called "The First Hours 
 of Life," to the effect that instead of the 
 usual foolish, inopportune toilet an infant 
 should, on its entrance into the world, be 
 received in an apron of the softest stuff, 
 and at once be laid upon a bed of cotton- 
 batting, which should be packed about 
 him so as to exclude the currents of air 
 which even in summer weather are icy to 
 his shrinking, shivering little body. Here 
 he should be allowed to repose until he 
 wakes, when he may be taken up, washed, 
 and dressed as simply and speedily as pos- 
 sible, and then placed upon his mother's 
 breast to regain there something of the 
 impression of that tender environment 
 from which he has been rudely and hastily 
 torn. What handling can be delicate 
 enough, what voice low enough to temper 
 itself to the needs of these sensitive nerves 
 against which the touch and sounds of 
 the outer world jar with awful torments?
 
 BAD HABITS. 129 
 
 Alas, that the first day of life should so 
 often be made an accumulation of horrors ! 
 And they leave their evil effects, too, in 
 weakened constitutions, in ruined disposi- 
 tions, in bad habits taught by injudicious 
 guardians, and that will henceforth occa- 
 sion many a warfare in which the innocent 
 party is sure to suffer most. 
 
 One such instance is of a nurse, sup- 
 posed to be an exceptionally intelligent 
 woman, putting the thumb of a baby a 
 day old, into its mouth, to stop its crying, 
 with the sage remark " a baby that will 
 suck its thumb is always a good baby." 
 The baby sucked its thumb, and continued 
 thereafter to do so, notwithstanding every 
 effort made to break up the habit, until 
 he was eight years old ! Moreover, out 
 of this grew up other offensive ways, one 
 of which was a desire to continually have 
 something in his mouth, a craving which 
 was instinctive and unconquerable. Was 
 the child to blame ? But in all the sub- 
 sequent years when he was corrected for 
 obstinate persistence in these unpleasant 
 habits, who pardoned him, and recollected 
 the nurse ? 
 9
 
 ! 3 o NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 It cannot be too urgently represented 
 that right treatment the first week is of 
 the utmost importance in rearing a child. 
 The foundation of good character is laid 
 in health ; and bodily comfort, a careful 
 adjustment to his novel and startling sur- 
 rounds is indispensable in bringing this 
 about. The vanity and ostentation of the 
 parent which enjoins elaborate toilets and 
 permits visitors to handle the baby, 
 ought to be overcome by a sincere wish 
 to secure to the helpless one quiet and 
 peace. No one can so well understand 
 the baby as its mother, if she is permitted 
 to exercise that tender solicitude nature 
 has endowed her with, and is freed from 
 the well-meant interference of the friends 
 and advisers who cluster about the cradle 
 with speculative eyes, and bristle with 
 recipes and hobbies the tithe of which, 
 if received, would bring every infant to 
 an untimely grave.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE MENTAL NEEDS OF CHILDREN 
 MUST BE CONSIDERED. 
 
 "In infancy the brain, being soft and warm, is 
 easily impressed, and as it hardens these impressions 
 are retained." FENELON. 
 
 A WISE writer says : " Patience is the 
 first lesson to teach a young child ; 
 it should be taught to wait. Don't give 
 a baby what it wants while it cries ; calm 
 it tenderly, and then promptly supply its 
 wants, so that it will come to associate 
 peace and quiet with its enjoyments." 
 
 The practice which obtains with some 
 nurses, of thrusting a bottle of milk into 
 a crying infant's mouth, or putting it 
 hastily to the mother's breast while it is 
 excited and fretted, is very likely to in- 
 duce impatience. At the same time, an 
 infant should not be kept waiting unnec- 
 essarily and unreasonably. Hunger is an
 
 1 3 2 NUKSEX Y E THICS. 
 
 exigent instinct, and its demands ought 
 to be satisfied, but with judgment. It 
 is surprising that among educated people 
 the practice continues of "stuffing" 
 babies, of offering food as the panacea 
 for all discomforts. This is to convert an 
 intelligent human being into a mere 
 appetite, inviting and encouraging its 
 sensual nature into prominence. Babies 
 should be fed regularly, by the clock, when 
 they are awake, through the day-time, 
 and only twice at most, during the night, 
 until the age of six months, when a 
 healthy, well-trained child will sleep the 
 night through, going probably from eight 
 till five or six without feeling any desire 
 for food. Of course there is a great dif- 
 ference in this respect among infants, as in 
 all respects ; yet some rules are of general 
 application, and the study of some little 
 treatise on the hygienic treatment of 
 infants ought to be part of every mother's 
 preparation for her duties. 
 
 Usually a baby cries from a sense of 
 discomfort which ought to be remedied 
 for him. The cause of his fretting 
 ought always to be ascertained, with-
 
 SYMPA THY. 133 
 
 out delay, but if it is certain that 
 he is merely willful, the proper plan is 
 to let him alone until he is convinced 
 of the futility of rebellion. Great care 
 must be exercised, and the cry of pain 
 distinguished from the cry of temper. 
 Babies suffer a great deal during the 
 first two years, and especially when they 
 begin to cut their teeth. Life then be- 
 comes one restless, feverish want, the 
 desire is constant to allay the itching 
 pain, and they cast about in their help- 
 less way, for some substance which pos- 
 sesses just the right qualities to meet 
 their necessities. Happy the baby who 
 at this juncture is surrounded by the 
 judicious care of an intelligent mother, 
 who realizes its needs, both physical and 
 mental, and who, without spoiling, can 
 give that sympathy and petting which 
 is like the breath of life to sensitive 
 children. It is a great gift to be able to 
 interpret a child's inarticulate murmurs. 
 And this is where science comes in to 
 supplement with its definite knowledge 
 the fallible ideas coming down to us from 
 tradition. It is something to know that
 
 134 
 
 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 there is a baby language, that infants and 
 animals commonly understand each other 
 better than grown persons can under- 
 stand either. Inflections and gestures are 
 the language that precedes words. The 
 expressions that rapidly chase each other 
 over a baby's mobile face, as it watches 
 for the first time a lighted candle, or 
 handles with vague, uncertain touch, a 
 worsted ball, are full of dawning emotions 
 that are to be translated presently into 
 ideas, which, nevertheless, it cannot ex- 
 press unless we are ready to comprehend 
 its wordless talk. We are too neglectful 
 of our children's intellects while they are 
 still in the cradle. The great advantage 
 of training them thus early through the 
 use of their sense-perceptions is one of 
 the most earnest doctrines of Frcebel, 
 whose system does not embrace as is 
 supposed by many, only the teaching 
 carried on in the kindergarten, but that 
 more important teaching of the mother 
 in the home nursery, where, hanging over 
 the cradle, she studies the awakening in- 
 telligence of her child and seizes the right 
 moment to satisfy, by supplying some ap
 
 SILENT CARE. 135 
 
 propriate object, its desire to investigate. 
 The room where an infant lies, however 
 plain, must be like a great, glittering fair, 
 where forms and colors melt into an un- 
 distinguishable mass. It fixes its eyes 
 on some bright object and stares intently ; 
 stretches out its hands to grasp, and is 
 disappointed ; and through this comes 
 the first idea of space, of distance. But 
 disappointment is the law of life to this 
 helpless little creature, unable to reach 
 the objects of its desire. And how sel- 
 dom it is helped. When we will bear in 
 mind that babies need something to in- 
 terest them, something to satisfy their 
 mental craving, which is imperative, they 
 will be better-tempered and more of a 
 comfort to themselves and other people. 
 
 Our little ones ought to be the sub- 
 jects of a care as vigilant as we can give, 
 but it should be silent and watchful, not 
 effusive. I was the pleased witness the 
 other day, in a train, of the gambols of 
 a fourteen months' old baby girl. There 
 was no attitude, save standing on her 
 head, which she did not take within the 
 space of ten minutes. With her mother's
 
 1 36 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 arm about her, simply to protect, not to 
 restrain, she climbed about the seat, 
 twisted, writhed, flung out arms and legs 
 and head, and frolicked to her heart's con- 
 tent. The mother was meanwhile talk- 
 ing to a friend on the opposite seat, 
 unconcerned by the little one's incessant 
 activity, although her arms must have 
 ached. The baby's face was full of char- 
 acter and sweetness, and she seemed to 
 have an excessive fondness for her 
 mother, flinging herself back into her arms 
 every few minutes and laughingly trying to 
 pat her face. When she was tired of play 
 she nestled her head down on that patient 
 mother's arm and rested quietly. Almost 
 any nurse would have been incessantly 
 admonishing and cajoling and threatening 
 a baby of this active disposition, and 
 thereby have excited fretfulness. Few, 
 even among mothers, would have endured 
 to be the subject of amused observation 
 on the part of all the other persons in the 
 car. I deemed her, in my heart, a wise 
 woman, who valued the welfare of her 
 child more than the opinion of the world. 
 It is generally easier to sacrifice one's ease
 
 NA UGHTINESS. 
 
 '37 
 
 and comfort than to endure the conse- 
 quences of going contrary to common 
 usage. And the common usage is to 
 make automatons of children in public. 
 Their innocent, unconventional questions 
 are hushed, their curiosity about new 
 scenes and objects suppressed, for fear of 
 exciting remark or offending some preju- 
 dice. Now, it is inevitable that the ac- 
 tivity of a child should have vent ; if 
 quenched in one direction it will breakout 
 in another. If natural, innocent curiosity 
 is denied expression there will be the fret- 
 fulness of a disappointed faculty. There is 
 no doubt but that a large part of the 
 naughtiness of children does not begin as 
 naughtiness, but is converted into it by in- 
 judicious treatment. We have no just con- 
 ception of how constantly we balk their 
 harmless wishes. Who can estimate the 
 grief and wrath that swells a baby's breast 
 when he is snatched without warning from 
 a fascinating play in the sand, or even 
 mud, whither he has crept while his 
 guardians are looking elsewhere ? Yester- 
 day I saw a toddling mite, in the out- 
 skirts of the city, stamping with his feet
 
 1 38 NUKSER Y E TfflCS. 
 
 some clay on the path, and making, per- 
 haps, fairy figures, full of poetic fancies ; 
 happy, dirty, and engaged in learning, in 
 his own way, something that vastly inter- 
 ested him. His brothers and sisters were 
 playing also in the garden, when one of 
 them, suddenly noticing the baby's occu- 
 pation, jerked him about with a harsh re- 
 proof, and carried him off to a distance, 
 from no sensible motive, surely, since he 
 was already as dirty as he could get, but 
 apparently following that thoughtless 
 habit, indulged in by grown people, of 
 treating little ones as automatons, twitched 
 here and there, and kept in certain posi- 
 tions, without regard to their own wishes. 
 If refined parents object to their chil- 
 dren's playing in mud as they will, of 
 course let them provide clay and sand, 
 spread on boards, put aprons on their 
 babies, give them toy shovels, and let 
 them be happy within reasonable bounds. 
 The point is not so much the permitting 
 some one occupation on which a child has 
 set his heart, as the taking care not to 
 thwart unnecessarily his natural impulses. 
 Much of the naughtiness of our children
 
 NATURE A TEACHER. 139 
 
 comes from the artificial lives we make 
 them lead. We substitute our own ma- 
 ture, educated tastes for their simple, in- 
 fantile ideas, and so force them too early 
 away from childhood. We make them 
 skip many of the stages in the natural 
 order of evolution between infancy and 
 maturity. And very often, if we were 
 suddenly confronted in the midst of some 
 difficulties with our children, by the stern 
 inquiry into motive, we should be con- 
 founded to find out that we are correcting 
 them not nearly so much for being bad 
 as for not being what we prefer to have 
 them. 
 
 Nature is a much better teacher than 
 the most careful parent, for she teaches 
 what must be learned : that which is es- 
 sential to living. And one of her earliest 
 lessons is patience. Animals possess this 
 trait ; and infants have it until they are 
 educated out of it. Modern civilization, 
 with its roar of machinery, its terrible 
 wearing competitions, and over mental 
 stimulations, brings disease to the nerves 
 of the majority of men and women. They 
 are impatient because they want things
 
 1 40 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 to move faster faster. In their house- 
 holds women often move about frantic- 
 ally, rushing up and downstairs, speaking 
 hurriedly, and giving themselves no time 
 to reflect or to study the laws of that life 
 they abuse. 
 
 It is no wonder they imbue their babies 
 with the spirit of impatience. It is ex- 
 pressed in their own movements, voices, 
 and faces, and infants imitate it. Nothing 
 is more contagious than discontent, and 
 when children feel in the atmosphere a 
 want of cheerfulness they become cross 
 and fretful themselves. The first im- 
 pression a baby ought to receive is that 
 of peace. Let him feel that he has en- 
 tered a realm of order and serenity, 
 where all claims receive attention in their 
 turn. Young and inexperienced mothers 
 are apt to experiment too much; they 
 try the effect of this and of that, and their 
 zeal allows no intervals of that judicious 
 letting alone that is necessary for the 
 healthy growth of the little ones. Babies 
 are very differently constituted in this 
 regard, but I have never seen a baby so 
 placid but that it could be trained into
 
 SELF-DENIAL. 141 
 
 habits of fretting by being constantly 
 " fussed over " and waited upon. It is 
 often observed that the children of decent 
 poor people, who are left to themselves 
 for long hours while their parents are at 
 work, are docile and patient. They have 
 learned to submit to the inevitable, to 
 realize that there are other claims before 
 which theirs must, for the time being, give 
 way. And, other things being equal, this 
 is a primary good, for the time comes to 
 all when duty lies not in action but in 
 patient waiting upon circumstances, and 
 happy, then, is he who can wait with ease. 
 " If," said Sir Isaac Newton, " I in any 
 way excel other men, it is in the power 
 of patient thought." 
 
