X
 
 UCNiV. OJf CALIF. LIKAK\. U>S A 
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES
 
 Crumbs and His Times 
 
 BY 
 DOLORES BACON 
 
 Author of '"Diary of a Musician," 
 "The King's Divinity," Etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 1906
 
 Copyright, 1906, by 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 Published, September, 1906 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 including that of translation into foreign languages, 
 including the Scandinavian
 
 TO 
 
 MY SON CHARLES 
 
 2125646
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Molluscan Stage - 3 
 
 II. Infant Fads and Fancies - - 18 
 
 III. Original Tendencies - 36 
 
 IV. Bending the Twig - - 51 
 V. Indirect Methods - - 69 
 
 VI. The Question of Obedience - - 91 
 
 VII. A Cure for the Tantrums - - 106 
 
 VIII. Generosity and Self-Control - - 121 
 
 IX. Fact Versus Truth - - 139 
 
 X. The Seventh Year - - - 155
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " Give me the first seven years of a child's 
 life, and I care not who has the rest" 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MOLLUSCAN STAGE 
 
 CRUMBS and I first became ac- 
 quainted somewhere about his 
 second hour. It was later that 
 we called him " Crumbs " ; not because of 
 any foolish, fantastical notion, but be- 
 cause at about his fourth year it had 
 become his habit to search the scripture 
 of the parental mind at those times when 
 he "wanted to know," and one day he 
 asked me why I had " choosed " him. I 
 explained to him I had made up my 
 mind he was just about the sort of boy I 
 wanted, and that I could not get on
 
 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 without him. He expressed much sat- 
 isfaction at my preference, and seemed 
 from that moment to regard himself as 
 having some advantage over his fellows. 
 This was an attitude which I accepted 
 as a sort of back-action tribute to me. 
 
 He mentioned some time afterward 
 when I had chided him for breaking 
 loose like an Indian as I entered the 
 house after a short absence, that he 
 '"sposed" he acted that way in my 
 presence, rather than in the presence of 
 others, because I had "choosed" him. 
 Also, that he '"sposed he woved" (short 
 on 1's,) me for the same reason; that as 
 I just had to take him instead of some 
 other, he " 'sposed he felt differ 'nt " 
 about me. 
 
 It seemed to me this had a bearing 
 upon the matter of pre-natal responsi- 
 bility. I do not know that I should 
 have formulated my thought thus, if I 
 had not begun long before to sit at the 
 feet of Crumbs and learn. I was glad at 
 that moment when he spoke so confid-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 5 
 
 ingly, so simply of my choice, that I had 
 chosen him chosen him long before I 
 knew him. At any rate I had thought 
 of him very much as he was, long before 
 he was born. 
 
 After this discussion of my choice, he 
 asked if he had been "just crumbs" be- 
 fore I "choosed" him. This protoplas- 
 mic thought in so youthful a mind seemed 
 worthy of recognition; hence, " Crumbs. " 
 
 He was never pleased with the name 
 because, as he explained, he had ceased 
 to be " crumbs " when he was " choosed. " 
 However, he submitted in a graceful 
 spirit of accommodation on the ground 
 that since I had preferred him to all 
 others, there were certain indulgences 
 due from him to me. In this I recog- 
 nised an original tendency a ten- 
 dency toward fairness. I do not know 
 that Crumbs' attitude toward me changed 
 for many a day; and during the process 
 of his early development, it was only 
 necessary for me to remind him that I had 
 chosen him with all my heart in order to
 
 6 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 receive from him some benefit. Later, 
 he was to serve me for love alone. 
 
 When I first saw him he looked pathet- 
 ically like an old gentleman to me, and 
 quite absurdly like one to other people; 
 absurdly like, no doubt, because they 
 had not chosen him. Though he was 
 absurd to others and pathetic to me f 
 I longed to think there must be some 
 particular in which there could be no 
 change. I thought I should like to look 
 upon his eccentricity of feature say 
 forty years afterward. 
 
 There came an early day when Crumbs, 
 who had seemed to be as blind as a 
 kitten, refusing to open his eyes, con- 
 templated me seriously. Then I felt 
 that I, too, had been chosen, and I was 
 glad, since many are called to mother- 
 hood, but I doubt if all are properly 
 chosen. 
 
 My cook had told me that infants 
 neither smiled nor shed tears at two 
 weeks of age, but if that be the rule, 
 Crumbs was in no way circumscribed by
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 7 
 
 it. He did not have to smile; he had 
 little upward and outward wrinkles about 
 his eyes that did the business for him. 
 When we looked at each other, Crumbs' 
 wrinkles would break up, and our anti- 
 phonal was not the less profound in its 
 meaning to me, because unsounding. 
 Crumbs had a talking pair of eyes, even 
 in the molluscan period of his existence. 
 
 That sun-rise love of ours seemed to 
 rejuvenate Crumbs within the week. 
 By that time I had begun to resent not 
 only a change of feature, but that trans- 
 mutation of tissue, scientifically, inevit- 
 ably, to take place in the course of days 
 and years. I wanted him just as he was, 
 never to become grown up, never to be- 
 come helpful to himself or me, but just 
 to remain a little pulpy oyster who de- 
 manded me to be all his, and who knew 
 me to be so by a faculty greater than 
 reason. But of the things which I re- 
 sented most at this time was a midnight 
 conference between Crumbs' grand- 
 mother and his father. So far I had
 
 8 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 been left out of these consultations, as 
 one whose mind was without form and 
 void on the subject of her own son. 
 Crumbs' father and grandmother were 
 divided upon the subject of aniseed tea 
 should it be taken, and if taken, should 
 it be administered with a spoon to a two- 
 weeks old child ? 
 
 His father was conservative, and ob- 
 jected to what he believed to be an ex- 
 periment. Crumbs' grandmother had 
 given aniseed tea out of a spoon to 
 five children of her own and to several 
 children who belonged to her young, un- 
 tried female relatives; she ought to know 
 something about it. I have since sus- 
 pected that she did, but that midnight 
 I was taking no chances. I preferred to 
 save the baby and to put his grand- 
 mother through her examination after- 
 ward. 
 
 Not having anticipated the issue of 
 aniseed tea in a spoon, I was no better 
 prepared to render judgment than Sol- 
 omon would have been, hence I kept
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 9 
 
 silence and prayed for wisdom. The 
 boy's father was of the opinion that ani- 
 seed tea filled the boy up to no purpose; 
 that if he was hungry he had better have 
 his more sustaining food. Crumbs' grand- 
 mother was of the opinion that the 
 boy had already had too much, and that 
 aniseed tea was useful principally to 
 mislead him, to make him think that he 
 was getting something, while in fact he 
 was getting nothing at all. Thus, by 
 easy stages, the argument drifted from 
 the material to the moral question: shall 
 we give him aniseed tea or shall we in- 
 culcate the first principles of self- 
 control? 
 
 His father thought the grandmother 
 absurd; his grandmother knew the father 
 to be so. Meanwhile, Crumbs, who after 
 all was said and done on the subject of 
 aniseed belonged to me, had swallowed 
 enough of the surrounding atmosphere 
 to make him cry to some purpose. With- 
 out awaiting the call of wisdom, I signi- 
 fied that I was awake and knew what to
 
 io CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 do since I had chosen him, and I did it. 
 A woman is never a prophet in her own 
 family, and the fact that a warm contact 
 and a sympathetic hand upon a much 
 discussed "turn- turn" brought peace, did 
 not convince anybody; but it established 
 my supremacy, if it also interrupted a 
 large moral disquisition upon the sub- 
 ject of Crumbs' stomach. 
 
 About this time I took to making it 
 difficult for Crumbs to breath through his 
 mouth. I leaned up on my elbow half 
 the night watching him not do it, be- 
 cause his father had an idea that one 
 could not begin too early to form a child's 
 proper habits. For my part, I never had 
 any notions about Crumbs' habits nor 
 his bringing up. I always felt that it 
 was going to be infinitely better to " in- 
 stinc" it Crumbs' own word later 
 while the conditions of uncertainty were 
 upon us. 
 
 In the first month I discovered so 
 many rules which didn't fit Crumbs, that 
 I decided either he was an exceptional
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES n 
 
 child, or the rules applied to babies were 
 mere tales of sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing in this world. 
 