 But it is not right to " try " the en- 
 durance of our little ones for the sake of 
 experiment. There should be just so 
 much denial as is necessary, and no more. 
 The mother who makes her baby the 
 tyrant of the house, invading with his 
 personality every room in it, driving the 
 father to his " den " for refuge, and tiring 
 relatives and friends with the reiterations 
 of her solicitudes, is not more wrong than
 
 142 
 
 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 the mother who, making quiet the great 
 object of life, suppresses her child's rest- 
 lessness by inattention, and calmly goes 
 her way regardless of his wants. Rest- 
 lessness should not be mistaken for fret- 
 fulness, as it sometimes is, for while the 
 latter must be dealt with as a fault, the 
 former is an indication of uneasiness, 
 either mental or physical. Children are, 
 in a sense, prisoners, and during the first 
 two years they endure probably more 
 hardship in the way of denial than any 
 parent would willingly inflict if he fully 
 comprehended their position. It is not 
 so much that there are restraints, for it is 
 proper that there should be, but that 
 the restraints are artificial : related, not 
 to that natural order of development of 
 which we have spoken, but to the con- 
 ventional idea of making children dainty 
 toys, " prettily-behaved " creatures shin- 
 ing with a surface polish, and smooth to 
 the touch, however rough and inharmo- 
 nious within. We fail, and deserve to fail, 
 in rearing our children creditably, while 
 we make " behavior " and not virtue, 
 the object of our training. There could
 
 LOVE AND TRUST. 143 
 
 be no greater proof of the sublime truth 
 and beauty of that instinct which ex- 
 presses itself in the religious feeling, than 
 that persons in whom this instinct is 
 strong and unperverted, exert a deep and 
 permanent influence over children. It is 
 not creed, formulas, and ceremonies, not 
 prayers, not exhortings, which arouse their 
 reverence and sympathy, but the exhibi- 
 tion of the spirit of faith, of enthusiastic 
 love for the " eternal verities " which 
 lifts all hearts capable of pure emotion 
 into that region where virtue and inno- 
 cence dwell. So unerring is a child's in- 
 stinct that I doubt whether all the para- 
 phernalia of a cathedral could impress him 
 so deeply as the fall of a simple word 
 the fleeting gleam of a beauteously holy 
 feeling mirrored in the eyes of a gentle 
 teacher, and which reveals in an instant 
 to his delicate sensibilities the existence 
 of a soul deserving his love and trust. A 
 child is the true idealist ; something of 
 the grace of that concordant movement 
 which underlies all the springs of our 
 outward life, reveals itself to him, and it 
 is through our understanding of this
 
 1 44 NURSE R Y THICS. 
 
 poetic susceptibility that we gain the 
 power to minister to the needs of his 
 moral nature. A formalist is merely 
 a ridiculous object to a child ; he sees 
 through the posturing and despises 
 without comprehending, the hypocrisy. 
 All our little, half-conscious pretenses 
 greatly lower us in these pure, far-seeing 
 eyes ; but a breath of skepticism, of that 
 contemptuous disbelief in virtue and 
 truth which abounds at table and hearth, 
 and is the outcome of hard, embittering 
 experience, is a withering pestilence to a 
 child's heart. Let him believe and trust, 
 let him retain his faith in human nature, 
 and accredit goodness to his companions 
 as long as he can. The less the child 
 knows of evil the safer he is, for we find 
 what .we look for. 
 
 So worldliness, even in the smaller meas- 
 ure of observance of the little details of 
 etiquette and dress, ought to be resolutely 
 kept in the background of a child's 
 thoughts. He should be taught to please, 
 not that he may attract, but from the 
 higher motive of doing good. How much 
 more delightful is the child who springs
 
 MANNERS. 145 
 
 up voluntarily to bring a glass of water 
 to a weary guest, even though he blunder- 
 ingly spills it, than the " little lady " who 
 sits gracefully and docilely on her chair, in 
 a trained attitude, and with all her native 
 spantaneity lost in "manner." But these 
 are matters that depend on the parents' 
 inner sense. They who sacrifice to Moloch 
 will offer up their children's characters, 
 and think they are doing their duty 
 to the world. The children are the 
 sufferers, and they revenge themselves on 
 the next generation. The vacuity that is 
 like a disease among a certain class re- 
 sults from the suppression of natural ac- 
 tivities in their forefathers. Patience 
 the patience that is so laudable and useful 
 is not passiveness, but the conscious de- 
 ferring of gratification. To prevent that 
 indefinite deferring of hope which, as 
 the proverb says, " maketh the heart sick," 
 there must be a certain dwelling of the 
 mind on other things, nearer, and which 
 supply the place, temporarily, of the thing 
 desired. To make clear the application of 
 this principle to children, I would say that 
 they should never be condemned, if it
 
 ! 4 6 NURSE K Y E THICS. 
 
 can be avoided, to wait for something an 
 indefinite time. They should be shown 
 that what we intend to give them is com- 
 ing, that we do not wish to torment them 
 but merely that they are subject to the 
 law of necessity. 
 
 What makes the difference between 
 the baby who screams and kicks while his 
 milk is being prepared and the one who, 
 equally hungry, " coos " and stretches out 
 eagerly but has strength of mind to wait 
 his time? Without doubt the difference 
 in the ways of his guardians. A gentle 
 and deliberate manner has great influence 
 with a peevish child. A noisy, bustling 
 activity, accompanied as it often is by 
 many loud reassurances and promises, 
 has a bad effect. There are people who 
 say that babies yell from " sheer natural 
 depravity," but I cannot help saying that 
 the depravity of the child is only the 
 foolishness of the parent. Nervous par- 
 ents, to whom an infant's shrill cry is like 
 the prick of a pin, will make unreasonable 
 exertions to sooth it into quiet. They 
 will supply it with such counter-excite- 
 ments as jumping, walking the floor with
 
 NOT NOISE BUT REST. 147 
 
 it, and attracting its attention by uncouth 
 noises. This is something like the prac- 
 tice of the savage " medicine men" who 
 endeavor to cure their patients by beat- 
 ing iron pans. 
 
 I have witnessed scenes where parents^ 
 grandparents, and nurse, have vied with 
 each other in creating confusion, blowing 
 horns, springing rattles, singing, playing 
 frog, and dancing, before the outraged 
 eyes and ears of a fretting baby, who, after 
 an amazed stare, would throw himself 
 back after each successive performance, 
 with a fresh fit of crying ! Common 
 sense would have dictated that when a 
 child's nerves are in an irritable condition, 
 what he needs is not noise and amuse- 
 ment, but rest. A glare of light, particu- 
 larly gas-light, is decidedly injurious. 
 Sometimes a change of scene, the taking 
 a child, well wrapped up, into another 
 room, a little cooler and darker, will exert 
 a beneficial effect. If there is reason to 
 suspect some physical ailment that a warm 
 bath will relieve, that should be tried, 
 even if the extra service is troublesome 
 and unusual. Babies must be treated, in
 
 ! 48 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 a measure, like patients, for nearly all their 
 tempers arise from physical discomfort 
 and the impossibility of making themselves 
 understood. And the rest must be con- 
 sidered due to injudicious management. 
 There is too much variability and uncer- 
 tainty in the nursery, and too little consid- 
 eration given to the fact that no indulg- 
 ence should be begun which cannot be 
 continued. The youngest child is able to 
 appreciate consistency. The second week 
 he cries for exactly the same treatment 
 he received during the first. There is 
 something of cruelty in petting and ador- 
 ing the new-comer while he is a novelty, 
 and then relapsing into comparative in- 
 difference. The first baby in a family is 
 a comic opera, and all view and applaud 
 him; rush to wait upon him until it be- 
 comes tiresome and then, without any re- 
 gard to the effect upon his feelings, they 
 begin trying to undo this spoiling, caus- 
 ing unnecessary suffering to the child and 
 to themselves. All the while it was being 
 made the prime object of consideration 
 that wonderful little brain was learning to 
 take account of its surroundings and to
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 149 
 
 occupy the place yielded to it, so that, by 
 the time its guardians awakened to a sense 
 of its identity, it had discovered that its 
 cry is the powerful lever that moves the 
 world. 
 
 Even we hardened citizens of the world 
 know how forcible is a first impression. 
 With us reason modifies and corrects it. 
 But infants do not reason ; they merely 
 perceive things in immediate relations. 
 The first effect of a cause they conjoin 
 to it, and thereafter the two make an 
 idea. If they cry vehemently and get in- 
 stantly what they want, while a more 
 moderate grumbling does not bring it, they 
 learn to attract notice by screaming. No 
 reproach can attach to such manifestly 
 natural conduct. Herein one perceives 
 how necessary it is that the nurse, or who- 
 ever has the management of the child 
 during the first few weeks, should have a 
 wisdom beyond the mere knowing how to 
 bathe and dress him. She should under- 
 stand that her actions now have much 
 more than a temporary importance and 
 that carelessness or ignorance will be 
 fatal. How few persons are able to weigh
 
 ! 5 o NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 well the consequences of their conduct 
 at this period. Commonly, everything is 
 sacrificed to the nearest good : the future 
 is left to take care of itself. It is singular 
 that when a baby cries the first thought 
 ordinarily is not what is the meaning of 
 the cry, what does he need, but how to 
 hush him. If it breaks out in the middle 
 of the night, he will be rocked, walked up 
 and down, or some attempt made to 
 amuse him, thus establishing a precedent, 
 unhappy for all parties. Or perhaps he 
 will be treated roughly by a tired, irritated 
 parent who cannot " see the sense of the 
 child's making a racket." 
 
 In truth, no child " makes a racket " 
 until it has been taught to do so either 
 by neglect or over-indulgence. We must 
 recollect that a certain amount of crying 
 is necessary to young children. It helps 
 them to bear discomfort, and is the natural 
 outlet to their feelings. But babies can 
 be trained to cry softly. They will never 
 learn to be violent if they are treated 
 with calm kindness. " Those children 
 only learn to carry their point by noisy 
 and violent demonstration who find, by
 
 A NEW LEAF. 151 
 
 long experience, that such measures are 
 usually successful. A child even who has 
 become accustomed to them will soon 
 drop them if he finds, owing to a change 
 of management, that they will never suc- 
 ceed." 
 
 I incline to think, however, that this last 
 sentence is somewhat too sanguine. It is 
 not easy to undo the effects of bad man- 
 agement, particularly if the attempt is 
 made under the old existing conditions. 
 Some parents think they have only to say 
 to a child, " You are not going to be 
 spoiled any longer ; I am going to turn 
 over a new leaf with you now, and you 
 must behave." What impression does 
 this vague threat convey to a child's 
 mind ? None. Or, at most, merely that 
 his parent, being cross, wants to make 
 an alteration somewhere, without exactly 
 knowing where, or how to do it. In many 
 instances this is the truth. For, as most 
 unfortunately often happens, the parent 
 finds it impossible to change his own 
 habits and live up to his reformed plan, 
 so that, as it proves, his words have been 
 mere windy gusts, having no result save
 
 1 5 2 MURSEK Y THICS. 
 
 that of creating a certain distrust of his 
 intentions. 
 
 Abbott wisely cautions : " If children 
 have become insubordinate, do not expect 
 sudden reformation, and do not warn them 
 that a change of management is coming ; 
 let it come gradually and gently." But 
 this pre-supposes unusual self-command 
 in the parents, and those parents whose 
 management has been faulty of course 
 have little faculty of self-command. It is 
 harder to reform parents than children. 
 Sometimes sending a rebellious child away 
 with a judicious relative or friend, for 
 a short time, effects a most beneficial 
 change. Amid entirely new scenes, and 
 with the old associations gone, he learns to 
 submit himself to new regulations, and if 
 upon his return home he finds that a wiser 
 government obtains than existed before, 
 it seems more natural and agreeable than 
 if the change came as a sudden surprise. 
 
 Just here, however, it may be well to 
 observe that surprise is an element in wise 
 training. The sudden substituting new 
 objects of attention, and new methods of 
 correction is of use, particularly with a
 
 COMPANIONSHIPS. 153 
 
 lively, imaginative child. Such an one 
 usually gives trouble, partly from his ten- 
 dency to tire readily of accustomed things, 
 and to be subject to ennui when re- 
 strained. This disease of childhood is 
 generally ignored, but it is very real, and 
 unpleasant. Isolation and enforced quiet 
 aggravate the disorder, which demands 
 the corrective of agreeable activity and 
 of companionship. It is not good for 
 children to be much alone, nor to be 
 chiefly with grown persons. There is al- 
 most sure to be thus developed precocity 
 of intellect at the expense of character. 
 It is wise for a parent to mingle with the 
 sports of her child, but permit him to 
 bring in other children. She may then 
 watch him to the best advantage, and 
 without interfering with his harmless 
 sports. There are some persons who 
 merely play with children to amuse them- 
 selves, to pass a chance idle hour, and 
 having no sense of moral responsibility, 
 they " draw out," the little one's oddities 
 and then laugh at them. From such 
 tormentors there ought to be protection. 
 Nothing is more reprehensible than the
 
 ! s 4 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 practice of teasing children. It does not 
 make them less sensitive or more reason- 
 able, and it does spoil their tempers com- 
 pletely. An old Eastern proverb says : 
 " It is dangerous to jest with children." 
 They take everything literally and think 
 us deliberately unkind. The inevitable 
 has lessons enough for them if we do not 
 interfere, and all our training should tend 
 toward strengthening their moral char- 
 acter without blunting their sensibilities. 
 It is for their good, not that parents may 
 be quiet and comfortable, that children 
 should be trained to patience. It is the first 
 step of that self-government they should 
 begin to exercise as early as possible. 
 Many children in poor homes bear early 
 the heavy burdens which crush all the 
 romance out of their lives and to them 
 endurance means ceaseless pain with no 
 rainbow of promise in the beyond. And 
 yet, even out of these hard conditions, 
 emerge sometimes the heroes of the world. 
 But the risk is not one to be chosen. In 
 teaching our children fortitude we want 
 to make use of those happenings which 
 constantly present themselves, ready to
 
 HOPEFULNESS. 155 
 
 be turned to the right account. Let them 
 be bright and merry and get all the fun 
 they can, for good-humor comes of health- 
 ful activity, and without this self-control 
 is impossible. When they have come to 
 be able to acquiesce in what they do not 
 like because it is best, and to please those 
 they love, they have attained to a height 
 of moral power that never could have been 
 climbed had we made the matter one of 
 coercion, and forcibly led them along 
 each step. 
 
 I have in mind at this moment a little 
 boy, not a dozen years old, whose fine 
 mind is constantly hampered in its ac- 
 tivity by his frail health. He has repeat- 
 edly been taken from school, and his 
 ambitious efforts baulked, but his hope- 
 fulness never fails, and he is buoyant and 
 light-hearted in all the enforced intervals 
 of the work he loves, with a cheerful 
 acquiescence in present deprivation and 
 confidence in the future. 
 