 For example, the prescribed amount of 
 milk once in two hours Crumbs couldn't 
 hold with comfort to himself or with 
 convenience to other people. He had a 
 sort of three-quarter gill capacity with a 
 pint assimilative gauge, which meant a 
 little less a little oftener, and there he was, 
 right as a trivet! Yet a circumscribed 
 spinster, who was learning in a teacher's 
 college all about how to bring up a 
 mother, made unpleasant remarks con- 
 cerning the frequency with which Crumbs 
 was fed one day when I had been self- 
 sacrificing enough to let her have 
 luncheon with us. 
 
 Another perfectly seasoned mother, 
 who had brought four massive percherons 
 into the world, each of whom might have 
 begun on tacks, or anything else that 
 could have been boiled, reminded me 
 that I was to "Let him cry! what else 
 are babies for? Good Heaven! It's good
 
 12 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 for 'em. " All the while, Crumbs was 
 getting black in the face for want of a 
 little decent treatment, because in de- 
 ference to the lady with the percherons 
 I was bringing him up according to rule 
 for the afternoon. 
 
 Then there was a rule about putting 
 something or other on his head, which 
 should soften something or other which 
 was not there, and about doing it each 
 morning after his bath. Whatever it 
 was that was prescribed, it made him 
 smell salvey and glisten unpleasantly. 
 I waived that rule without mentioning 
 it, he had his head washed in honest 
 soap suds and lived through it. I learn- 
 ed afterwards that it was not necessary 
 to use the stuff if babies did not need it, 
 but it was the rule to use it, to make 
 sure they should not need it. 
 
 There came a piping hot day when he 
 was a month old after we had been 
 confidants for two weeks, and he signi- 
 fied to me that even very young oysters 
 should be clothed with some regard for
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 13 
 
 their feelings and the weather. A family 
 howl went up that belonged to the dark 
 ages and the ride, when I took off a few 
 layers of Crumbs' clothing. Another 
 baby who was going to live according to 
 rule till he was able to kick the rules to 
 Kingdomcome, and who lived just over 
 the way, was all speckled, according to 
 rule but Crumbs was as comfortable as 
 one set of flannels could make him. 
 When in doubt about him I played the 
 trump of instinct. Instinct, of course, 
 was Crumbs' trump card also, and our 
 combined blindness frequently resulted 
 in some uncommon good sense. At 
 those times when we missed, we laughed 
 and didn't tell anybody. 
 
 For some time we added greatly to the 
 gaiety of nations represented by the 
 German cook, the Swedish house-maid, 
 the Irish nurse-maid and the man-about 
 who owed his characteristics to an in- 
 ternational alliance but I stood firm 
 for Crumbs, and tried to live patiently 
 under the opprobrium cast upon me by
 
 i 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 discreeter women. Some of them had 
 had six babies to my one, but I am still 
 convinced that they had been less in 
 their confidence than I was in the con- 
 fidence of Crumbs. 
 
 However it was, for a very long season 
 we had an anxious time of it; because, 
 if we guessed right, nothing was going to 
 happen ; but, if we guessed wrong, every- 
 thing was going to happen. There was 
 the teachers' college mother, the lady of 
 the percherons, the mother according to 
 rule over the way with her speckled baby, 
 and there was Crumbs' grandmother, 
 eternally wracked because she had brought 
 up four children and I hadn't. It 
 did seem to me that I must be a fairly 
 good example of how not to do it. Fin- 
 ally there was Crumbs' father. He didn't 
 set up as an authority, but even while he 
 stood by us, I knew that he was appre- 
 hensive, wished we wouldn't, and only 
 refrained from asking us to take advice 
 because he was loyal unto death. He
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 15 
 
 might not be able to save us, but he 
 could die with us. 
 
 There were dreadful moments when I 
 did not positively know if it had been I, 
 or his father, or his grandmother, or his 
 nurse, or almost anybody else that was 
 his, who had given Crumbs birth; but 
 through it all I stuck to the superficial 
 truth that he was mine by divine right 
 of that personal preference shown me by 
 him. Hence, although we were deci- 
 mal one, and say nine tenths (Crumbs 
 being the one) in point of numbers, yet 
 Crumbs and I, by hanging together, 
 managed not to hang separately, and 
 things finally went of! as well as if we 
 had gone by rule instead of by love. 
 Neither of us boasted of this, because we 
 had a hard enough time as it was, but we 
 early recognised that we must pool our 
 issues against an experienced and critical 
 world, if Crumbs was to begin as an in- 
 dividual and not as a polyp. 
 
 I did not start him out on individual 
 lines during his first moments for he did
 
 16 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 not stand in immediate need of such 
 treatment; but I did not long delay, be- 
 cause I felt that the sooner I, myself, fell 
 into approved lines, the better for our 
 future relations. His embryonic condition 
 could not be for long, and the sooner 
 I began to regard him as my own child, 
 and not as a teachers' college mother's 
 child, the better for Crumbs and me. 
 
 I believed that he had a kind of dig- 
 nity to consider, even while in the oyster 
 state, because he was ours. This may 
 have been a sharp egotism on my part, 
 but not a very harmful one, if not 
 carried too far. Moreover, a man, wo- 
 man or child must have plenty of egotism 
 if he is going to be a good citizen. The 
 man who doesn't feel that he, personally, 
 is responsible for the enforcement of law 
 and order, in pretty much every quarter 
 of the globe, is the man who is not going 
 to be too particular to establish residence 
 about voting time; and his excuse is 
 going to be that it's no use so long as the 
 Primaries are run as they are!
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES i? 
 
 I intended Crumbs to think himself of 
 so much importance in this world, that 
 when he saw the Artful Dodger at work 
 he would mention it to a policeman. I 
 knew that Crumbs would necessarily get 
 himself more or less disliked at times, but 
 if he came to be known by the sort of 
 enemies he made, I could stand it, be- 
 cause I meant to help him make the 
 right ones.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 INFANT FADS AND FANCIES 
 
 CEVERAL things had happened in 
 ^ the readjustment of the house- 
 hold which, before Crumbs' birth, I 
 had regarded with tranquility if not 
 with enthusiasm. As an example: the 
 room allotted to Crumbs had been 
 elaborately fries-ed and dado-ed with 
 birds, animals and other such matters 
 supposed to be presented in their natural 
 colours. It had seemed to me, in con- 
 templating the result, that the artist had 
 had periods of colour-blindness while en- 
 gaged upon the job, or that the colour- 
 press lacked training. However, since 
 this had been done with a view to de- 
 veloping Crumbs' incipient and imminent 
 mind I had let the work go on; es- 
 pecially since it pleased the grown-ups. 
 But at six months, Crumbs, with all his
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 19 
 
 educational advantages, didn't know the 
 American eagle from good red-herring, 
 and I had contracted a continual night- 
 mare. 
 
 The tails of the birds "in natural 
 colours " took to wagging at me in my 
 sleep, and most of the creatures turned 
 out to be loons who laughed a merry 
 "Ha, Ha'' every time I went into the 
 room to make sure that the window was 
 down from the top which it was not 
 and that the hand that ruled the world 
 was not doing its worst which it al- 
 most always was. That the baby's milk 
 should not be churned inside it, and that 
 the crib rockers should be regarded solely 
 as reminders of a by-gone crime these 
 were the only things upon which I and 
 the Teachers' college mother agreed. I 
 was willing that the rockers should be 
 there as a sort of sop to history, but I did 
 not mean them to be used. But you 
 couldn't make Crumbs' grandmother nor 
 the Irish nurse regard the rockers as 
 sacred history. To them, rockers were
 
 20 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 still contemporaneous, and I fear they 
 made new digestive combinations inside 
 the baby right along, till I had them 
 the rockers removed and given to the 
 janitress to put on the receptacle in 
 which her own child slept. 
 
 I have said that, in theory, Crumbs 
 was expected to grow up with a knowl- 
 edge of the flora and fauna of his own 
 and other countries; and as nearly as I 
 could understand, the knowledge was 
 to be absorbed through his pores and 
 from his earliest infancy. This method 
 of taking his knowledge in through his 
 cuticle, assimilating it with his breakfast, 
 dinner, supper and the between-snacks, 
 was expected to make the path of learn- 
 ing a broad, straight way for him. Also, 
 he was to have as second nature, a taste 
 for the exquisite in form and colour. 
 That was why the bath-tub had a gar- 
 land about it roses growing with flori- 
 cultural irregularity, out of a passion vine, 
 all painted in pastel shades. The hearth- 
 rug had a dog upon it a woven-in dog.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 21 
 
 I had objected to nothing that had been 
 done except the dog, but since there was 
 to be a dog, I felt that it should be of 
 some denned breed, or at the very least 
 a generic dog. As it was, it was a cross 
 between a grey-hound and a spitz, with a 
 hint of erstwhile fashionable coach-dog 
 on its stomach. I think it was a well- 
 beloved aunt with advanced ideas who 
 had stood for these inovations, and she, 
 having no sporting instincts, could not be 
 expected to choose a proper dog for 
 Crumbs to turn to as a fount of learning. 
 But it worried his father and me, and I 
 felt that, since the nursery equipment was 
 to be wholly educational, the distressing 
 spots on the dog's stomach should have 
 been more regular, perhaps have borne 
 the letters of the alphabet. Certainly, 
 the hearth-rug taught nothing at all 
 about dogs. 
 
 Of course Crumbs knew no more of 
 ornithology at one year of age than I 
 knew of the differential calculus, but his 
 powers of observation along those es-
 
 22 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 pecial lines were stunted a five years' 
 growth. Those birds and things "in 
 natural colours " he had always with him, 
 and they might as well have been fly- 
 specks on the wall for all the note he 
 made of them. At three years of age, 
 after he had enjoyed the companionship 
 of his father's old guide for two weeks, 
 and had gone to the field in the wagon 
 with the dogs, he knew more about 
 the things that had been upon his one- 
 time nursery wall than Audubon him- 
 self could have known; because Felix, 
 the guide, had a fancy as well as useful 
 intellect. He knew how to make mat- 
 ters of forest and stream picturesque to 
 children. If the guide had only been 
 upon the nursery wall 
 
 With pastel shades all about him from 
 his earliest infancy, Crumbs developed 
 a surprising taste and took to the raw, 
 untamed national colours as a duck to 
 water, even before he knew their meaning. 
 We owned a camp-chair whose seat was 
 pinked out in red, white and blue, and
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 23 
 
 Crumbs liked that. He liked it tremen- 
 dously, crude as his colour sense must 
 have been, if one were to give preference 
 to the nursery resolvents of the spectrum. 
 I admired his judgment on the sly, since, 
 after all, there was some meaning in 
 Crumbs' choice. One may give up mean- 
 ing anything, or regarding life seriously 
 after one has passed the eightieth year, 
 but before then it is always well to regard 
 cause and effect. 
 
 We fell to talking baby talk together 
 about all the things for which the colours 
 of the camp chair stood about life, 
 liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 
 Those were the things I was sitting up 
 nights at that time to secure to Crumbs; 
 and even at twelve months he seemed to 
 be appreciative. Crumbs' father was 
 full of patriotism, in that he believed 
 wholly in American institutions, and yet, 
 as a nomad who felt it the duty of man- 
 kind to have gunned in every quarter 
 of the globe, I had never known him to 
 vote. However, if his pursuits pre-
 
 24 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 vented him from establishing residence, 
 he always used accoutrements of Ameri- 
 can manufacture. 
 
 That Crumbs' father did not vote had 
 very greatly distressed me, although per- 
 ceiving my feeling to be one of the 
 inconsequent vagaries of womankind, 
 I had never mentioned it; but here 
 now was Crumbs, almost all mine for 
 the present, and already in love with 
 the national colours on the camp-chair. 
 I began to plan ahead twenty years. 
 If he should vote twice each election 
 for his three-score years, minus the 
 first twenty-one, he might by this deed 
 of supererogation make up for the negli- 
 gence of his restless, if conscientious, 
 father. 
 
 Crumbs and I talked a good deal about 
 this. I think he began with that camp- 
 chair to assimilate a sense of the obliga- 
 tions of good citizenship. When the 
 family intruded upon our causeries and 
 made remarks, I went within the room 
 still sacred to the birds and beasts "in
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 25 
 
 natural colours, " stood upon the hearth- 
 rug dog and felt comforted. 
 
 Crumbs' father never expressed him- 
 self to any extent upon the subject except 
 once when Crumbs had achieved his 
 thirteenth month. Upon that occasion, 
 while I was showing him a before-election 
 parade and trying to demonstrate its lack 
 of relation to the camp-stool and the flag, 
 Crumbs' father said : 
 
 "You'll get notions into that child's 
 head which can never be got out." I 
 appeared apologetic, but secretly, I re- 
 joiced. 
 
 Notwithstanding his early training in 
 pastel shades, Crumbs had no affinity 
 for aesthetics till one day, about his fifth 
 year, a young woman whom he liked ex- 
 ceedingly, because she knew more about 
 Indians than if she had been born one, 
 wore a resada and blue-coloured gown. 
 It was a truly French combination that 
 certainly required a nursery training to 
 appreciate; a combination that ordi- 
 narily needed to be worked up to by
 
 26 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 easy stages. She wore this upon the day 
 she impressed him as "a awful bully 
 girl," and Crumbs tied those colours to 
 his hat-band and stood ready for the lists 
 and her benediction. From his earliest 
 breath he had been trained into an 
 appreciation of the choicest combina- 
 tions in the spectrum, but he chose an 
 up-to-date French agony, unreal and 
 unrelated, however you looked at it; and 
 all because it was worn by " a awful bully 
 girl" who had told him all that she did 
 not know about Indians. 
 
 Crumbs was born a strange fusion of 
 the literal and the ideal. When we drew 
 near to that second Christmas after 
 Crumbs' birth, how I longed to have 
 him enjoy the pleasures of legendary 
 deception and believe in Santa Claus! 
 Two weeks beforehand, his father 
 achieved the impossible by converting 
 the steam-radiator into a fire-place 
 fallacy. He pounded upon the steam- 
 pipes with a lead pencil to summon the 
 spirit of Christmas, then confided Crumbs'
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 27 
 
 wants, sotto voce, and replied in a ven- 
 triloquistic way that none but a fond 
 father could have achieved without more 
 practice. 
 
 A poem of suspiciously personal nature 
 was contributed to the occasion by a 
 friendly genius who, year after year, had 
 successfully fooled legions of children 
 belonging to his acquaintances. All this 
 was done that Crumbs might revel dur- 
 ing a few adolescent years in the delight- 
 ful, world-old lie. But from the first, 
 Crumbs regarded the performance as a 
 foolish emprise in which he must indulge 
 the old-folks. We never really knew 
 what he thought about it till he was 
 three years old. At that time the third 
 annual poem was taken from the toe of 
 his stocking to which it had been pinned. 
 He had a fleeting glimpse of his father, 
 somewhat larger in girth by two sofa 
 pillows; and he heard the jingle of the 
 sleigh-bells the entire ritual but he 
 exhibited only patience instead of 
 pleasure.
 
 28 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 He expressed his feelings, character- 
 istically, after the exhibition was over: 
 
 "Don't nobody tare ! Santa Claus is fat 
 wike the ice-man. Ice-man don't say 
 whymes!" This, a propos of the poem. 
 From that time, Santa Claus poems 
 came only on the twenty-sixth of August, 
 birth-day time, and then in their sane 
 and proper guise of " advice to youth. " 
 
 The following Christmas I stopped 
 lying, and the grown-ups were the only 
 ones who felt badly about it. Crumbs 
 crawled into my bed after that last 
 exhibition of steam-pipes, bells, Santa 
 Claus and all, and said: 
 
 "If there is a Santa Claus, don't no- 
 body tare! If you gave me the waggin I 
 could wove it." I betrayed the secret 
 of the ages upon the spot, and then lay 
 awake for the next six months trying 
 to reconcile Crumbs' literal tendency 
 with his imaginative disposition. At 
 the end of six months I had some- 
 thing so much worse to worry about, 
 although I have now forgotten what,
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 29 
 
 that until now the detail slipped my 
 mind. 
 