 This power of waiting for the good 
 momentarily denied is the basis of fine 
 character. It is a sort of spiritual flexi- 
 bility that, like finger flexibility, must be
 
 ! 56 A'UXSEK y THICS. 
 
 developed early in life. And its presence 
 then is most charming because unexpected. 
 What pleasure is imparted to a company 
 by the entrance of a little one whose be- 
 havior is dictated by a well-balanced 
 sense of the rights of other people and of 
 his own. He is neither bashful nor for- 
 ward. He accepts notice contentedly, and 
 if it is delayed he can wait. 
 
 The only way of imbuing our children 
 with feelings of consideration for others 
 is by treating them sympathetically. 
 They learn the rights of other people 
 through having their own respected. Has 
 not every one observed how, in their play 
 of " school " and their " mothering " 
 plays, they imitate the management they 
 have received? Go among the poorer 
 and more ignorant classes and you will 
 find on the door-step a mere baby with 
 threatening brow and stick upraised to 
 beat her companions, all in play. As 
 Richter says : " Among the people the 
 blows of fate on the parents usually beget, 
 as in a stormy sky, retaliating blows on 
 the children." And they pass it on if 
 only to their cat or their doll.
 
 NATIVE SWEETNESS. 157 
 
 We must enter into the feelings of our 
 children and divine the moment when 
 good impulses are at work. As they 
 grow older put it into their power to 
 exercise the grace of concession. Few 
 children will refuse if they are left to their 
 own option. For there is a native sweet- 
 ness about childhood that makes a certain 
 serious, gentle patience the quaint expres- 
 sion of their love for the elders who 
 understand them and labor for their 
 welfare.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DEALING WITH LITTLE FAULTS. 
 
 " Don't aim at controlling every detail of a child's 
 life ; leave him liberty in small things." Spencer. 
 
 V\7HILE children are small, during, 
 probably, the first dozen years of 
 their lives, they must feel that there is an 
 authority vested in their parents which is 
 incontestable. And that this may be 
 accomplished it is absolutely essential that 
 the parents shall have from the beginning 
 a clear idea of what they want, and the 
 way to attain it. Many parents live in 
 this respect " from hand to mouth," not 
 knowing from one day to another what 
 their requirements will be, and leaving to 
 chance the unfolding of the young natures 
 which ought to be trained and tended 
 with the nicest prevision of consequences. 
 Of late years, since the scientific study of
 
 PARENTHOOD A PROFESSION. 159 
 
 human nature has begun to receive some 
 attention, there has grown up among 
 educators, a sense of the importance of 
 understanding the laws of development 
 and of adjusting their instructions accord- 
 ingly. But this knowledge is as yet 
 confined to the small class of earnest, 
 thoughtful people who make the educa- 
 tion of the young an art as well as a pro- 
 fession. Few parents interpret their 
 responsibilities so broadly as to feel it 
 incumbent upon themselves to understand 
 physiology, and mental and moral science 
 in its application to the training of their 
 children. Yet only through such knowl- 
 edge can there be made out a plan, a 
 formula, conformity to which shall save 
 us from that " hap-hazard " government 
 that obtains in ill-regulated households. 
 Parenthood is already looked upon by 
 the more advanced minds as a profession : 
 the time must come when its duties will 
 be reduced to an exact science, ignorance 
 of which will be inexcusable ; as it is even 
 now deplorable. But the march of 
 science has always encountered at every 
 turn the dead wall of prejudice, which in
 
 1 60 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 this place takes the form of that vast self- 
 love that makes a parent consider his 
 children but an exterior portion of his own 
 personality, and as long as this idea has 
 firm hold in his mind he cannot compre- 
 hend his obligations, nor conceive that he 
 is but the connecting link between his 
 child and society, and that his duty is 
 to protect and educate, not to re-create. 
 When a child is born there already exists 
 within him the germ of all he is to be. 
 Nothing can be added or taken away. 
 " I," said the tiny philosopher when ques- 
 tioned, " am the thing that makes a 
 man ! " 
 
 The great object of government, then, 
 is the evolution of the individual ; the 
 gradually lifting a child out of his position 
 of helplessness and dependence into the 
 position of self-sustaining manhood or 
 womanhood. The same law ruling the 
 culture of all species of plants and ani- 
 mals is applicable to child-culture. The 
 suppression of undesirable traits comes 
 about chiefly through the strengthening 
 desirable traits, thus diverting energy 
 from activities that are hurtful to such as
 
 THE CHILD'S WILL. 161 
 
 are beneficial. How much friction would 
 be done away with if this simple rule 
 the law of evolution in a word were but 
 constantly borne in mind ! 
 
 Self-will, the persistency in some sort 
 of action that has been begun is usually 
 more or less mechanical. The child con- 
 tinues what he has not power to stop do- 
 ing simply because his will is weak, and 
 his impulse masters it. Unreason is but 
 a lesser insanity, and the way to deal with 
 it is by exercising the magnetism which 
 a sane mind, keeping itself calm and cool, 
 can always exert. A serene, cheerful 
 person, an embodiment of reserved 
 power, has no difficulty in controlling 
 angry children, because he presents to 
 their minds the appearance of something 
 more agreeable than anger, thus arousing 
 their desire to emulate, and this desire, 
 opposing itself to the impulse of anger, 
 weakens the force of that emotion. 
 
 This should suggest the propriety of 
 strengthening the child's will, which is 
 the power of voluntary choice, by so in- 
 vesting right actions with delightful asso- 
 ciations, that he will choose them of his 
 ii
 
 j 62 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 own accord. Thus he will learn to over- 
 come for himself the temptation toward 
 acts essentially evil, because they will 
 bring less pleasure than acts of a higher 
 character. This impression must of 
 course be aided by the association of pain 
 and discomfort with wrong-doing. But 
 as far as possible the pain ought to seem 
 intrinsic to the act. A parental command 
 should seem to have reason in it, and dis- 
 obedience should bring discomfort, be- 
 cause that which was prohibited was 
 harmful in itself. The ordinary custom 
 is to offset the attractions of self-will by 
 making merely the disobedience painful, 
 and while this may serve as a deterrent 
 for the time being, while the child is un- 
 der authority, it misses the real point, 
 which is to teach him that a certain sort 
 of conduct is bad. Not infrequently one 
 hears the muttered threat of a child, 
 baffled in the instant of desire by the 
 harsh force of an arbitrary command. 
 " Wait till I am grown up won't I do it 
 then ! " And very probably he does. 
 Of what use, in such a case, has been his 
 youthful education ? Merely to suppress,
 
 ENCOURAGE VIRTUE. 163 
 
 for the comfort of his family, tendencies 
 that break out in after life to bring dis- 
 comfort to a whole community. 
 
 Obedience has no reason for being ex- 
 cept where a command is justifiable. In 
 cases where there is no equitable imped- 
 iment to a child's taking his own way, he 
 ought not to be prevented merely to edu. 
 cate him in submission that is to gratify 
 the self-love of parents. How much more 
 just and kind it is to make obedience at- 
 tractive, not so much by the offer of 
 gifts and rewards, although they have 
 their uses, as by taking away some of its 
 preventive character and making it ap- 
 parently spontaneous. It could be done, 
 just as morality is rendered attractive to 
 us, by presenting it as an impulse of one's 
 higher nature. Every emotional prompt- 
 ing toward virtuous action should receive 
 prompt encouragement, and the more a 
 child can be got to feel that in such acts 
 he is doing what he wants to do, the 
 greater is his inclination toward them. 
 A deliberate wrong act would then have 
 added to the parent's prohibition the re- 
 enforcement of the child's own self-disap-
 
 ! 64 NURSE R Y E THfCS. 
 
 proval. And the habit of associating 
 disobedience with discomfort would be 
 formed without any unpleasant associa- 
 tion with the parent. It of course takes 
 a tender conscience one that has never 
 been reproof-hardened to feel in this 
 way. Sympathetic relations must exist 
 between parent and child before the lesser 
 will is brought into harmony with the 
 larger one. But this harmony is the 
 goal of our efforts, and no pains must be 
 spared to secure it. The interchange of 
 good offices promotes such an under- 
 standing. Let a child recognize that 
 obligations are reciprocal, that he owes 
 kindness in return for kindness. Sym- 
 pathy that does not express itself in acts 
 is mere sentiment, useless in every way. 
 Feeling and action are so close together 
 in a child's mind that his impulse natur- 
 ally is to do something for persons whom 
 he is fond of. And this service, which 
 is the direct outflowing of right feeling 
 should not be interfered with. It will, 
 when judiciously educated, take the form 
 of self-sacrifice. A child is very pliable 
 when he loves his parent. I have seen a
 
 EMOTIONAL NATURES. 165 
 
 small boy, left to hre own volition, while 
 knowing that his mother disapproved of 
 what he wanted to do, return, on second 
 thoughts, after setting out in pursuance 
 of his plan, and give it up with the most 
 cheerful acquiescence. What a gratifica- 
 tion to the mother ! And how much 
 more confidence she would have there- 
 after in her boy, since he displayed thus 
 early an ability to reason, and choose for 
 himself the better thing. 
 
 But even with the same training chil- 
 dren will not display equal capacity for 
 reasoning. Some remain babies a long 
 time. But with an appropriate adap- 
 tation of government to their peculiar 
 needs the most impetuous, headstrong 
 child can be brought to control himself. 
 An emotional nature is susceptible through 
 its affections, and it is dangerous to attempt 
 to influence it in any other way ; for where 
 there is a strong capacity for love there is 
 always, also, a strong capacity for hate, 
 and this sentiment, commonly little sus- 
 pected or taken account of as existing 
 among the very young, has sometimes 
 an appalling ferocity, like that of a
 
 ! 66 WUKSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 savage. The blind 'Instinct of an en- 
 raged child is to annihilate : only his 
 feebleness prevents his setting the world 
 on fire. Does not the Apostle Paul, that 
 stern, dogmatical man who feared noth- 
 ing, and could not have been moved by 
 the apprehension of the mere unpleasant- 
 ness of consequences caution once and 
 again, " And you, parents, provoke not 
 your children to wrath ! " Let us cul- 
 tivate affection in them, for this is the 
 only sure and permanent hold we can 
 have. The great object in government 
 is to exercise our physical power of co- 
 ercion as seldom as possible. There 
 should be no terrible displays, no threats, 
 or exhibition of implements of torment. 
 These have the effect upon weak and 
 timid minds of making them more vacil- 
 lating and cowardly, and a bold and 
 courageous mind is thereby aroused to 
 a sense of resistance, through a feeling 
 of babyish self-respect. It is both cruel 
 and impolitic to dominate this instinct, 
 the inheritance probably of ancestral 
 bravery and endurance, the very qual- 
 ities most admired in men and women.
 
 A BAD LESSON. 167 
 
 Anger is but ardor perverted from its 
 proper action. What we want is willing 
 adhesion, not conquered submission. 
 There is an old and true proverb which 
 is often misinterpreted : " He who would 
 command must first have learned to obey." 
 But the obedience, to have had an educa- 
 tive value, must have been voluntary, a 
 deference to one's own higher impulses 
 over his lower impulses. 
 
 Do we ever make children obey our 
 lower impulses, and praise their docility ? 
 If so, we irretrievably injure their moral 
 nature. It is an ill lesson to inculcate the 
 principle of yielding to superior power, 
 whether it is right or wrong. The ques- 
 tion may be asked at this juncture whether 
 children are to be judges of their parents' 
 character ? The answer must be that they 
 will judge, and although possessing so 
 small a share of reason they have an in- 
 tuition which enables them readily to 
 detect guile. If we acknowledge, as the 
 conscientious mind must, that we are 
 only justified in commanding our children 
 to do what is right, we must be very 
 careful not to weaken our position by
 
 ! 68 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 giving orders which their own sense will 
 tell them are erroneous. To make our- 
 selves respected we must be and appear 
 worthy of respect. A parent, like the 
 judge upon the bench, the governor in 
 his chair, ought to carry about him an 
 atmosphere of unimpeachable integrity, 
 and whence can this emanate but in the 
 consciousness that back of him is the 
 great moral law of which he is the in- 
 terpreter, and that sustains all his decrees ? 
 There is no such awe-inspiring character 
 as a person who is at once consistently 
 just and kind. He is looked up to and 
 his influence is unlimited. On the rare 
 occasions that such a parent would be 
 obliged to resort to physical restraints he 
 could effect far greater results with less 
 force than an impulsive person whose 
 constant bent was toward violence. Mild, 
 friendly expostulation is far better than 
 severity. Coercion should be the last 
 resort, and only used to restrain violence 
 or an obstinate resistance to the rights of 
 others. Where proper relations have ex- 
 isted from the beginning, it will probably 
 never have to be resorted to, but in those
 
 MORAL EDUCATION. 169 
 
 cases where it is necessary, let there be no 
 hesitation and no withdrawing from the 
 stand taken. While it is not equitable 
 for a parent to adhere to what he per- 
 ceives is a mistake to insist upon a thing 
 merely because he has once said so when 
 he knows that right and justice are on the 
 side of his edict, he should enforce it with 
 Roman firmness. There are times when 
 leniency is cruel, when laxness on our 
 part means certain future suffering to the 
 child we excuse. We ought to represent 
 the inevitable, and to this he must bow 
 his head. Never deceive nor tyrannize, 
 and assume this supreme, indisputable 
 authority but seldom : it will be awful 
 in proportion to its rarity. Corporal pun- 
 ishments should be excluded from the 
 nursery. Parents have no right to use 
 blows as a method of moral education. 
 In cases where a child is obstinately re- 
 bellious he can only be regarded as a 
 demented person, and the same remedial 
 treatment administered which we would 
 bestow upon the insane. Compassion, 
 not anger, is the sentiment appropriate to 
 the occasion. Magnanimity cows a cul-
 
 1 7 o NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 prit ; he feels abashed and belittled in his 
 own esteem. Let him be made aware 
 that the public good demands his restraint : 
 that just as a raging animal would be tied, 
 so he must be confined to his room or his 
 chair, and his liberty curtailed because he 
 interferes with the liberty of other people. 
 Can a parent trust himself, when necessity 
 thus arises, to be stern without being 
 harsh ? Ordinarily, dignity and sweetness 
 are entirely compatible. Infinite patience, 
 unfailing kindness, are the qualities to cul- 
 tivate. Dr. Fellenburg, who quelled so 
 many riotous boys, found that in all which 
 relates to puerile faults, "mild means are 
 the only effectual means." On the twen- 
 tieth repetition of a fault the remonstrance 
 should be as kind as the first time. 
 