 I never could reconcile Crumbs and his 
 works, and early gave up trying. Any- 
 way, who wants to solve a puzzle ? After 
 one is able to get all the pigs in clover 
 there is nothing more to be done with 
 them. It is the man who takes the 
 thing to church with him, who sits up 
 nights with it and who yet never does get 
 it right who deserves congratulation. 
 
 During Crumbs' first three years of 
 life, I felt my responsibility toward pos- 
 terity, and continually laid up treasures 
 that should mark the several stages in 
 Crumbs' career and which should "make 
 up" well in the event of a photographic 
 interview about his thirty-fifth year. I 
 expected the things would eventually 
 find their way to the Museum of Natural 
 History, the British Museum or the 
 Smithsonian Institute. I was vague as 
 to the place where such things went, 
 but not as to the fact that I was assisting 
 to make history.
 
 30 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 For example : I put away the first thing 
 that ever attracted his attention enough 
 for him to make an intelligent effort with 
 his hands. I had to take the furniture 
 apart to get it because it was the brass 
 knob on the arm of a rocking chair. I 
 put it away with the date, which; as a 
 matter of fact was a reasonably early 
 one for a child to " take notice " with his 
 hands; although his grandmother tells 
 me that if he hadn't taken notice then, 
 we might have considered him an idiot. 
 I do not think so. Possibly it was time 
 for him to take notice, but he did it in a 
 way different from other children. 
 
 At the time I was having the chair 
 taken apart, Crumbs' father said that it 
 would make the boy feel like a fool to 
 have his wife and her mother come across 
 the collection. (I had not mentioned 
 the British Museum to his father.) I 
 already had a fairly complete outfit, and 
 everything labelled. I had the entire 
 night-lamp with the red chimney which 
 had marked Crumbs' first recognition of
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 31 
 
 anything in particular except his meals. 
 I had the careful history of all of those 
 things, and I rejoiced in them ; but upon 
 the occasion of the brass knob, Crumbs' 
 father managed to impress upon me that 
 after all I was laying up misery and hu- 
 miliation for the child. So one afternoon, 
 with Crumbs propped up near me on 
 many little pillows, I got out all those 
 evidences of a fond foolishness, and before 
 his eyes I put them resolutely from me. 
 His father said, not without reason, that 
 if I continued to collect things under 
 sentimental pressure we should have to 
 hire a warehouse somewhere between 
 the boy's tenth and twelfth years; and 
 by the time he was a full-grown man we 
 should have to move to some boundless 
 pampa. 
 
 After I had the collection adjusted for 
 the dry-garbage man, Crumbs' father 
 came home and asked me what I was 
 doing. When he found out, he began 
 to look things over with an eye to saving 
 " some one sensible memento " of Crumbs'
 
 32 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 infancy. I left Crumbs alone with his 
 father and I have the complete col- 
 lection inviolate still. 
 
 I agreed with his father however, to 
 maintain secrecy, because he said that 
 to have such things hauled out when a 
 man is twenty or thereabouts, together 
 with a picture taken in a shell with no 
 clothes on to speak of, is enough to 
 destroy the best intentioned man's reso- 
 lution to be right rather than to be Presi- 
 dent. I was never taken thus in a shell 
 and do not understand; but Crumbs' 
 father was, and I have always felt for 
 him when the family album with plush 
 mountings is around. 
 
 The affairs of Crumbs' infancy were so 
 irregular that I find myself unable to 
 recall them with much sequence; which 
 leads me to believe that an analytical 
 consideration of myself might in some 
 way account for the irregularities of 
 Crumbs and his Times. However that 
 may be, we had one thing to tie to: 
 there was no irregularity of affection to
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 33 
 
 recall; no intermissions were there in 
 his superficial training. The worthy in- 
 cidents of Crumbs' training certainly were 
 the results of a benign fate. His father 
 and I had some large and creditable 
 theories upon the subject of boy-culture, 
 and I have them yet no doubt, although 
 it is years since I have made a search; 
 but his father and I agreed that our 
 theories were altogether too fine for 
 everyday use, and we carefully put them 
 aside for Sundays and holidays. A pro- 
 pos of this economy, at about two 
 months old Crumbs fell to getting inside 
 his father's shirt at about nine of the 
 clock, and thus sleeping, he was per- 
 ambulated about the house till all hours. 
 I knew it to be an irregularity of infant 
 culture, but since his father did not 
 mind, Crumbs waxed fat, and I loved to 
 see the procession, I maintained a reason- 
 able silence. 
 
 As his father put it: " If I were a poor 
 workingman who must be in the trench 
 at seven o'clock in the morning, instead
 
 34 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 of on the cotton exchange at eleven, or a 
 poorer society man who must be on the 
 tread-mill all the time, I dare say this 
 would not be proper. But as I am noth- 
 ing on earth but the chap's father and 
 have no higher aspirations, I guess he 
 may as well have things as he likes them 
 while I can walk, and that seems to be 
 about all he does like between the hours 
 of nine at night and two in the morning. 
 Besides, this doesn't over-work our me- 
 thod. " 
 
 I dare say if we really had any method 
 there was madness in it, but it did not 
 make Crumbs unlovely. As long as his 
 father walked, Crumbs smiled; and 
 when he ceased to walk, Crumbs didn't 
 make any fuss. He simply ceased to 
 look joyous, which was punishment 
 enough for us. 
 
 In those days of Crumbs' embryonic 
 career, his father and I were not well 
 thought of by our friends, yet with it all 
 Crumbs was not a bad baby. About his 
 sixth month the lines of antiquity had
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 35 
 
 begun to leave his face and he laughed 
 from the inside out. He was not very 
 robust and was frequently given to 
 fevers; but these things did not seem 
 greatly to disturb his gaiety. His fevers 
 took place mostly when I got stalled on 
 the elevated, and they were likely to 
 disappear soon after my return home. 
 Yet Crumbs could not have been called 
 exacting. 
 
 Since, with the method of his bringing 
 up, he should have been a miserable 
 little tyrant yet was not, I was reminded 
 to think him out. The discrepancy 
 certainly had to do with character. 
 
 As time passed, I knew that Crumbs 
 had been born with the germ of a devoted 
 disposition, and that most of his peccadil- 
 los were the result of blind, elemental 
 affection.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 
 
 /CERTAIN original tendencies were 
 ^ first made manifest to me when 
 Crumbs was three years old, and an as- 
 sortment of children convened upon the 
 occasion of his birthday. 
 
 They were mostly normal children, 
 therefore mostly stomachs, and a division 
 of the spoils became a large and serious 
 matter. Crumbs was five years high 
 at three years of age, with a long, pliant 
 muscle against which the herculean, 
 knotty muscle of a five year old boy did 
 not seem to have much show. Before 
 anyone could interfere, Crumbs waived 
 the rules of hospitality, possessed himself 
 of all the bananas and rendered himself 
 inaccessible behind the piano. Under 
 
 the circumstances, discretion seemed to 
 36
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 37 
 
 be the better part, and the small fry 
 were resupplied. Meantime I called 
 Crumbs' attention to one very little girl 
 who was in the throes of heart-break 
 and gustatory disappointment. With a 
 new and somewhat superior supply be- 
 fore them, I called Crumbs' attention to 
 the fact that greedy people gather no 
 moss. He voiced his philosophy. 
 
 " Don't nobody tare! " This was simply 
 his method of implying that he was al- 
 ready possessed of all that he could con- 
 veniently assimilate, and that anybody 
 else was welcome to what he was indif- 
 ferent to. 
 
 Upon the evening of that day I 
 whipped him. He cried pitiably, and as 
 soon as he could recover his breath he 
 mentioned: "Don't nobody tare!" I 
 knew that my purpose had miscarried, 
 and that I had discovered another 
 original tendency resistance ! Crumbs 
 would never be made docile arbitrarily. 
 
 This was no trivial matter. A child 
 who can be whipped into decency is easy
 
 38 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 enough, if not good for much; but a 
 child who must be thought out represents 
 ruin or glory, just as he stands in his 
 clothes at three years of age, or even less ; 
 and it doesn't depend upon the child, but 
 upon the men or women who handle him. 
 