 This is where parents usually fail. 
 They do not sufficiently excuse forgetful- 
 ness and inattention. Few children are 
 gifted with the earnest and intense con- 
 scientiousness essential to the bearing in 
 mind every wish of the guardian. This 
 ability is also an attribute of fine health. 
 Disease weakens both memory and will, 
 hence a healthy child is much easier to
 
 GENTLE FIRMNESS. 171 
 
 manage than an ailing one. "The mind," 
 observes Quick, " will not act during any 
 depression of the animal spirits." This 
 is an argument for keeping our children 
 happy. When the body is in a morbid 
 condition there is not present sufficient 
 energy to make oneself do right. There 
 is no confidence, no faith, and an effort 
 seems not worth the while. So, a much 
 greater degree of tact and patience are 
 necessary in dealing with ailing children 
 than with well ones. Yet even when sick 
 they should not be spoiled. Never is 
 gentle firmness more in order. I have 
 known a child, entirely tractable until 
 then, ruined by the injudicious treatment 
 he received during the fretful stage of 
 convalescence after a severe illness. He 
 received the impression then, never after- 
 ward to be quite effaced, that his wish 
 was the law of the household. The ten- 
 derest nursing, the most assiduous care 
 can co-exist with the authority essential 
 to the good of an invalid. The mother 
 then should imitate the physician, whom 
 no one thinks of disputing. But children 
 without being really sick are often in a
 
 1 7 2 NURSE K Y E THICS. 
 
 physical state that necessitates a certain 
 leniency on the part of their guardians. 
 The health of grown people largely de- 
 pends upon their having found out by ex- 
 perience what they can do and what they 
 must avoid. They keep themselves well 
 by judicious selection. Children are get- 
 ting used to life, and every day they suffer 
 some slight or perhaps serious inconven- 
 ience while their parents are learning just 
 what their constitutions demand. Thus 
 there are so many things that have to be 
 taken into consideration in the exercise 
 of parental government that the only way 
 to avoid making some great mistake is to 
 make kindness and consideration the in- 
 variable rule.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE PRIMARY OBJECT IS THE DEVELOP- 
 MENT OF CHARACTER. 
 
 " It is quite a common fault to make use of repri- 
 mands for the slightest faults which are almost inevit- 
 able to children. This breaks the force of reprimands 
 and renders them fruitless." ROLLIN. 
 
 OINGULARLY enough it is habitual 
 *^ among us to regard with dislike the 
 trait which marks out our children as be- 
 longing to a superior race. The evolution 
 of the civilized man from the savage is 
 accompanied by an increased interest and 
 curiosity concerning his surroundings. 
 Consequently, in a race, and in individuals, 
 the exhibition of vivid interest must be 
 held to indicate the presence of intellect- 
 ual power. Now, no one is more pleased 
 at having pointed out evidences of intel- 
 lect in his child than the parent, to whom 
 these mental endowments seem to be
 
 1 7 4 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 owing. The mother wears a flattered 
 smile, the father vainly tries to hide his 
 complacency under an air of indifference 
 when the intelligence of their child is 
 made the subject of remark. But there 
 is a wish to reap the reward without hav- 
 ing gone through with all that preliminary 
 work which must be considered one of 
 the penalties of pleasure. A baby at two 
 or three months shows faculties of ob- 
 servation, a certain " brightness " which 
 arouses in his friends hopes that he may 
 become something remarkable. They 
 pet him and play with him and teach him 
 from time to time some little tricks that 
 people will call "cunning," and altogether, 
 make use of this dawning intelligence 
 to glorify themselves in the eyes of the 
 public, without a thought of the mental 
 needs of the little creature and of that 
 vacuum left by the lack of appropriate 
 training which this monotonous little 
 play of " showing off " by no means satis- 
 fies. Presently, when the child's mind 
 has become tired, and in a way stultified 
 by nonsense, and he turns his attention 
 voluntarily to something more rational,
 
 SURVEILLANCE. 175 
 
 has wants and shows determination to 
 gratify them, there is a revulsion of feel- 
 ing in his guardians. They require a pet, 
 and ceasing to be this he becomes a 
 nuisance. They regard with high dis- 
 favor his independent exertions, and in- 
 stead of assiduously studying the natural 
 way in which the little mind unfolds, and 
 aiding its development they hinder it, re- 
 tarding its processes so much that often 
 the " bright " baby grows into a stupid 
 child, because he has never been allowed 
 any intellectual freedom, and nature has 
 been balked by all those conventional 
 regulations which unhesitatingly sacrifice 
 even genius to convenience. 
 
 From the day the child steps from his 
 cradle to the floor and begins to totter 
 about the room, he becomes the object 
 of uneasy surveillance. This is dictated 
 partly by a regard for his safety, but 
 more from the desire to protect our pos- 
 sessions. The swaddling clothes of in- 
 fancy were fetters of gauze compared to 
 the restrictions now imposed on the eager 
 little creature who stretches out his hands 
 to touch (and so gain the only knowledge
 
 1 7 6 NURSER Y THICS. 
 
 open to him) all the strange and beautiful 
 things in his new world. The children of 
 the wealthy now suffer more than those of 
 the poor. Rousseau speaks of the torture 
 these children experience in the very em- 
 barrassment of riches displayed to their 
 sight, but which they are never allowed 
 to handle and analyze. In the cottage or 
 the farm-house the baby is much more at 
 ease, playing with some clothes-pins and 
 a tin-pail, whose shining surface is ever a 
 new surprise, and sitting on the sand in 
 front of the door, learning from the use 
 of the primitive element lessons suited to 
 his understanding. Simplicity is restful, 
 and a few flowers and grasses, pine cones, 
 shells, and soft, bright balls, are welcome 
 treasures that furnish both amusement 
 and instruction. Every mother cannot 
 be a kindergartener which is a great 
 pity but every mother ought at least 
 to obtain some simple manual, and learn 
 the use of the Frcebel gifts and songs. 
 The ball is the child's first natural toy, 
 and one hung above his cradle just where 
 he can touch and swing it is sure to give 
 him great enjoyment. It ought to be
 
 NURSERY WARFARE. I77 
 
 bright and soft to the touch, so that he 
 can learn little by little, the qualities of 
 this spherical body, and the mother ought 
 to make it her duty, however busy, to 
 watch at times and assist in the play of 
 the little one with a view to teaching 
 him, for the desire to play which nature 
 implants as an instinct in the young is the 
 first method of physical and intellectual 
 development, and pastimes soon pall upon 
 them unless they contain scope for some 
 sort of activity. 
 
 At the instant when the baby is intro- 
 duced to the environment that commonly 
 is his heritage in refined homes, we ought 
 to stop and ask ourselves the scope and 
 purpose of the certain warfare now to be 
 waged between the little one, moved 
 solely by natural instincts, and other 
 people, controlled by all the complex and 
 contradictory motives of civilized life. 
 Is there sufficient reason in our prefer- 
 ence, for bewildering this new-born intel- 
 ligence by numerous frail and costly sur- 
 roundings, and thwarting its laudable 
 curiosity by constant protest and restraint 
 when he toddles forth to investigate ? 
 12
 
 ! 7 g NURSE R y E THICS. 
 
 I have seen a mother who made essay 
 toward culture, and whose taste ran riot 
 upon the subject of bric-a-brac, pursuing 
 her two-year-old around the parlor with a 
 perpetual " No, no, naughty to touch 
 that ! " with no other object in view than 
 to teach the child obedience and " to let 
 things alone." A mother will tap a 
 child's hand when the little fingers are 
 laid upon a costly fan or vase. Now, 
 what is she trying to convey? If she but 
 knew it merely an idea of an arbitrary dis- 
 tinction which it is impossible for him to 
 comprehend. " This " she tacitly ob- 
 serves " costs money and if broken can- 
 not be replaced. But that other thing 
 over there is tough and valueless play 
 with that." The object having beautiful 
 colors is forbidden probably, and a dull 
 thing substituted. The child simply per- 
 ceives that the most attractive object, 
 the one that interests him is taken away ; 
 the why is beyond him. If we could 
 once see into the workings of the little 
 mind we would know that such trials are 
 too hard, and they are premature. We 
 do not subject our sons to the tempta-
 
 YEA AND NAY. 179 
 
 tions of vice set forth in its most attract- 
 ive forms, even when some degrees of 
 judgment and self-control have been at- 
 tained. And yet, while arbitrarily estab- 
 lishing the code that it is wicked to de- 
 stroy even in the pursuit of knowledge, we 
 place a baby in the midst of wonders and 
 expect it to exercise the amazing fortitude 
 of preferring to be good to following 
 the strong instinct of nature, which is to 
 touch, taste, and handle all unknown 
 objects. 
 
 But the simplest law of equity demands 
 that we make virtue possible to our chil- 
 dren. Place no overwhelming tempta- 
 tions in their way and tenderly educate 
 them into the faculty of self-denial before 
 we make our mere command the impass- 
 able barrier to their chosen enjoyment. 
 "Our 'yes,'" observes the author of an 
 excellent old book, " should be hearty 
 and unconditional ; our promise the rock 
 on which the child can find unshaken 
 foundation for building its plans. Our 
 ' no ' should be a wall of brass which the 
 child shall give up all hope or endeavor 
 to shake." But what is to be thought of
 
 180 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 the parent who inconsiderately erects this 
 wall between his child and legitimate 
 sources of gratification ? Who debars 
 him from some pastimes because of his 
 own timidity, and from others because it 
 is much less troublesome to have him re- 
 main quiet ! There is a chapter in Car- 
 lyle's Sartor Resartus called " The Ever- 
 lasting No," the reading of which produces 
 profound sadness, as it vividly presents a 
 feeling of all the negations of life. I have 
 sometimes read on the pensive faces of 
 little ones, travelling about the world 
 under the surveillance of sour-looking 
 guardians, a reflection of the dark shadow 
 cast on their innocent young souls by this 
 bleak wall of everlasting negation that 
 puts its veto on all sorts of action merely 
 because it is action, and dooms creatures 
 born to attain to self-knowledge and 
 knowledge of the world by the use of 
 their faculties, to passivity. 
 
 " Stop, Sarah ! " sharply cries the nurse 
 to the baby who is throwing its head 
 back against the cushions of its carriage, 
 intent on getting exercise in this way. 
 " Sit down and keep still," orders the
 
 NATURAL WANTS. 181 
 
 mother, annoyed and interrupted in an 
 interesting conversation by her little tot's 
 throwing a handful of pebbles or dande- 
 lions in her lap and asking her to help 
 him play with them. " Come right along," 
 shouts some person in charge of the child 
 who stops short at an inconvenient mo- 
 ment to gaze in wonder and delight at 
 a colony of ants on the sidewalk. And 
 thus perpetually wherever they go they 
 encounter this thoughtless opposition 
 from people who have forgotten that they 
 ever were children. This terrible lack of 
 sympathy is what clouds so many young 
 lives and converts buoyant dispositions 
 into sullenness and obstinacy. A con- 
 tented child is an obedient child. If he 
 has been treated with systematic consider- 
 ation, and the natural wants of his mind 
 as well as those of his body attended to, 
 he has no feeling of antagonism to his 
 guardians. But the mental solicitations 
 of children are strong. From the first 
 they require to be taught. The unfold- 
 ing of their faculties gives them conscious 
 delight, and we ought from the beginning 
 to address ourselves to their intelligence.
 
 ! g 2 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 Present things to them in contrast by 
 getting them to notice successively two 
 objects widely different in some special 
 properties, such as form and color. By 
 the time he can walk a child should know 
 the difference between soft and hard, 
 elastic and brittle. What pleasure it gives 
 a child to handle a thing which seems to 
 possess a certain vitality ; he likes to 
 stretch a rubber-band back and forth and 
 listen to its vibrations as he snaps it with 
 his fingers. A certain old carpenter's 
 " level " containing a drop of mercury re- 
 volving under its glass shield, furnished a 
 whole fairyland of wonders to one fanci- 
 ful little girl. They like something that 
 responds, that encourages them to action. 
 But they soon tire of aimless exertions. 
 Monotony is a child's horror. 
 
 The parent who has a high ideal of his 
 duties will make his care of his child a 
 progressional education : joining what he 
 has learned one day to new knowledge 
 the day following. But this necessitates 
 more information of human nature and 
 physical nature than is usually possessed, 
 for a child's first instinctive researches
 
 FIRST STEPS. 183 
 
 lead him into the field of physics, chem- 
 istry and natural history. His earliest 
 questions, diving straight to the founda- 
 tion, baffle superficial minds. But it is 
 mortifying that men and women who 
 have passed ' through the schools and 
 would resent the imputation of being 
 ignorant of the fundamental principles, 
 are not ashamed to confess that they are 
 not prepared to guide their little ones 
 along the preliminary steps of education. 
 They could teach the child of seven to 
 read and write, but they cannot teach the 
 six months' old baby the use of his muscles 
 by appropriate movements, nor help him 
 to develop his sense perceptions by simple 
 but scientific experiments ; and they have 
 so far forgotten all they ever knew about 
 natural history that it is impossible for 
 them to satisfy inquiries about plants 
 and stones and insects. Is it really igno- 
 rance, or is it indolence ? Whatever it is 
 there is no excuse for it. I have observed 
 that when people are impressed with a 
 sense of the real importance and the ne- 
 cessity of a pursuit they find time and 
 energy to engage in it. Something less
 
 1 84 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 essential is given up. But where the in- 
 terest is slight, even though the duty may 
 be manifest, they find innumerable and 
 quite satisfactory excuses for shirking. It 
 is hardly to be expected that the ordinary 
 parent will undertake the trouble of pre- 
 paring himself for the great duty and 
 privilege of developing in its natural order 
 the mind of his child. But let him not 
 grumble then at having fretful and re- 
 bellious children. He must either be 
 benefactor or foe ; there is no medium ; 
 unless, indeed, he conceals his indiffer- 
 ence by keeping aloof, delegating his 
 duties to others, and remains a stranger. 
 He will thus avoid seeing all the conse- 
 quences of his neglect. 
 
 But the parents who have in their souls 
 enough of that freshness and enthusiasm 
 happily preserved to those who believe 
 that life is "worth the living" in its high- 
 est sense, will have supplied to them 
 through sympathy and affection sufficient 
 zeal to undertake the education of their 
 child. Instead of merely amusing them- 
 selves by an hour's play they will give 
 him a daily object lesson, training him to
 
 EARL Y ED UCA TION. 1 85 
 
 observe and to reason, and furnishing him 
 in this way with subject matter for 
 thought while he feels himself merely en- 
 tertained. The first moral lessons should 
 be intersting, not mere barren iterations. 
 Ingenuity should be employed and use 
 made of that dramatic instinct and love 
 of representation which every child pos- 
 sesses. Instead of scolding being admin- 
 istered for the very natural and com- 
 mon fault of dropping an object after he 
 has finished with it, he can be taught that 
 china and glass will break by the sacrifice 
 of a few old pieces, and from the sorrow 
 of the parent he will comprehend that 
 breaking is to be avoided and such things 
 handled carefully. It is not fair to give 
 a child, during the first year of his life, a 
 rubber doll that can be tossed about any- 
 where, and then expect him to hold a 
 china cup or glass. Yet such absurd tran- 
 sitions are common in the thoughtless 
 treatment children too often receive. 
 
 A certain amount of breaking is nec- 
 essary for him to obtain a notion of 
 solidity. He should no more be chided 
 for it than we would chide the chemist
 
 ! 86 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 for shattering the glass tube to demon- 
 strate an experiment. Destructiveness in 
 young children only means great mental 
 activity. The most careless persons are 
 usually those who have been in youth 
 continually repressed by over - careful 
 parents. Dr. Edward Seguin gives it as 
 his opinion that suffering develops con- 
 tradiction. In his own words : 
 
 " Average men who oppose everything 
 were compressed from birth in some kind 
 of swaddling bands ; those who abhor 
 study were forced to it as a punishment ; 
 those who gormandize were starved ; 
 those who lie were brought to it by fear ; 
 those who hate labor were reduced to 
 work for others ; those who covet were 
 deprived ; everywhere oppression creates 
 antagonism.'' 
 
 If a parent will recall the experiences 
 of a single day it is probable that he will 
 find that most of the reprimands with 
 which he has visited his child have been 
 for faults against usages ; faults which if 
 left alone would in time amend themselves. 
 The critical attitude is easy to assume, 
 hard to relinquish, and by indulging
 
 OBEDIENCE. 187 
 
 ourselves in it we come to dislike persons 
 who jar against our nerves. Children 
 suffer much through contact with such 
 ultra-refined sensibilities. " We instruct 
 them too much," remonstrates Rousseau. 
 "We torture them and lose their love." 
 
 " The wall of brass," therefore, should 
 be erected only before fields whose 
 entrance is forbidden from just reasons. 
 There come times when a child's safety 
 may depend upon his habit of prompt 
 obedience. This willing, cheerful con- 
 cession cannot come if he has been made 
 to perpetually yield to whims. It results 
 from confidence that his parent has good 
 reason for making the demand. " Ah," 
 says the little heroine of the " Wide, wide 
 world," contrasting the training of her 
 brother with that of her other relatives : 
 " but you always had a reason, and they 
 have not." 
 
 " Obey first and I will tell you why 
 afterward if you wish to know," re- 
 marks a wise parent, when giving a hard 
 order. The kind explanation cements the 
 bond of sympathy and makes the child 
 more ready next time to give up his will,
 
 X 88 NUKSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 since he realizes that he is under benefi- 
 cent direction and not the subject of a 
 tyrant. There are circumstances where 
 the explanation should accompany the 
 order, as in the denial of a cherished plan. 
 It is unnecessary to cause even temporary 
 heart-burnings. But as obedience should 
 be a habit learned in infancy, it is in 
 general, not judicious to defer it to 
 explanations. Let them come afterwards, 
 and as resulting from a pleasant, friendly 
 intercourse between parent and child. 
 Young people love these intimate talks, 
 perhaps mixed with allegory and tales of 
 what " happened when papa was a boy 
 and mamma a girl," as much as they dread 
 formal lecturing. Familiarity can be 
 maintained without fear of disrespect. 
 The most beautiful relations exist where 
 a mother is the comrade and chosen 
 confidante of her children. They like to 
 feel that she is human like themselves ; 
 and if fallible sometimes, so it is not in 
 point of principle, it does not hurt her in 
 their eyes. We have no right to pretend 
 to be perfect to our children ; only let 
 them see that we are striving toward
 
 LIBERTY OF ACTION. 189 
 
 perfection. They are keen observers, and 
 there are times when every parent displays 
 himself in an unlovely light. Rather than 
 be false, let him acknowledge that he is 
 not always able to conform to his own 
 standard ; but he regrets the lapse, just as 
 every one must who tries to do right. 
 Children are very tender with the faults 
 of grown people, when the latter have not 
 repelled and disgusted them by a harsh 
 show of perfection. In our querulous 
 moments it is as plain to them as to us 
 that we are wrong. But how quickly the 
 explanation of "a headache " or of being 
 " worried " turns their vexation into sym- 
 pathy. Would we were as forgiving and 
 sweet toward their foibles as they are 
 toward us. 
 
 In dealing with the problem of family 
 government it is necessary to recollect 
 that the tendency of our age is strongly 
 toward liberty of the individual, and in 
 no other country is the bias so deter- 
 mined as in our own. Coming down to 
 us perhaps from the old Romans is that 
 spirit which makes us remarkable for 
 patriotic devotion to our country and for
 
 I go. NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 absolute independence within the limits 
 of our private life. But while for ages 
 the evolution of personal independence 
 was confined to the men, who, as heads 
 of households, absorbed all other person- 
 alities into their own, this century has 
 seen a striking revolution accomplished 
 in the status of women, and proceeding 
 concomitantly with this has come in- 
 creased consideration for children, as 
 separate individuals. Men are no longer, 
 as formerly, lost in and sacrificed to the 
 State, women are no longer merged in, 
 and their identity covered by that of 
 their husbands, and children are no 
 longer lost in the family. One reason 
 for this is that with the advance of higher 
 civilization and the consequent diminish- 
 ing frequency of those internicine wars 
 which used to depopulate whole commu- 
 nities, the same necessity does not exist 
 for having immense families. When 
 nations are young quantity is of the 
 first importance, but when there has 
 been a considerable evolution of arts, 
 sciences, and social refinements, quality 
 becomes the object of consideration and
 
 THE FAMILY TYPE. igi 
 
 the preference grows up for devoting to a 
 few, for the purpose of aiding them to 
 reach a high degree of development, the 
 care that, given to the many, would only 
 be sufficient for them to attain to a lower 
 degree of development. 
 
 The fewer children there are in a family 
 the more, other things being equal, will 
 each one receive separate consideration 
 and become in himself an object of im- 
 portance. Contrast the progeny of the 
 Irish laborer or of the negro in one of the 
 southern states, as in numbers they cluster 
 about the door of his cabin, their faces 
 and expression so wonderfully alike that 
 except for the difference in their ages 
 their own parents could scarcely tell them 
 apart, with the three children, say, of 
 some highly-educated professional man. 
 In the former case they are a herd, all 
 treated alike and no account taken of 
 such natural mental or physical dissimi- 
 larities as do exist. But in the latter case 
 each child is a distinct factor, with marked 
 variations from the family type. Each 
 has tastes, constitutional peculiarities, and 
 abilities which single him out very early
 
 1 9 2 NUKSER Y THICS. 
 
 as an object for some special sort of care 
 and training, and draw attention to him 
 as an individual. 
 
 Nature thus arranges, in her processes 
 of selection, that the finer the quality of 
 her specimen the more he shall stand 
 apart, as an independent being. Another 
 reason for the decrease in the size of 
 families is that beside the necessity for 
 more attention being given to each one, 
 there is a great difference in the kind of 
 attention required. In ancient times 
 physical education was the primary es- 
 sential. When life and property de- 
 pended upon a man's strength muscle 
 was the only power and received the 
 most care. For many centuries mental 
 cultivation was confined to the practi- 
 cally useless portion of the community, 
 and was acquired by others merely as an 
 accomplishment. But the demand of 
 modern civilization is for brain, and that 
 of a superior quality. When boys could 
 once be sent out with a servant to pass 
 whole days in learning to swim, to ride 
 and to handle weapons, and the girls 
 be set down to their sewing and em-
 
 CHARACTER. 193 
 
 broidery, leaving their parents' minds 
 free and at ease their whole duty done 
 modern children must be studied and 
 considered from the standpoint of their 
 mental development : a matter requiring 
 the exercise upon the part of their parents 
 of all the intellectual and moral faculties 
 they may possess. To rear a child pos- 
 sessing strongly original qualities is a vast 
 wear and tear upon the nerves. But 
 this is the penalty of high civilization. 
 The Americans are the most original 
 people that have ever existed ; the most 
 versatile, the most nervous. They pos- 
 sess the element of inherent stability that 
 leads them to dominate weaker natures. 
 It is done good-naturedly and uncon- 
 sciously, for the most part. 
 
 It is a singular thing to observe the ef- 
 fects produced in even one generation, by 
 the atmosphere of freedom and aspiration 
 that exists in our country. The Irish 
 mother, born and bred in the old country, 
 comes here, and has a daughter who 
 almost from the beginning manifests a 
 strength of character far exceeding that 
 of her parents. The traditions and ideas 
 13
 
 194 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 brought from beyond the sea seem to have 
 all the vigor taken out of them during 
 their passage across the Atlantic. Chil- 
 dren born on our free soil are Americans 
 in very spirit, imbibing apparently from 
 their surroundings and education that 
 which nullifies their hereditary pre-dis- 
 position. If this may be said of these 
 half-foreigners, how much more strongly 
 it applies to the descendants of the early 
 settlers of our country. There is little 
 phlegm in our constitutions, and our 
 babies show in their earliest movements 
 a sense of individuality springing from 
 generations of self-governing men. 
 
 The Germans are a nation of soldiers 
 and philosophers. The one practice 
 makes them submissive to discipline, and 
 the other renders them cheerfully indiffer- 
 ent under hardships. Consequently the 
 heritage of German children is obedi- 
 ence, and they are the most docile and 
 easily governed of any. But their re- 
 pressed powers of self-will have the most 
 violent outbreaks in later years, just as 
 our own Indians develop, from their 
 cruel confinement in the board cradles,
 
 LET THEM GROW. 195 
 
 the most ferocious activities of incessant 
 war. 
 
 Repression causes more suffering to our 
 children than it causes less nervous tem- 
 peraments, and harshness brings about 
 very grave mental disturbance. Decision 
 is in all government a matter of first im- 
 portance, but with a free-born race it is 
 an object always to produce the maximum 
 of good conduct with an exertion of the 
 minimum of force. We must not keep 
 our children infants, for our own pleasure, 
 but let them grow as fast as they will. 
 With each succeeding year our com- 
 mands should be fewer, our restraints 
 lighter. A child who has been well 
 trained usually shows touching confidence 
 in the judgment of his parents. He will 
 bring to them his perplexities and dis- 
 putes, and insist upon their saying 
 whether he is to do certain things. The 
 less arbitrary a parent is the more real 
 power he possesses, for it is a power 
 which penetrates beyond action into the 
 spring of action, the heart.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EARLY INDICATIONS OF INDIVID- 
 UALITY. 
 
 " Do not regret the exhibition of considerable self-will 
 on the part of your children. It is the correlative of 
 that diminished coerciveness so conspicuous in modern 
 education. The greater tendency to assert freedom 
 on the one side corresponds to the smaller tendency to 
 tyrannize on the other. They both indicate an ap- 
 proach to the system of discipline we contend for, 
 under which children will be more and more led to 
 rule themselves by the experience of natural conse- 
 quences ; and they are both the accompaniments of 
 our more advanced social state. SPENCER. 
 
 ""THE rapid growth of a child's person- 
 ality after he has left infancy be- 
 hind, is a constant surprise to his parents. 
 Yesterday he seemed passive and dumb ; 
 to-day he bursts forth into expression 
 and tells us of ideas and opinions that 
 startle us by their boldness. At first 
 everything he says is not only treated 
 with indulgence, but the freshness and
 
 BRIGHT SA YINGS. \ 9 7 
 
 originality of his fancies give a great deal 
 of pleasure to his elders. His extrava- 
 ganzas are repeated and laughed at. The 
 child is the real wit as he is the real 
 poet : there is sure to be a pungency in 
 his observations which comes from their 
 directness and fearless truth. Before his 
 book education has begun, and while he 
 yet observes everything for himself and 
 at first hand, he has that delicate sense 
 of real value which only unsophisticated 
 natures possess, and which is lost so soon 
 as artificial views corrupt the mind and 
 rob it of that pure insight which teaches 
 that truth is always right. 
 
 The child goes straight to the point and 
 his directness refreshes the jaded energies 
 of his mature companions. They ques- 
 tion him and draw him out, but it is only 
 to toy with him. All the wealth of sug- 
 gestion and speculation constitute merely 
 " bright sayings." They do not appre- 
 ciate that he is desperately in earnest 
 about everything, that life is commencing 
 to take on a serious aspect, and the baby 
 has developed into the responsible human 
 being. His little airs of assertion seem
 
 ! gg MURSEK Y THICS. 
 
 amusing, and aware that he has no real 
 power that he is a dependent and a sub- 
 ject we divert ourselves by allowing him 
 to strut around with his fancied assump- 
 tion of manhood, just as we cheer the 
 little one who seizes hat and cane and 
 insists that he is " papa." 
 
 Most persons see in all this only some- 
 thing grotesque. There is required the 
 penetrating eye of affectionate interest to 
 dive down to the bottom of their hearts 
 and see there the struggling self-respect 
 of the growing creature, beginning to 
 realize that he has a mind of his own, that 
 he can observe, understand and reason 
 without aid. " / know," he remarks, with 
 the quick instinct of dignity, when a too 
 elaborate explanation is forced upon him. 
 " I can understand for myself." And 
 following naturally upon this comes the 
 desire to act for himself. He wants to be 
 " let alone," and if crossed is apt to say 
 so. There is a stir of real ambition, a 
 desire for freedom, which makes his breast 
 swell and his heart beat impatiently 
 against his fetters. It is now that he is 
 galled by the sense of constant oversight,
 
 LET THEM GROW. 199 
 
 that he does not like to feel himself an 
 object of solicitude. Petting is obnoxious, 
 because it is a reminder of babyhood. 
 Mothers are often much hurt at the re- 
 buffs of their tenderness about this time. 
 Particularly where there are only two 
 children at most in the family, in which 
 case they are kept infants because parents 
 cannot bear to lose their babies. This is 
 a very common sentiment and held to be 
 meritorious. " I want to keep my child 
 a baby as long as I can," a mother de- 
 clares, looking with aversion upon the 
 parent who permits to his child the free- 
 dom essential to his healthy growth. But 
 this is not affection, it is sentimentality, 
 and grounded upon the real dogmatic, 
 egotistical instinct. He must have a 
 narrow mind and a feeble conception of 
 his duties who thinks that the only way 
 to preserve children's innocence is to keep 
 them in a state of profound ignorance 
 concerning life. They have a right to 
 comprehend that which concerns them 
 while it can be taught from the right 
 standpoint. The " knowledge of good and 
 evil " is a defense or a snare, according to
 
 200 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 the way in which it is imparted. And 
 the time for putting this power in our 
 children's own hands is when they mani- 
 fest the first signs of being ready for it. 
 