 The child who is not amenable to the 
 easy and primitive method of thrashing 
 is a reasonable being. Since he has begun 
 to reason so soon, nine times out of ten he 
 is the superior of his parents, because the 
 habits of the parents have become the 
 instinct of the baby, and he has started 
 where they left off. At any rate this 
 Darwinian science does well enough for 
 the lay mind which does not grasp the 
 modern biological fact that acquired 
 characteristics are not transmitted. 
 
 It occurred to me upon the evening of 
 the party, that in the course of time say 
 at the age of twenty-five years Crumbs 
 might find his banana in some other 
 man's new spring over-coat, and he 
 might take it and get behind the piano 
 as it were; then somebody would get
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 39 
 
 him out and Crumbs would be in gaol. 
 If that happened, Crumbs would not be 
 happy, and I was working for his happi- 
 ness. 
 
 The desire for something to which one 
 has no right may lead to almost any 
 place or anything that is unpleasant, and 
 to an over-wrought imaginatidn there 
 was a relation between the bananas of 
 the afternoon and the spring over-coat of 
 several years hence. Perhaps I could not 
 have applied any moral code whatever to 
 Crumbs, if the application must have 
 made for morals alone, but there was 
 Crumbs' happiness! 
 
 A love of right for its own sake is a 
 development that belongs exclusively 
 to civilisation. Before that, we exact 
 our own rights by the easiest method and 
 leave the other fellow to get his. By the 
 time the easiest method proves to be a 
 reciprocal system, and "survival of the 
 fittest " and " natural selection " step in to 
 clinch the matter, we may have acquired, 
 some of us, that instinct which was the
 
 40 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 habit of a former generation, and we 
 may have learned blindly to love right 
 for itself alone; but at most it is the 
 guarantee of training training but of 
 yesterday or to-day and the only thing 
 one can actually depend upon is the fun- 
 damental tendency. All humanity has 
 one in common the tendency to be 
 happy. I knew Crumbs would determine 
 to be happy. He could not be happy 
 if he were in gaol for ten years. Ergo: 
 I hastened to avert the sentence. 
 
 About this period, a friend, full to the 
 brim of human kindness and a "before 
 the war" sense of the fitness of things, 
 whose two sons were living examples of 
 glorious mind and matter, smiled at my 
 apprehensions and assured me that de- 
 cently born children "went right in spite 
 of the devil and training. " This notion, 
 born of his own good luck, was so much 
 more absurd than my method that I 
 turned to Crumbs himself for needed 
 wisdom. Thus far he had been pretty 
 nearly the only one who had been able
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 41 
 
 to teach me anything; now his salvation 
 began in earnest and we had an awful 
 time. 
 
 We began with the theory, acknowl- 
 edged by me, winked at by Crumbs, that 
 the Young Carpenter Himself, might have 
 got into trouble earlier if Mary had not 
 thought out the basic proposition of his 
 happiness. Beyond doubt, the Sermon 
 on the Mount echoed the tender, child- 
 hood hours with Mary, when she involun- 
 tarily did unto Him as she would have 
 Him do unto others! 
 
 As I held Crumbs under the microscope 
 I knew to a certainty that of all the child- 
 ren I had ever known and they were not 
 many, because until the present admin- 
 istration I had had no large interest in 
 children my child stood the best chance 
 of getting into the social and legal stocks. 
 
 Crumbs was self-absorbed and not to 
 blame for it. With the maternal instinct 
 within me, I had taken no account of little 
 children not my own. After my own 
 child occurred, I took account of others
 
 42 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 largely in contrast with Crumbs. I re- 
 garded it a blessed privilege to sit up 
 nights with Crumbs and nurse him in his 
 illnesses, but I should not feel it a privi- 
 lege to sit up nights with some other 
 woman's child, although I certainly 
 should do so if occasion and humanity 
 demanded it. But the joys of healing 
 and of creating universal happiness are 
 no larger in me than in most people. It 
 is the exception who takes to the hospital 
 for fun. 
 
 After a self dissection, I found myself 
 in a state of great humility when I 
 thought of Crumbs, and beheld how my 
 general defect of self-absorption appeared 
 in him as the specific meanness of 
 personal selfishness. It became my prob- 
 lem to overcome for him a ruinous heri- 
 tage, and after that I knew no peace. 
 
 For long weeks my inclination toward 
 extremes worked itself out in my imag- 
 inings, and Crumbs' definite danger took 
 the form of gaol and the liking for an- 
 other's new spring overcoat. This
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 43 
 
 psychical evolution had begun in the 
 spring, hence I never imagined our Deus 
 ex machina to be a fall overcoat. 
 
 In course of time, I took to weeping 
 spasmodically in the night at the ever 
 recurrent picture of Crumbs at the bar of 
 justice, with the smile from the inside 
 out forever gone. I even began to de- 
 vise ways and means for corrupting the 
 judiciary. I thought at one time that 
 it would be well for me to make unto 
 myself friends of all the magistrates 
 within my reach, that I might be ready 
 to buy Crumbs jDff at the proper time. I 
 grew to thinking that all the world might 
 be corruptible for Crumbs' sake, but soon 
 I began to see the futility of such pro- 
 cedure. I might hope to lead a few 
 honest men from duty, but how if Crumbs 
 were to be in Europe when he coveted 
 the overcoat? I was willing to spend 
 my life in suborning justice, but ob- 
 viously the scheme was impractical, and 
 I am seldom impractical, outside my 
 imagination-
 
 44 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 As the nights passed after days of com- 
 bat with Crumbs, and I could no longer 
 in reason hope to buy for him immunity 
 from the results of evil doing, I began to 
 devise ways and means of helping him to 
 escape his place of incarceration, after 
 which we were to fly to but there! I 
 abandoned that line : there is extradition 
 almost everywhere now. 
 
 Be bad and the goblins'll get you! 
 That was the whole of it. That was 
 about all the growth out of my fearsome 
 thoughts. 
 
 After that I wept at night, while 
 mentally preparing good things for 
 Crumbs to eat, which I should carry to 
 him in the penitentiary. About two 
 o'clock in the morning, when it was 
 Crumbs' infant habit to turn over and 
 reach out of his crib to find my face, I 
 could no longer endure the agony of my 
 imaginings, and I fell to waking him, as 
 the little hand plunked down upon me in 
 the night, and begging him to be a good 
 boy.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 45 
 
 For a time Crumbs only looked at me 
 sleepily and slept again; in the second 
 stage he mumbled something, put his 
 hand on my eyes, said " Kyin ? " and slept 
 serenely; but in the third stage Crumbs 
 sat up, stared at me and said: "I'll be 
 good. Don't ky. Don't lets nobody 
 tare!" 
 
 Thus Crumbs formed the habit of 
 waking regularly at two o'clock in the 
 morning, a habit which prevailed for two 
 years and more, which shows how much 
 harm a woman can do if she tries. Long 
 months after the horrid chimera of 
 Crumbs in dreadful clothes with "no sun 
 or moon, no morn, no noon," but always 
 after that " November, " when all this 
 had left me, Crumbs still sat up in his bed 
 each night, fully awake with his hands 
 upon my breast, leaning over me to say: 
 "I'll never take nuffin' of nobody's, so 
 don't you cry!" 
 
 In time the assurance became mechani- 
 cal, Crumbs immediately turning over 
 and sleeping the sleep of the just, I nod-
 
 46 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ding at him half awake, in acknowledg- 
 ment of his attentions, but on the whole 
 he might have had a worse habit. 
 
 The "before the war" friend, who 
 knew more or less of my problem, ex- 
 plained to me with considerable elabora- 
 tion that it was folly to put such notions 
 into a child's head. It was quite enough 
 to make a thief of him, or if he couldn't 
 become a thief, it was enough to "make 
 him imaginative. " 
 
 Well, Crumbs could not at the very 
 best have been called unimaginative 
 imagination was an original tendency 
 of the most opulent sort with him so 
 along that line I could not have done 
 much harm. Besides, it was not any 
 part of my business to kill his imagin- 
 ation, but rather to foster it and help 
 him to imagine the right things. For 
 the rest: I have never been able to de- 
 cide whether that good friend was right 
 or not, because after all, Crumbs formed a 
 habit in his sleep, as it was of letting 
 other people's things alone, so far as he
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 47 
 
 was able to distinguish between which 
 was his, which mine, and which the ex- 
 clusive property of others. 
 
 I am almost certain that in time he 
 would have learned to know what a 
 thief was, even if I had not told him ; and 
 if his initial acquaintance had been a 
 nice gentlemanly, genial thief, Crumbs' 
 love of good fellowship, which he so 
 strongly developed later, might have 
 made matters worse than did our early, 
 post-midnight sessions. Given as a 
 basis, love and a sense of comraderie, a 
 boy may turn out to be almost anything 
 from a bad thief to a good husband. 
 
 I have never desired to make Crumbs 
 shudder, but since he must shudder 
 more or less as he goes through life, I 
 have always given the preference to the 
 undesirable, rather than to the cold bath. 
 
 He grew to identify badness with 
 thieves, with midnight tears and a close 
 enfolding of his small body ; and, finally, 
 with the softest hours when he learned 
 to think sorrowfully, rather than resent-
 
 4 S CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 fully, of thieves. But there again, Crumbs' 
 original tendency toward Original Sin 
 stepped in and distracted me. A soft 
 pity for wrong-doing was hardly suited 
 to Crumbs' disposition. It worked both 
 ways. Crumbs, himself, loved to be 
 pitied, because that meant to him, though 
 undefined, an element of sensuous hap- 
 piness, a close folding of the arms about 
 him and introspective conversations 
 and Crumbs thought himself quite well 
 worth talking about. It meant ultimate 
 love-feasts, and that reactionary hap- 
 piness known only to ill-advised lovers 
 who quarrel. 
 
 I surmised that Crumbs might be cap- 
 able of taking the spring overcoat merely 
 for the human love of pity and celebra- 
 tion. I ought then to leave out of his hor- 
 izon the gentle quality of mercy, while 
 I must initiate him into stern hatred of 
 the doers, as well as the doings of evil. 
 As I did not want him to go to gaol, I 
 gave precedence to the latter method, and 
 trusted the compromise to time and luck.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 4 
 
 Crumbs grew merry or melancholy 
 along such immoderate lines but he 
 loved me. He spurned his friends when 
 he did not want them, but demanded 
 their instant attention when he grew 
 sociable; and as this seemed to me 
 only another form of taking the spring 
 overcoat, it became a detail to be looked 
 after. Hence, I fell into being at Crumbs' 
 command never at those times when 
 he sought me. I frequently reminded him 
 at such moments, that I then felt as he 
 had felt the hour previously, when I had 
 longed for him very much. It took a 
 troublous season for the meaning of this 
 to find its way to Crumbs' understanding, 
 and it cost me considerable self-denial, 
 because as a fact I was always ready for 
 Crumbs, whether he wanted me or not. 
 But in time he discovered that one secret 
 of happiness was reciprocity, and that 
 people frequently paid for happiness by 
 making decent compromises as they 
 went along.
 
 50 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 It began thus, but later on, force of 
 habit robbed such methods of directly 
 selfish purpose, and fairness became as 
 much the order of the day as luncheon 
 was. 
 
 It saddened me to know that Crumbs 
 was not exceptional, and that he did not 
 love propriety of action for its own sake; 
 but gradually I became so eternally 
 thankful that he was decent for any 
 reason whatever, that I forgot to exper- 
 ience regret. Still, Crumbs was born 
 with the excessive advantage of being a 
 loving chap; and maybe if he had not 
 had me to bring up, while I was assisting 
 him to form his character, he might have 
 fared exceptionally well. His respon- 
 sibility was somewhat greater than mine, 
 because, if he did not early enough get 
 me started in the way I should go for his 
 best good, it was almost certain to kill 
 me. Maybe it is good for a child, who 
 must be continually occupied, to have 
 the responsibility of his mother.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BENDING THE TWIG 
 
 /CRUMBS probably boasted a con- 
 ^^ stitutional robustness, since he 
 knew little illness that could be traced 
 to a source, but there was a trick of 
 sudden rises in temperature, of dark 
 circles that suddenly made their appear- 
 ance beneath his eyes, of quick-coming 
 lassitudes, followed by surprising recu- 
 peration, and each phase bore the mark 
 of actuality, was no pathological affec- 
 tation. These moments of abnormal 
 physical mood became matters of con- 
 tinual nervous anxiety to me; and 
 Crumbs' nonchalant watchword "Don't 
 nobody tare ! " frequently spoken with a 
 grin and with whimsicality of tone, while 
 his condition was febrile and obviously 
 wrong, never helped me much.
 
 2 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Somebody one day whispered "regu- 
 larity of habit," and I was impressed. 
 Crumbs was not yet so nearly lost that he 
 could not be redeemed; hence, in his 
 second year we began to retire and to take 
 sustenance along regular lines. Crumbs 
 seemed to like that way as well as any 
 other, but it made no difference whatever 
 in his oft-recurring nervous tempers. I 
 was an all-night worker, and when I did 
 not work, neither could I sleep, hence it 
 was my habit to encourage late rising in 
 myself. 
 
 Those solicitous friends, who were 
 patiently watching our swift retrogres- 
 sion, and who never doubted that I was 
 taking Crumbs to perdition long before 
 the time appointed of God, told me that 
 early rising as well as early bedtime was 
 the proper caper for all well-appointed 
 children. 
 
 I reminded them that Crumbs was not 
 well-appointed, and that frequently he 
 mentioned in the night that he was 
 " tryin ' to sweep, but it aint no use and
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 53 
 
 don't nobody tare!" I explained that 
 I approved of late rising, if one could do 
 it, but they assured me early rising 
 would help to " appoint " him. Perhaps 
 they were right; I never tried it. I be- 
 lieved that a very little and very active 
 chap was not far enough advanced along 
 the unwholesome way, either to exper- 
 ience or to affect laziness. I had fur- 
 tively watched Crumbs suffer poignantly 
 toward six o'clock in the morning, in his 
 instinctive effort to keep still till I should 
 open my eyes, and I did not believe he 
 was going to fall down on the breakfast 
 hour, as it were, unless he needed to. 
 
 Hence, it became understood between 
 him and me, that nobody in all this world 
 was ever to be awakened by either of us, 
 unless that unfortunate person was going 
 to take a train. 
 
 Now this matter of regularity, if quite 
 unregulated, has its disadvantages; and 
 hard and fast rules are about as un- 
 pleasant and unprofitable as hard and 
 fast people. In time, a kind fate demon-
 
 54 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 strated to me how much regularity was 
 deadly to this special boy, and I was not 
 bringing up any other boy just Crumbs. 
 
 A night came when Crumbs said he 
 felt that he could not go to bed. I did 
 not know enough at that time to take 
 him at his word, and I thought he could 
 go to bed if he was helped. During the 
 evening small complainings came to me 
 from Crumbs' bed, and with the new 
 consequentiality born of an approved 
 purpose I replied tranquilly, decisively, 
 sternly as the affair progressed. Crumbs 
 suffered with resignation till ten o'clock, 
 which must have been an eternity to him, 
 and then he cursed me. He knew the 
 words : there was the banana man at the 
 corner, hoi polloi all about, and Crumbs 
 always wide awake and receptive. 
 
 Rounded out cursings, full of vigour, 
 hot from the griddle and coming from a 
 little child are awesome things. Some- 
 thing helpfuller than the advice of regular 
 and childless people counselled me to be 
 silent.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 55 
 
 It was a difficult night for Crumbs 
 and me. Crumbs had risen from his bed, 
 had stood before me, shrieked, called me 
 names, then thrown himself upon the 
 floor and kicked. His appearance was 
 that of a dejected fiend blue eyes gone 
 black, and a purple face. When ex- 
 haustion came upon him, I laid him in 
 his bed and lying beside him said, "we 
 are tired, Crumbs; let's you and I go to 
 sleep. " So Crumbs slept with a cool 
 cloth upon his head, instead of with a 
 hot spot upon his anatomy which I 
 fancy would have been more regular but 
 less helpful. 
 