 Guarding them still without effusive 
 display, from contact with evil, we ought, 
 as the age of reason arrives, to acquaint 
 them with those profound truths the 
 understanding of which brings a heavy 
 but inevitable responsibility. What right 
 have we to retard the moral and mental 
 growth of our children, any more than 
 to prevent their physical growth ? " My 
 guardian is so tyrannical," laments some 
 hero of a juvenile tale, " that if he had 
 taken a notion that I ought to be tall he 
 would have hung me up to the ceiling 
 with weights to my heels!" Equally 
 tyrannical is the attempt to suppress the 
 evidence of those early feeble efforts of 
 the young soul to enter upon its rightful 
 relations with the universe. Instead of 
 being ridiculed they should be treated 
 with profound respect. We ought to let 
 our children grow up as fast as they will, 
 and rather rejoice than lament over signs 
 of advancing maturity.
 
 THE CHILD'S POSSESSIONS. 201 
 
 One of the early indications of the 
 sense of personality in the child is his 
 desire for privacy. Now he withdraws 
 himself slightly from the family, and has 
 little secrets and makes little plans. 
 If he has a propensity for scribbling he 
 keeps journals which with characteristic 
 confidingness he leaves about the house. 
 It outrages his sense of propriety when 
 some one reads his papers, and why 
 should it not ? The child's possessions 
 ought always to be inviolate. He learns 
 a sense of property through possessing 
 toys of his own. There is no greater 
 wrong than forcibly taking away some- 
 thing that belongs to him and giving it 
 away to some one else. Many good 
 parents commit this robbery to teach the 
 child to be unselfish ! It rather sets him 
 the example of stealing. And just as we 
 respect his rights to his toys we ought to 
 respect his rights to his ideas, and permit 
 him liberty of thought. Cannot some one 
 recollect some incident in his own past 
 life when his face was made to burn and 
 his heart to beat almost to suffocation, by 
 having some inconsiderate grown person
 
 202 MURSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 haul up to the light a little secret he had 
 fondly cherished and taken pride in as 
 his very own ? 
 
 They are innocent, for the most part. 
 A few pages of a wildly imaginative 
 romance, the beginnings of an ambitious 
 invention which is to revolutionize indus- 
 tries ; perhaps a note-book of signs for a 
 new language, which is something par- 
 ticularly attractive to a certain class of 
 bright children. They like to establish 
 secret societies, and get up ciphers as a 
 means of private communication. Their 
 projects, while founded generally upon 
 the institutions that surround them, have 
 a certain air of the unique, because while 
 still imitative, they are no longer slavishly 
 so, preferring to do things in their own 
 way. But constant experimenting brings 
 constant surprises and disappointments. 
 The seething, bubbling spirit of restless- 
 ness leads to rash enterprises and the 
 little hero finds himself wound up in the 
 coil spun by his own originality. But in 
 this way he learns the use of his powers. 
 All the experience he gets in childhood is 
 so much capital for maturity. What he
 
 THE TRANSITION PERIOD. 203 
 
 suffers now in a small way he may be saved 
 from suffering some day in a larger way. 
 Happy are those children who are allowed 
 to mingle freely with each other and make 
 a miniature community for themselves, 
 planning, acting, making their own rules 
 and regulating each other's conduct 
 according to their own ideas of justice. 
 All this is play, but it has far-reaching 
 consequences in its effects upon character. 
 Only those who have been accustomed 
 early to freedom can rightly use it, and 
 those who have been obliged to weigh and 
 balance questions and make decisions 
 gain accuracy and steadiness of judgment, 
 and are far less liable to unfortunate 
 mistakes than persons who have been 
 always over-restrained and over-advised. 
 We make unnecessarily hard this period 
 of life which is in itself the most trying 
 time in all our existence. The transition 
 period between the docility of infancy and 
 the independence of youth is peculiarly 
 uncomfortable both to the parents and 
 the child himself. He now really knows 
 nothing while aspiring to know every- 
 thing. He is swayed by contradictory
 
 2 04 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 impulses and perplexed by the ever-chang- 
 ing relations matters present to his limited 
 reasoning powers. At one time he is loud 
 in his confident assertions, at the next, 
 rebuffed and discouraged, he withdraws 
 into the depths of his own consciousness 
 and is inclined to be skeptical of every- 
 thing. 
 
 Corresponding to this mental state of 
 the child is the condition of the parents. 
 They see with surprise and concern a 
 weakening of their authority, and are 
 accused of rigor while exercising their 
 natural prerogative of government. But 
 let them consider. Vicarious government 
 the rule of one individual over another, 
 is, in the economy of nature, a temporary 
 makeshift, to be pursued only until such 
 time as the weaker party shall have gained 
 self-possession enough to manage his own 
 affairs. In infancy government is abso- 
 lute because the young creature is abso- 
 lutely helpless. Day by day the helpless- 
 ness diminishes, and so, too, should the 
 coercion lessen day by day. When the 
 baby can creep alone, shorten his frocks 
 and give him the freedom of the floor ;
 
 ARTIFICIAL RESTRAINTS. 205 
 
 when he can run let him go at will. It is 
 only our artificial civilization which neces- 
 sitates artificial restraints, and bearing in 
 mind that they are unnatural, they should 
 be made as few as possible. Stairs in 
 houses suggest protective lattices to keep 
 the baby from precipitating himself from 
 top to bottom, and the presence of mir- 
 rors and ornaments make it advisable to 
 keep out of the way anything capable of 
 being used as a missile. Now, we mix up 
 every where, the ideas of government which 
 is protective of the child and that which 
 is protective of our own privileges and 
 property, until often the real aim of gov- 
 ernment is lost in thoughtless every-day 
 usages. Through subjecting his conduct 
 to surveillance for the sake of our own 
 pleasure and profit we fall into the habit 
 of extending this restraint far beyond its 
 natural limits of age. 
 
 As fast as a child grows wise enough 
 to substitute self-rule for the restrictions 
 imposed by others he earns independence 
 and takes his place in the world as a factor. 
 Our training should be progressive, so 
 that the truth learned one day may be the
 
 2 06 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 starting point for higher knowledge after- 
 wards. Dogmatical prohibitions avail 
 nothing but to put a stop to specific acts, 
 but teaching a child to reason out the use 
 and beauty of right conduct means put- 
 ting in his hands the torch-light of virtue 
 which will light the dark paths he must 
 traverse in future. It is principles which 
 sink deeply into the mind and are long 
 remembered. The moral lesson conveyed 
 by the apt and happy illustration of a wide, 
 all-embracing truth in a manner revolu- 
 tionizes thought and influences all opin- 
 ions that are touched by it. Children can 
 be taught much through the reading of 
 history and biography, and, even undi- 
 rected, they acquire through these studies, 
 many predispositions and views that be- 
 come unalterable. 
 
 Our primary duty is to encourage our 
 children to think for themselves. Throw 
 upon them, as soon as they are capable 
 of understanding it, the responsibility of 
 choice. No fear but that they will learn 
 far more and with less evil consequences, 
 than if we kept them in leading strings. 
 Reproaches should never be multiplied.
 
 TRUST TO TIME, 207 
 
 Let them bear their own fruit. When 
 love and wisdom have dictated our words 
 we may safely trust to time to develop all 
 the potency of their influence. If to-day 
 we correct our child for stoning a cat, to- 
 morrow he refrains in obedience to our 
 wishes ; but next year, having observed 
 the evil effects of cruelty to animals, he 
 determines of his own accord to treat his 
 dog and pony with peculiar gentleness, 
 because sympathy and reason have been 
 at work in his mind and he has evolved 
 for himself a permanent rule of conduct. 
 And he has gained so much poise and 
 independence, and needs so much the 
 less guidance and restraint.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GROWTH IN SELF-GOVERNMENT. 
 
 " The control of parents over children is based solely 
 upon the parents' duty to educate them. This duty of 
 education is established by nature and guaranteed by 
 the state. To consider the children as property of the 
 parents is absurd. When the education ceases the 
 child becomes free. Parents should constantly in- 
 crease the freedom of the child during its education." 
 
 FICHTE. 
 
 HP HE more highly specialized the in- 
 dividual the more general and less 
 stringent becomes the external govern- 
 ment. Authority is supposed to act as 
 a kind of conscience for ignorant minds, 
 and its reason for being is only in the in- 
 capacity of the person so ruled. The life 
 of an individual must be looked upon as 
 a continuous adjustment of his physical 
 and mental powers to his environment. 
 When he first comes into the world he 
 
 is, as it were, fast-bound, all his faculties 
 
 208
 
 RESPECT GROWING POWERS. 209 
 
 imprisoned, all activities prevented by 
 the officers of order who represent its 
 interests. Little by little, the powers of 
 perception and understanding grow with- 
 in him, and little by little the iron bonds 
 of restraint are loosed, until with matur- 
 ity of mind the last link slips away and 
 he stands fully evolved, a free man with 
 only his conscience for his king. 
 
 The entire education of a child from 
 birth should have in view this assumption 
 of self-government. Just as we permit 
 him to use his muscles as he acquires 
 control of them we should respect his 
 growing mental powers and resign our 
 authority in each instance when he shows 
 that he has attained judgment enough to 
 decide any question of conduct correctly. 
 It is not unusual for parents, too careless 
 to acquaint themselves with even the most 
 ordinary facts relating to growth, to 
 keep their children physically helpless. 
 A baby will be fed, if he has a nurse, to 
 prevent his soiling his clothes or the table- 
 cloth. He will be kept in his carriage to 
 " keep him out of mischief," and in fact, 
 allowed to do nothing for himself lest he 
 14
 
 2 1 o NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 should do it wrong. " He can't do it 
 wait till he knows how," are the objec- 
 tions made. Is this rational ? How is 
 he to learn how except through doing it 
 wrong many times over ? If some of the 
 officious kindnesses people lavish on 
 children were probed for motives, it would 
 be found often that they so act to save 
 themselves trouble. Indeed, there is not 
 infrequently some frank avowal of this 
 sort. " It is a great deal easier to do it 
 myself than to teach John or Dolly the 
 right way," confesses some mother, while 
 dispensing with proffered help. Easier, 
 no doubt, but a wrong to the child, 
 nevertheless. There are little ones of two 
 years whose muscles are so weak from 
 lack of exercise that they totter uncer- 
 tainly on their feet, and cannot hold a 
 fork or spoon with any precision in their 
 baby fingers. Because their uncertain 
 motions make it disagreeable to be near 
 them they are not allowed to handle 
 things. This is keeping a child a slave 
 to our convenience and comfort. Strength 
 of muscle, nicety of touch, only come 
 with free exercise. And the same rule is
 
 CUL TIVA TE JUDGMENT. 2 1 1 
 
 applicable to mental development and to 
 conduct. We should recollect this when 
 we are inclined to interfere and decide 
 questions the deciding which for them- 
 selves would be valuable as an education. 
 Of all the multitude of things we have 
 been taught during our lives how much do 
 we recollect ? Inquiry would reveal the 
 fact that the information which has 
 obtained a permanent hold upon our 
 minds is that which has been related to 
 action. Particularly, to independent and 
 chosen action. It is the duty of a parent 
 to let a child crystallize his impressions 
 into knowledge : let him act out his 
 beliefs and find whether they are worth 
 anything. Make judges and jurymen of 
 the tots in the nursery, and do not laugh 
 when they screw their innocent faces into 
 an expression of droll gravity and seem to 
 have the weight of an awful responsibility 
 upon their shoulders. There is the greatest 
 difference between children in the growth 
 of capacity for self-control. Some spring 
 boldly along, making mistakes without 
 losing their self-confidence, keeping up 
 their courage and hope and gaining ground
 
 212 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 with every experience. While others 
 remain timid and vacillating beyond the 
 age of adolescence, and seem to shrink 
 from the responsibility of making 
 decisions. Dispositions of this sort ought 
 to be imbued with courage, not injudi- 
 ciously shielded. When it is a native 
 tendency every pains should be taken to 
 arouse ambition and ardor, else the timid 
 child will grow up into the weak, incapable 
 adult, selected apparently for every 
 species of " bad luck " incapables fall 
 heir to. How unhappy are such natures 
 when they are confronted, as they 
 inevitably will be, sooner or later, with a 
 crisis requiring prompt and decided action, 
 and where weal or woe will depend entirely 
 upon their ability to make a wise judg- 
 ment. 
 
 It will appear that the habit some 
 parents have of praising and encouraging 
 a tendency toward moral laziness must 
 have the effect of weakening that fiber 
 which can only reach its proper strength 
 by measuring itself against difficulties. 
 Self-willed and energetic parents, and par- 
 ticularly those in whom vanity is great,
 
 SELF-WILLED PARENTS. 213 
 
 ordinarily manifest an overwhelming fond- 
 ness for the offspring whose weakness 
 offers least opposition to their rule. And 
 they will deduce the most singularly short- 
 sighted and illogical arguments to defend 
 a method of training which is based alto- 
 gether upon the long-exploded fallacy 
 that parental authority is a divine right, 
 to be exercised without restriction or 
 reason. Such a parent remarked to the 
 author with a fierce emphasis sufficiently 
 indicating the all-pervading egotism of 
 which she was the hopeless and uncon- 
 scious subject : " I don't want my daughters 
 to budge without consulting me." And 
 as a matter of fact her growing girls were 
 utterly helpless in all the minor affairs of 
 life in knowledge of which a child of ten 
 should have graduated. They could not 
 so much as change a gown or alter the 
 disposition of a piece of furniture with- 
 out leave. The mother, a singular com- 
 pound of ignorance, vanity, aggressive 
 conscientiousness, and tyrannical self-as- 
 sertion, completely dominated every feeble 
 sign of individuality as it peeped forth, 
 and covered with her spreading maternal
 
 2 1 4 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 wings these fledglings whom she so per- 
 sistently prevented from achieving their 
 natural independence. 
 