 The next morning he slept late and 
 awoke white and hollow-eyed, and that 
 day I begged his pardon. I felt that I 
 had been a bad mother to him and I said 
 so. Crumbs was a gentleman, because 
 in that hour, with my sins heavy upon 
 me, he said: " You're a good Muver 'n' 
 I'll kill everybody. You're kyin', Oh 
 don't, DON'T lets nobody tare!" his 
 methods were crude but his feeling was
 
 56 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 along the right lines. Thereafter, I fre- 
 quently confessed my faults to Crumbs, 
 but his chivalry never failed. Upon one 
 such occasion an original tendency love 
 for the moment got the better of him, 
 but honesty prevailed, in the end, and 
 he said with evident distress: 
 
 " I guess mebby you were bad because 
 you just said 'No, you can't go, don't 
 bover me, ' wifout thinkin' it over. I 
 guess mebby you were bad; but don't 
 lets nobody tare. " So if honesty pre- 
 vailed, yet love tempered another beauti- 
 ful original tendency a tendency to be 
 honest in his own thought at the expense 
 of my feelings. 
 
 After that night when regularity so 
 miscarried, we were less well appointed; 
 but I determined to save Crumbs, even at 
 the expense of my friends' approval. 
 That night's fearful exhibition marked 
 time for us, and my imaginative excesses 
 again took hold on me: I had witnessed 
 another of Crumbs' possibilities. Again 
 he was twenty-five years old ; it was no
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 57 
 
 longer a matter of the spring overcoat 
 but of murder, and my sense of respon- 
 sibility sorely afflicted me. 
 
 After Crumbs had recovered from the 
 nervous exacerbation of that night, to 
 him it was all as if it had never been ; but 
 to me the hour was for a long time pres- 
 ent. His outbreak had been simply phys- 
 ical; he had made no childish objection 
 to going to bed at the accustomed hour; 
 he had been willing enough to sleep at 
 the established time, but in the grasp 
 of nervous irritation he only did not kill 
 me because he could not. 
 
 To add to our troubles there rose upon 
 our horizon the maiden lady without any 
 nerves for other people, but a-plenty 
 for herself; and the lady with the children 
 who were too good to be true; and the 
 man-friend with more good feeling than 
 discretion who laughed when Crumbs' 
 soul was in danger, and who said in 
 Crumbs' presence: " He's a corker. 
 He'll come out in the wash!" And the 
 lady whose sons only awaited the coming
 
 5 8 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 of the years when they should turn high- 
 waymen; and the helpless lady who 
 "doesn't know what to advise she 
 really doesn't!" Yes, she came also. 
 All, all of these and more came between 
 Crumbs and me, till finally we both felt we 
 were fighting for each others very life. 
 
 Crumbs and I began to feel that we 
 were not proper people, not fit for human 
 society; and one day he said of a con- 
 scientious friend: 
 
 " I fink she don't wike me " (still short 
 on 1's) "I fink so because when I said 
 'hello!' she just wooked. " 
 
 Crumbs was right. He had got him- 
 self disliked. I do not know how it made 
 him feel at this period, but I know how I 
 felt about it. I suspect it made him feel 
 like going out and killing a policeman 
 because he sniffed when he told me, and 
 humped his shoulders in a way he had 
 whenever he came in conjunction with 
 his critics. There again was that orig- 
 inal tendency toward resistance. 
 
 I suggested to him that possibly we
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 59 
 
 were not pleasant people to have much 
 to do with, and I have always felt that 
 at that moment Crumbs' loyality helped 
 to save the day. 
 
 " Folks' d better wike you er I'll fix 
 'em," he remarked, and the remark 
 afforded me a desired opportunity. He 
 and I had a talk, and it was decided that 
 if I were to be made acceptable to others, 
 he would have to labour in my interests. 
 I expressed a doubt that I could be be- 
 loved of my own ability. I also ex- 
 pressed an inspired confidence in his 
 ability to make people endure my pres- 
 ence for the sake of having his charming 
 manners forever before them. I told 
 him how to go about making this strictly 
 true. 
 
 By Crumbs' third year we had fallen 
 upon grave ways and pale misfortune: 
 Crumbs' father had become an invalid, 
 was no longer near us, and we felt there 
 was an end of cakes and ale for us. I 
 knew then that Crumbs and I were to 
 grow up together as best we could. He
 
 60 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 had long since made an impression on 
 my original disposition, as I on his, and I 
 believed there was hope for us both. 
 
 Crumbs and I had moved away from 
 the house with the pastel nursery, the 
 creatures in "natural colours" and the 
 woven-in dog, and about the only thing 
 we took along out of the wreck was the 
 bath-tub with its garlands, that Crumbs 
 might some day have his attention called 
 to how flowers did not grow. I had 
 learned to wish sometimes that Crumbs 
 did not laugh, nor love, nor have his 
 spiritual being from the inside out, but in 
 some more superficial fashion. 
 
 We began anew and pretty much all 
 alone, a short-handed, half-crippled re- 
 gime, but Crumbs was a great moral 
 stimulant. When I looked sad, he looked 
 sadder, would have a fever, or indigestion ; 
 hence it became my habit to look sad 
 only when I had entered into my closet 
 and shut the door. This habit of smiling 
 for the baby was more potent than 
 "coughing for the lady," and after a
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 61 
 
 while I found myself looking superficially 
 pleasant, even in the closet behind 
 closed doors. Tf this Sunny- Jim habit 
 had its drawbacks, it had its advantages : 
 being expected to frivol for my friends, 
 I found it after all better to laugh than 
 be sighing. 
 
 Yes, during this transition period 
 Crumbs got himself disliked. He had 
 no manners but bad ones, and this was 
 my fault, not his. We were mostly 
 alone, save for a maid-of-all-work, and 
 my occupation distracted my thoughts 
 from those details of conduct which 
 Crumbs had a right to expect me to 
 attend to for him. He frequently took 
 his meals alone, and when we were to- 
 gether the joy of listening to his chatter 
 was so great that in the absence of all 
 cause to silence him, I permitted him to 
 chatter on. It was harmless enough in 
 itself, yet deadly, because we could not 
 always be alone. When Crumbs began 
 to get us disliked, and we entered into 
 secret session to discuss the matter, he
 
 62 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 suggested that we go "way off some- 
 where where they 's just dogs, 'n' do every- 
 fing what we wikes. " 
 
 This was a serious matter. I beheld 
 the soil in which misanthrophy should 
 one time sprout. Instead of less of 
 human society and more of dogs', C umbs 
 must have more of the former, because, 
 like someone else, the more he saw of 
 men the better he liked dogs. 
 
 Nobody but f uli-grown robustious men 
 really wanted Crumbs. He had become 
 a horror to women, and the surprises he 
 continually had in store for them got on 
 their nerves. He talked too much; he 
 was 'fresh, ' he told me the janitor said, 
 and it seemed to me that the janitor 
 was a man of judgment. He could 
 only get on with men, and a particular 
 sort at that. 
 
 This was first revealed to me just be- 
 fore his fifth birthday, while we were in 
 the country. There his intimate was 
 the skipper of his uncle's sailing boat. 
 Crumbs greatly enjoyed the man's society
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 63 
 
 and the skipper was good enough to 
 tolerate Cmmbs; indeed I think he had 
 almost as good a time out of the friend- 
 ship thus established as Crumbs had. 
 Among other things he taught Crumbs 
 to spell phonetically. The skipper was 
 good natured; but one unfortunate day, 
 when I had begun to feel that something 
 must happen to Crumbs and happen 
 quick something of a nature that women 
 cannot do, or that they do not know how 
 to do on that day, I was sitting not far 
 from where the boat lay anchored and 
 Crumbs and his friend were aboard her. 
 I inferred that the man was trying to find 
 repose in the heat of the day, while 
 Crumbs had a high-noon vitality that 
 interfered. 
 
 All I heard of the session was from the 
 skipper: 
 
 " Now don't you get fresh, young man, 
 or I'll just naturally chuck you over- 
 board, " and the tone implied busi- 
 ness. Crumbs was unused to such 
 treatment. Most people handled him
 
 64 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 gently in deference to me, but also, they 
 mostly avoided me at those times when 
 Crumbs was not asleep, and he was 
 almost never asleep any more. That 
 hot July day as I sat within earshot 
 of the boat, my presence unrevealed, 
 I hoped that one man was going to be as 
 good as his word. I felt that action 
 from such a source, without other animus 
 than the man's determination to maintain 
 his right to be let alone at certain times, 
 would help us back into the straight and 
 narrow way. The silence of surprise 
 followed the threat, and then Crumbs 
 jeered, aggressively. 
 