 It is not in intellectual jails that human 
 beings gain self-knowledge and the ability 
 to formulate definite purposes. This 
 ability constitutes the great distinction be- 
 tween workers and idlers ; between the 
 persons destined to add something 
 to the world's wealth and those whose 
 career is that of the leech, the de- 
 pendent, docile enough, perhaps provok- 
 ingly humble and meek, but a drag upon 
 the wheels of progress, and a torment to 
 those active organisms of which they be- 
 come the satellites. Not in homes where 
 the straps that hold baby to his crib and 
 chair become, as he grows older, cables to 
 anchor his intelligence to the parental 
 fiat, and to bind his free choice by the 
 thongs of traditional influences, not in 
 such an environment flourishes the bright, 
 brave, enterprising character which is the 
 average type of our age and country. 
 But in that atmosphere most favorable to 
 its healthy unfolding, where parents are 
 capable of taking in the conception of a
 
 SELF-HELPFULNESS. 2 1 5 
 
 broad humanity, and recognizing that the 
 tie between themselves and their children 
 is only part of that more general and not 
 less stringent relation existing between 
 their children and society, will all that is 
 strong and beautiful take root in young 
 souls and expand into symmetrical ma- 
 turity. Here the baby shows, as he 
 handles his belongings and responds to 
 the overtures of his elder playmates, that 
 self-possession which surprises thought- 
 less on-lookers. Here the toddling mites, 
 just learning to walk and talk, are self- 
 helpful, a comfort to nurses and parents. 
 And here, at the age of eight or ten, they 
 manifest such good-sense that they may 
 be safely trusted to take care of them- 
 selves in minor matters, and by the time 
 they are twelve or fourteen authority is 
 an obsolete quantity, and influence alone 
 can be depended upon to aid them in such 
 affairs as are yet beyond their range of 
 experience and reason. 
 
 Some women are possessed of that un- 
 happy disposition which has an absolute 
 distrust of the competency of any creat- 
 ure other than themselves. A woman
 
 2 1 6 MURSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 of this kind, grumbling and groaning 
 under self-imposed burdens, will compel 
 every one about her to sit still and be 
 waited upon. She officiously puts to 
 rights belongings their owners have left 
 temporarily in disorder, watches every 
 chance to embarrass people by unwished- 
 for assistance and makes herself trouble 
 most unnecessarily, yet which it seems 
 ungrateful not to thank her for. In a 
 household of children such a well-mean- 
 ing person may become a haunting terror. 
 She follows up their footsteps and over- 
 sees every trivial act. A heavy sense 
 of responsibility concerning the acts of 
 others, possessed by one determined 
 inmate, may contrive to dull the moral 
 sensibilities of an entire family. No one 
 likes to be rendered passive and be laid 
 under an obligation of gratitude for the 
 deprivation of their normal independence ! 
 Grown persons resent it. Children writhe 
 under it. 
 
 " Let us go off by ourselves," they may 
 well pray. " Let us cease to be things, 
 and be human beings," they might plead, 
 if they were able to interpret and express
 
 EXPERIMENTING. 217 
 
 their own feelings. The cognition of ob- 
 jects as they exist when we first see them 
 gives us those definite impressions which 
 need to be voluntarily combined and ar- 
 ranged before there comes any knowledge 
 available for everyday use. This power 
 to combine and compare is the most valu- 
 able faculty of the mind. It is essential 
 that it be exercised unrestrainedly ; by 
 each person for himself. If the exercise 
 is by the manipulating of objects we call it 
 experimenting, and if only dealing with 
 ideas, reasoning. Experimenting comes 
 first in the natural order of develop- 
 ment. The child handles everything and 
 must put objects in actual position before 
 he can comprehend their relative uses and 
 properties. Now, just as he gains definite 
 knowledge of the laws of matter by being 
 left free to manage matter, so, he gains 
 power to reason by being thrown upon 
 his own mental resources and obliged to 
 put his vague ideas to the test of practice. 
 Of the two ways of gaining knowledge : 
 being told, and finding out, the latter is 
 incalculably the better. It is impossible 
 to make an impression upon the mind of
 
 2 1 8 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 another unless we address his personal 
 feelings and his intelligence. We cannot 
 manipulate another person's mental ma- 
 chinery to his own advantage, we can 
 only suggest a course or an idea, and let 
 nature do the rest. 
 
 Parents should make it their constant 
 aim to educate the judgment of their 
 children, so that from year to year they 
 may become more and more capable of 
 perceiving the true relations of things and 
 able to extricate truth from its overlying 
 mass of fabrication and fancy. In early 
 life the imagination is so active that it 
 presents vivid pictures liable to be con- 
 fused with actualities. Little children, 
 like savages, think that shadows have in- 
 dependent existence. The image in the 
 water, the projection on the wall furnish 
 to their excited fancy living images which 
 make their dreams seem real, and the 
 vague suggestions made by the floating 
 clouds, the flying white papers on a lonely 
 road, and the dusky drapery over a chair- 
 back, round themselves out into complete 
 pictures which at once allure and terrify. 
 There is a period in the life of a fanciful
 
 ABSENT-MINDEDNESS. 219 
 
 child when it is well-nigh impossible for 
 him to give an accurate description of 
 an occurrence. He believes that that 
 really happened which he only appre- 
 hended or conceived ought to happen. 
 Dreams frequently confuse him and 
 pursue him far into the day. If much 
 alone he is apt, too, to fall into a habit of 
 day-dreaming, so that while walking about 
 with every outward semblance of ordinary 
 activity, he may be the mere mechanical 
 agent of habits pursued while his mind is 
 totally withdrawn into a mysterious, un- 
 real realm. This leads to " mind-wander- 
 ing," " absent-mindedness," etc., and 
 breaks up the power of fixed attention 
 to immediate duties. But when the habit 
 has become confirmed it is not judicious 
 to break it up suddenly and harshly. The 
 effects of any forcible interruption of the 
 mental processes may be dangerous. Phys- 
 ical activity and liberty of action are the 
 remedies. Little slaves dream much. 
 And wherever children have been sup- 
 pressed and the natural unfolding of their 
 reasoning powers aborted we may ex- 
 pect displays of inconsistency, irration-
 
 220 NUKSER Y E THICS. 
 
 ality, and, in after life, weakness and ir- 
 resolution where there ought to be firm- 
 ness. What is the most obvious failing 
 of the ordinary man or woman? Poor 
 judgment. Inability to weigh the value 
 of testimony and form conclusions based 
 upon a just consideration of all the data 
 at hand. Hamilton observes that it is 
 suicidal to distrust the evidence of our 
 faculties. But evidence depends upon 
 the normal condition of perception. Per- 
 ceptiveness may be blunted and dulled in 
 early life so as to be too sluggish and 
 unsound to transmit correct impressions. 
 Or, even the bright, active mind, alive to 
 details, may have relapsed into a mere 
 registrar of isolated facts, through denial 
 of liberty to compare and generalize. Of 
 all the things people suppose themselves 
 to be familiar with, the most important 
 one receives the least attention. Human 
 nature is the great book of which all 
 other sciences and arts are mere volumes. 
 To understand the laws of life is to be 
 furnished with the key to unlock the door 
 in the palace of destiny. How little we 
 know of one another, how incorrectly we
 
 INSIGHT. 221 
 
 read the outward signs of those emotions 
 that are stirring the hearts of our friends 
 and enemies and that will re-act most 
 powerfully in another moment either 
 against us or in our favor. 
 
 To be able to read character is to be 
 wise against the day of ill to come, and to 
 be possessed of power to help and defend 
 the weak and ignorant against the unfor- 
 tunate consequences of their own follies. 
 But the student of character, the man or 
 woman possessed of insight to detect and 
 ability to turn to account the impulses to 
 action, must be a good reasoner as well as 
 a keen observer. Neither predispositions 
 nor prejudices must blind him, but the 
 cool logic of an imperturbable self-control 
 must accompany and dominate both his 
 sympathies and his wishes. The scien- 
 tific study of human nature is being more 
 attended to in the present age, and it 
 must be the chief and choice pursuit of 
 the more cultured future. And while to 
 this pursuit must be brought the fullest 
 measure of enlightenment and vigor of 
 which the mind is capable, it is only 
 through the cultivation of our highest
 
 222 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 faculties and their exercise in early life 
 upon common subjects that we shall ever 
 be able to attain to this consummation of 
 power. 
 
 Says Faraday, in a lecture delivered 
 before the Royal Institution of Great 
 Britain : 
 
 " Claiming, then, the use of the ordi- 
 nary faculties of the mind in ordinary 
 things, let me next endeavor to point 
 out what appears to me to be a great 
 deficiency in the exercise of the mental 
 powers in every direction. Three words 
 will express this want deficiency of judg- 
 ment. I do not wish to make any start- 
 ling assertions, but I know that in physical 
 matters multitudes are ready to draw con- 
 clusions who have little or no power of 
 judgment in the case; that the same is 
 true in other departments of knowledge ; 
 and that, generally, mankind is willing to 
 leave the faculties which relate to the 
 judgment almost entirely uneducated and 
 their decisions at the mercy of ignorance, 
 prepossessions, the passions, or even acci- 
 dent." 
 
 Are not parents responsible in great
 
 INDEPENDENCE. 223 
 
 part for a defect so wide-spread and 
 glaring ? Does not the suppression of 
 curiosity, the contempt bestowed upon 
 early attempts to reason, and the pro- 
 longed exercise of an arbitrary gov- 
 ernment dull the faculties of youth and 
 prevent the development of the highest 
 and most important one of them the 
 judgment? 
 
 In their anxiety, often in their tender 
 solicitude, parents forget that they and 
 their offspring are separable units, that 
 the time must arrive, as with the polyp, 
 when the young will detach itself from 
 the 'parent stem and go floating away on 
 the ocean of life to thrive or perish on its 
 own merits. Mere commands, directions 
 to avoid this danger, to embrace that 
 opportunity, will never hold against an 
 adverse inclination in the youth old 
 enough to judge for himself. How will 
 it be with him, then, if he breaks away 
 from authority with a heart seething with 
 suppressed impulses, a will weak through 
 lack of exercise, a judgment totally un- 
 educated and incapable of independent 
 exertion ?
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF PERSONAL CON- 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 " True progress requires study of the wisdom of the 
 race to develop the humanities ; and counter movement 
 of study of science, which develops individuality." 
 DOVE. 
 
 'T'HE function of parental government 
 is to protect the child and prepare 
 it for independent life. This view of 
 parental duty which it has been the 
 object of the author to keep constantly 
 in sight throughout the foregoing chap- 
 ters involves the admission that there 
 is in every child an inalienable right of 
 choice for a certain kind of conduct 
 over another kind. Evolution of char- 
 acter proceeds along both a general and 
 a special path, the general path harmo- 
 nizing with the average tendencies of the 
 species, of the family, and of the period ; 
 
 but the special path leading to those de- 
 
 224
 
 THE BASIS OF GOVERNMENT. 225 
 
 viations and eccentricities which mark out 
 the organism as something existing by 
 itself, unlike anything else, and ruled by 
 a mental bias seemingly self-created, so 
 far does it carry him away from the regu- 
 lation pattern conceived as proper to his 
 antecedents and surroundings. 
 
 It must be apparent that authority can 
 only have jurisdiction over the general, not 
 the special, tendency of the individual. It 
 exists for the purpose of bringing him into 
 those relations with society occupied by 
 an average man, for the purpose of giving 
 him that degree of enlightenment concern- 
 ing laws and customs which shall make 
 self-control expedient and criminality 
 avoidable. He must be taught what it 
 is essential to do and what not to do in 
 order to maintain his own personal free- 
 dom and seek his own happiness, consist- 
 ently with respecting the right to free- 
 dom 'and happiness possessed by all other 
 members of the community. The moral 
 law, as accepted from the ancient statutes 
 called the " Ten Commandments," by all 
 civilized nations, and made the basis of 
 civil government, should be expounded 
 '5
 
 326 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 and the same degree of obedience to them 
 enforced that will be enforced by legal 
 authority when he enters the world. This 
 obligation is one that will be binding upon 
 him through life and that is susceptible 
 to no change or mitigation. It is there- 
 fore, permanent ; not the outcome of 
 caprice, chance, nor the preference of his 
 advisers. An anchor, ever at hand to 
 keep his restless barque safe in port, is 
 that firm conviction, which, implanted 
 early in life, stays to the end ; that justice 
 is the undying universal moral principle 
 which no one can controvert without self- 
 destruction. 
 
 So, to general relations, as being the 
 only permanent ones, should be directed 
 the efforts of the guardians of the young. 
 Is this done ? Must it not be admitted 
 that the most of our teaching, of our ad- 
 monitions, are devoted to those special 
 relations, comparatively transitory, and 
 that special conduct, comparatively unim- 
 portant because dictated by occasions not 
 likely to last, which concerns not parents, 
 teachers, nor the community, but the 
 individual himself, and over which, conse-
 
 MORAL EDUCATION. 227 
 
 quently, he should be permitted personal 
 control ? 
 
 If this is so, it affords an explanation 
 why, in the training of the young, confu- 
 sion, trouble, and discouragement are the 
 rule, not the exception. If, instead of 
 employing our authority in the way nature 
 intended it to be employed, we distort it 
 to unnatural uses, how can any other result 
 ensue than despair to the parent and injury 
 to the child? Commonly, the entrance 
 into life is the beginning of a warfare 
 with those whose duty is protection, not 
 aggression. Misconceiving their respon- 
 sibilities, they make moral education con- 
 sist almost wholly in the teaching of those 
 minor subjects which concern themselves, 
 and leave out those all-embracing eth- 
 ical principles which concern humanity. 
 Nearly all the instruction a child receives 
 is in regard to those little acts which, from 
 hour to hour, affect the convenience of his 
 family. And particularly is there strict 
 surveillance exercised over the least of his 
 doings which differ in any respect from 
 the ordinary conduct of his associates. 
 The very unlikeness which constitutes his
 
 228 NURSER Y E THICS. 
 
 personality is held to be an offense. He 
 is chided for proclivities which are odd, 
 for habits which are the outcome of his 
 original impulses. Originality is in fact 
 the point of contention between his guard- 
 ians and him ; and yet with his originality 
 they have nothing to do. That is a matter 
 out of their province. And whatever 
 efforts they make will be attended with 
 but little success, for nature takes care 
 not to be wholly thwarted, and confers 
 sufficient impetus with every trait to 
 enable the possessor to struggle for its 
 preservation. 
 
 But the struggle may be embittering, 
 as it certainly is unwise and unnecessary. 
 The harmonious relations natural between 
 parent and child may be converted into 
 hostility wearing upon both, through the 
 attempt to accomplish the impossible. 
 Suppose that the lower species were im- 
 bued with the obstinate disposition to 
 oppose in their offspring all tendencies to 
 variations? What mad combats would 
 take place, how progress would have been 
 impeded ! But man alone, of all the 
 animals, makes the rearing of his young
 
 NATURAL METHODS. 229 
 
 a training in all those temporary and con- 
 ventional customs that are the accompani- 
 ment of his caprices, instead of an educa- 
 tion of those faculties essential to his 
 existence as a being, and a mere guidance 
 in that matter of individual preference 
 which concerns his personal develop- 
 ment. 
 
 And man alone makes a failure of gov- 
 erning his offspring. For the reason that 
 his government is an interference with 
 nature. He can, therefore, only make it 
 a success by returning to natural methods. 
 In a few words these may be thus in- 
 dicated. In great and permanent matters, 
 restraint ; in little and transient matters, 
 liberty. In all cases, restraint only during 
 the period of ignorance and irresponsi- 
 bility, and a removal of it when reason 
 has been attained. 
 
 The doctrine here advocated, of per- 
 mitting children all possible freedom of 
 action, and letting them suffer the natural 
 consequences of their actions, has, as its 
 direct aim, the development of their 
 reasoning powers. Every experiment a 
 child makes, every result traced to its
 
 230 NURSERY ETHICS. 
 
 cause, gives keener insight and adds cer- 
 tainty to future researches for truth. If, 
 in the physical world, he learns accurate 
 use of his senses, how to detect flaws and 
 trace the reason of his failures, he will 
 carry into the sphere of morals an en- 
 hanced respect for vital truths and a 
 tendency to keen observation of conduct. 
 But above all this, he will be able to ap- 
 prehend the vital springs of human nature. 
 He will see how impulse betrays to error 
 and that principles rule the moral as well 
 as the physical universe. Thus trained 
 he realizes early the use and abuse of 
 government. Accustomed to look for 
 causes he will not readily be blinded by 
 mere displays of power, and will be on 
 guard against all those dazzling shams 
 the world flashes before credulous eyes. 
 
 But I pause here to say earnestly, that 
 an education which develops the practical 
 and logical side of nature should not sup- 
 press nor handicap the taste for the beauti- 
 ful, the imaginative, the romantic. The 
 Gradgrind who would eliminate from the 
 realm of childhood the flowers of fancy, the 
 grace and sweetness of sentiment, brings
 
 THE SCHOOL BOY. 231 
 
 grim, ghastly death to the fairest side of 
 human nature. " Youth," said Aristotle 
 " prefers beautiful to profitable conduct." 
 Let it cherish its fairy dreams as relaxa- 
 tions from the work of living; for living 
 is sometimes work to the young as well 
 as to the old. But as art and science are 
 at once both beautiful and practical, the 
 education of the sense-perceptions, while 
 conferring accuracy and judgment, permit, 
 also, free play to the imagination. It is 
 not dealing with natural facts which 
 dwarfs the mind, but dealing with un- 
 natural facts ; with the sordid side of life, 
 the mercenary, the grasping side. Who is 
 more practical than the school-boy, of the 
 type of Aldrich, Eggleston, and Holland, 
 as they are represented by pen pictures 
 scratched down when they were at play 
 by the mill, the river, the school-ground ? 
 How wide-awake, how intolerant of 
 humbug, and yet how fanciful, how 
 tenacious of childish ideas and romantic 
 whims ! While encouraging the practical 
 we must not discourage the ideal, for the 
 two threads run along side by side, in- 
 terweaving in the warp and woof of a
 
 232 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 symmetrical character. And out of sen- 
 timent often comes useful action ; useful, 
 because noble and heroic. 
 
 Youth worships heroes, and so learns 
 to emulate. Love of liberty, of fair play, 
 of equal rights springs up in the heart 
 from contemplation of the events of 
 history, as well as from the experiences 
 of everyday life. In perceiving that acts 
 which produce misery to others are bad 
 and that to confer happiness is to be 
 virtuous, a boy feels the emotions of sym- 
 pathy with the oppressed, and disgust of 
 tyranny. Presently he begins to under- 
 stand how the curbing of wild and 
 inconsiderate impulses in himself, and the 
 cherishing sentiments impelling to right 
 conduct has been the aim of parental 
 government, and when conscience has so 
 far developed that the wish is strong in 
 him to do right, he has become an 
 emancipated, self-governing being whose 
 personality must "henceforth be respected. 
 
 No such puerile sentiment as a wish to 
 keep power in his own hands should impel 
 a parent at this period to substitute 
 restraints of his own for the natural
 
 DR. FELLENBURVS SCHOOL. 233 
 
 restraint consisting in the good intentions 
 of the lad himself. He should be trusted 
 to look after himself as far as may be. 
 Rousseau, who has in most other respects 
 good sense, falls into the error natural to 
 a Frenchman, in advocating the encour- 
 agement of timidity, and a servile 
 dependence upon tutors. The broader 
 policy of modern educators places children 
 upon their honor, rendering them self- 
 respecting from the first. The educational 
 institutions of Switzerland are among 
 the best in the world, and here liberty 
 is exercised in its purest form. In Dr. 
 Fellenburg's model school social life was 
 depended upon as the great aid in training. 
 The boys were encouraged to become 
 critics of one another, but in the spirit of 
 generosity and justice, not with malice. 
 It is wise to make, thus early, public 
 opinion the instrument of restraint, since 
 that will be the chief restraining force in 
 later life. 
 
 Herein we see the advantage of children 
 being surrounded from infancy by refined, 
 high-minded companions, and not en- 
 trusted to ignorant servants. The evolu-
 
 234 NURSE R Y E THICS. 
 
 tion of the personal conscience is the end 
 of moral education. And the quality of 
 the conscience depends upon the average 
 virtue of the community in which our 
 lot is cast. Almost with mathematical 
 certainty we might predict that a child's 
 inclination toward virtue will not be 
 greater than the sum of the power for 
 good in his educators heredity being 
 taken into account also as against their 
 aggregate power for evil. The presence 
 of an adviser with loose views may be 
 offset by the magnetism of one strong in 
 uncompromising rectitude ; but here the 
 child would be exposed to a cross-fire 
 which would bring about constant fluct- 
 uations. It would be difficult to say 
 what would be the result of the settling 
 down. 
 
 Generally, we are influenced by our 
 equals more than by superiors or those 
 we deem inferior, because the equality of 
 position leads to the habit of looking at 
 things from the same point of view, and 
 affords a chance for congeniality. Children 
 are, consequently, apt to defer to the 
 opinions of each other, and they find it
 
 ACCEPTING CONSEQUENCES. 235 
 
 harder to go against this fiat of social life 
 than to act contrary to the admonition of 
 an elder who seems, in a way, far off, and 
 not intimately associated. They learn 
 through pain and disappointment the 
 fallacy of their youthful oracles, and 
 acquire by this means, and through the 
 enjoyments arising from happily chosen 
 conduct, judgment in affairs of life and 
 behavior. 
 
 We cannot spare our children the suf- 
 fering consequent upon the development 
 of their moral nature. It is an experience 
 every soul must go through for itself. 
 Gradually, silently, parents must with- 
 draw from active interference, and let the 
 child face circumstances and accept the 
 consequences. As a veil hung before 
 tender eyes and lifted little by little to 
 admit the full light of day that screen 
 made by parental solicitude must slide 
 back. By the time the child has reached 
 his " teens " and those emotions begin to 
 work within him which are to revolution- 
 ize his nature and position, he should 
 possess an equipment of self-knowledge 
 and self-control that renders outside inter-
 
 236 NUXSER y E THICS. 
 
 ference superfluous. Such indirect influ- 
 ence as can be exerted by placing in his 
 way books likely to take pleasant hold of 
 his imagination, and the permitting un- 
 restricted intercourse with persons of ex- 
 cellent character, and above all, the mak- 
 ing his home pleasant and attractive, will 
 be almost the sole methods of help we 
 shall be able now to afford. Government 
 is over ; the rest is purely a matter of in- 
 fluence. Made the intelligent agent of 
 his own destiny from his earliest years, 
 he knows his faults and weaknesses and 
 comprehends the uses of discipline. 
 
 Julian Hawthorne, in his novel " Garth " 
 depicts in his powerful and graphic style, 
 the struggle of a rugged, strong-willed 
 boy with his turbulent nature. He takes 
 himself in hand at the age of twelve and 
 assures his gentle, philosophical father 
 that when there is a necessity for punish- 
 ment he will inflict it himself. And what 
 no external force could have effected he 
 does succeed in accomplishing, until, after 
 much sorrow, he arrives at maturity a 
 strong, self-controlled man. 
 
 Early discipline in self-control is the
 
 RESPONSIBILITIES. 237 
 
 surest preparation for success in life. 
 Why should we not get our first lessons 
 while the cost will be comparatively light, 
 and there is shelter and comfort near by, 
 to sustain our drooping spirits ? We can 
 then go forth equipped against similar 
 accidents, possessed of knowledge that is 
 a bulwark. Pre-eminent above others is 
 the person possessed of " good sense," 
 the faculty of seeing clearly and judging 
 impartially. And it is notable that per- 
 sons so distinguished have usually been 
 thrown early upon their own resources 
 and forced to think for themselves. Who 
 makes cake and forgets the flour, who has 
 perpetual trouble with servants, and finds 
 every responsibility a burden too heavy 
 to be borne ? Who, but the girl who was 
 denied access to the kitchen and forbid- 
 den to meddle with the store-room, she 
 whose capable mother kept her a pet and 
 wished her " not to learn such work and 
 then she would never have to do it." 
 What man is pusillanimous and unfort- 
 unate in all his undertakings ? Usually, 
 the one who was kept close to the hearth 
 in his boyhood and never suffered to
 
 2 38 N17RSEK Y E THICS. 
 
 stray out of sight for fear of his coming 
 to harm. 
 
 In one of the best governed families I 
 ever knew, the three boys, ranging in age 
 from seven to eleven, were allowed an 
 amount of liberty that sometimes occa- 
 sioned wondering comment from friends. 
 To all intents and purposes they were as 
 free as birds, and yet I recall no instance 
 of their abusing their privileges. On the 
 contrary, they seemed united to their 
 parents by an unusually strong bond of 
 affection. The larger lads hung fondly 
 about their mother's chair and the little 
 man of seven seemed to feel a deep sense 
 of his responsibility in taking care of her 
 and of his younger sister. 
 
 This care-taking is a great pleasure to 
 a manly lad, and should be permitted 
 early. Let him carry the satchel, buy 
 the car-tickets, select the shady seats. 
 Let the girl of a dozen years feel that 
 she has a great deal to do in making the 
 comfort of the family ; that upon her 
 thoughtfulness depends largely the pleas- 
 ure of others. Let her learn the value of 
 money, how to buy, and the limitations
 
 FAMILY COUNSELS. 239 
 
 of an income. It is a very sensible 
 custom to give young people an allow- 
 ance and let them purchase their own 
 clothing and belongings, at first under 
 direction, afterward alone. Extrava- 
 gance comes from ignorance, as parsi- 
 mony from fear, and even an hereditary 
 disposition to either trait may be largely 
 overcome by wise management. 
 
 Without casting upon their young 
 shoulders too heavy a burden of care, I 
 think children should understand, when 
 they show themselves reasonable enough, 
 the worldly position of their parents. Is 
 it necessary to show them the sordid side ? 
 It is to be hoped not. But show them, at 
 least, the practical side. Let them become 
 helpers, even counselors. " Family coun- 
 sels " are something more than a name, 
 and they establish that mutual confidence 
 which is the safeguard of the young, the 
 comfort of their elder friends. The time 
 comes when the spontaneity, the de- 
 monstrativeness of childhood is replaced 
 by a reticence and dignity hard for the 
 affectionate parent to bear. But if there 
 remains confidence, he can comfort him-
 
 240 NURSER Y E THICS, 
 
 self. The young creature just learning 
 his responsibilities will return ere long to 
 pour his troubles and hopes into that 
 patient ear. It is a physiological truth 
 that the young are often most cold- 
 hearted and selfish just before reaching 
 manhood and womanhood, as the coldest 
 hours are before sunrise. 
 
 There are inevitable pangs for parents 
 in seeing their children grow away from 
 them. But after all, these are selfish 
 sufferings. We do not sufficiently realize 
 that we are training our children not for 
 ourselves but for the world, for their 
 country, and above all, for life. This 
 modern period in which our destiny is cast 
 is one fraught with strange interest and 
 importance to the future. It is the age 
 of science, of knowledge, of experiment, 
 of action, of individuality. The children of 
 this generation have peculiar need of such 
 early discipline as shall fit them to deal 
 with the most intricate problems of mor- 
 ality. Empiricism is passing away, and 
 men are confronted personally with all 
 those questions that were settled for their 
 fathers by the vox Dei. The exigencies
 
 FREEDOM OF CHOICE. 241 
 
 of modern life demand self-poise, an inde- 
 pendent mental attitude, as well as senses 
 trained to the nicest discrimination. The 
 timid and vacillating will be overborne by 
 those possessing readiness and determina- 
 tion to set truth above conventionalities 
 and work for the establishment of that 
 order of things which shall give the 
 greatest happiness to the greatest num- 
 ber. 
 
 Let us recollect that the boys and girls 
 about our hearths are the future law-givers 
 of the world. They may have certain 
 qualities which make them uncomfort- 
 able to deal with now ; the very force 
 and self-confidence valuable in the future 
 citizen renders them intractable and rest- 
 less under repressive government. We 
 must meet such restlessness by enlarged 
 opportunities for action, and permit to 
 the growing man and woman freedom to 
 exercise and develop faculties of which, 
 when maturity is reached, they will stand 
 most in need. 
 
 THE END.
 
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