 It was all over in a minute. One 
 splash was followed by another and yet 
 another, and then I beheld Crumbs 
 standing in the trailer, very wet, very 
 much surprised and somewhat choked. 
 While being set ashore, he did not enter 
 into conversation, but rid himself of the 
 superfluous water that had entered his 
 system as best he could, and without any 
 help from his practical friend. I had
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 65 
 
 time to get home before Crumbs was well 
 on his way from the dock. 
 
 I waited developments and they ar- 
 rived with Crumbs. He trailed into the 
 house wet, thoughtful and looking foolish. 
 
 "What's oedema?" he asked. I said, 
 "Why?" 
 
 " That's what I got the doctor waffed 
 and said so. " He had encountered the 
 village physician on his way home. 
 Even drowning could not separate 
 Crumbs and his curiosity. 
 
 " Did you fall into the water, Crumbs? 
 Oh, my!" I cut the water-logged knot 
 in his shoe-strings. Crumbs gasped out 
 something that might have meant any- 
 thing while I wrung the water out of his 
 pants. 
 
 "My darling child! To think you 
 might have been drowned!" 
 
 " No I mightn't. " 
 
 "Why to fall into the water like 
 this" 
 
 "Didn't fall in; chucked damn it! 
 Didn't saynuffin,'" he added hurriedly,
 
 66 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 while he became as much too red as he 
 had been too white. He did not have 
 the habit of bad language. I looked 
 my disapproval, and he muttered again: 
 " Didn't say nuffin ', " and squirmed his 
 toes. 
 
 " How did you get into the water ? " I 
 rough- towelled him. 
 
 "Billy chucked me!" 
 
 " I shall see Billy the minute I get dry 
 clothes on you. I'll see what he means 
 by this. " Crumbs furtively regarded 
 me, but was silent. With the last button 
 of a dry suit of clothes, he said : 
 
 " I fink I don't want you to see what 
 Billy means by this; he's awful!" 
 
 " I shall call him to account at once, " 
 I said and started for the door. Then 
 Crumbs frantically clutched my hand: 
 
 " You'd better not bover Billy. " 
 
 "Did you bother him?" 
 
 "Well he just chucked me 'n* 
 didn't say nuffin '. " Thus Billy accom- 
 plished more in one hot, mid-day minute 
 than I had been able to accomplish in the
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 67 
 
 three months of our ostracism. Yet 
 Crumbs would rather have pleased me 
 than Billy; but the outlook was bran- 
 new to him. All life now presented the 
 aspect of a ducking if he should continue 
 to impose upon people some people; 
 and evidently he would not be able to tell 
 just which people were safe. The in- 
 cident was marked with good results for 
 many a day ; indeed, Crumbs never again 
 returned entirely to his old methods. 
 I passed Billy in the road later in the day 
 and Crumbs was with me. Crumbs 
 looked away, but Billy and I looked at 
 each other as Greek Augurs used to do, I 
 dare say. 
 
 The season developed new troubles 
 every week. Crumbs was born with a 
 capacity to see all sides of a question ; an 
 intellectual faculty upon which to build 
 as on a rock; but also, he was born with 
 a fixed determination to acknowledge 
 no side but his own, and this reduced his 
 rock foundation to shifting sand. 
 
 There was the efficient intelligence to
 
 68 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 appeal to, but likewise a temperamental 
 obstinacy to be overcome. 
 
 His was that mental condition which 
 goes to render the dialectician invincible : 
 he could perceive with his peculiar flash- 
 light intelligence, the strong points of 
 another's argument, and thus prepare 
 to meet them by strengthening the weak 
 points of his own.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 INDIRECT METHODS 
 
 TN his third year, when Crumbs and I 
 were first left to our own devices, the 
 demand for moral invention on my 
 part became oppressive. Necessity again 
 proved herself a mother, and upon this 
 occasion she brought forth twins. Some- 
 body gave Crumbs a cat and a dog. The 
 cat died young, much to my satisfaction, 
 but the dog lived to fulfill his mission. 
 
 The dog was a good deal like the 
 woven-in dog, and had as many different 
 kinds of breed as New England is sup- 
 posed to have weather, but it passed for 
 a fox terrier. In recognition of Crumbs' 
 inherent sporting proclivities, I had the 
 mutt's tail docked, named him Mulvaney 
 and hoped for the best. Crumbs already 
 knew Mulvaney in his literary place,
 
 70 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 more or less those portions of him that 
 could be turned to account best, just 
 before bedtime, when I was expected to 
 " fink of somethin'." Many of the things 
 I thought of under these circumstances, 
 elicited the characteristic " don't nobody 
 tare!" which was Crumbs politest way 
 of letting me down easy when I fell short 
 of the mark. But Mulvaney had always 
 found favour. Hence, Mulvaney for the 
 dog. 
 
 Being a nervous person, much occupied 
 and preoccupied and not over-fond of 
 live-stock under foot, the impulse to cuff 
 the dog for its persistence in wrong-doing 
 was strong within me, but this impulse 
 gave way to the fear of arousing in 
 Crumbs some untrained, unnatural im- 
 pulse to cuff his finest fate. Thus I fell 
 to reasoning with the dog, and it is sur- 
 prising how like an obsession this love 
 of ratiocination may become. It is the 
 vanity in us: one runs on and on, drunk 
 with one's high-flown capacity. 
 
 I noticed that if I reasoned with Mul-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 71 
 
 vaney only in Crumbs' presence, and 
 cuffed him on the other side of the door, I 
 was likely to fall from the moral tight- 
 rope I found it necessary to walk; and 
 thus in time, as a matter of precaution, I 
 found myself becoming almost as reason- 
 able a being as I wished Crumbs to be- 
 come. 
 
 Bye and bye, the terrier became a 
 great educational medium for his master. 
 By a method of indirection I managed 
 to present certain problems of conduct to 
 Crumbs without hurting his feelings, and 
 without greatly crippling the dog. For 
 instance, when the dog mutilated a folio 
 of music I first reasoned with him, in 
 Crumbs' presence, upon his lack of self- 
 control. I pointed out to him that 
 wrong doing inevitably brought punish- 
 ment, and further to demonstrate my 
 point I took Mulvaney out and scientific- 
 ally cuffed him. Thus, I made Crumbs, 
 through the dog, understand a good 
 many things: how essential it was for a 
 dog possibly a person to learn self-
 
 72 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 control in the interests of himself and 
 society. 
 
 All little children, even those of aver- 
 age intelligence, love to listen, if facts be 
 made to appear picturesque or dramatic 
 to them, and in their conduct they in- 
 variably reflect what they have observed. 
 It would have been impossible for me to 
 keep in hand another human being thus 
 to serve as a daily moral example to 
 Crumbs ; impossible, even if it would not 
 have been truly degrading to Crumbs to 
 witness the correction of another in all 
 respects like himself. But a dog, a good, 
 self-sacrificing dog like Mulvaney, was 
 amenable. Crumbs loved the dog and 
 could be made to feel his own responsibil- 
 ity for Mulvaney's good conduct. 
 
 Thus it fell out that Crumbs not in- 
 frequently evolved certain ethical notions 
 of his own, by no means unworthy, 
 if unique, and these he imparted to 
 Mulvaney for Mulvaney's betterment. 
 In short, the dog became a medium by 
 which I might continually put before his
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 73 
 
 master much that it was good for him to 
 know of generosity, of kindness, of justice 
 and of good sense. The cur-dog pro- 
 vided a sort of moral atmosphere most 
 helpful to Crumbs and me. 
 
 It was not always restful nor conven- 
 ient to devote so much time to a small 
 cur-dog, even though the results were all 
 for his master ; but it was as restful as any 
 other method of living up to a son's 
 future glory through his present well- 
 being. 
 
 Seven years is none too much time, 
 if improved without ceasing, in which to 
 discover a child's tendencies toward 
 Original Sin and Original Saintliness; to 
 overcome or neutralise the former, or * to 
 strengthen the latter. Fully as close at- 
 tention and application are required in 
 making a child's character, as in making 
 a cake. In the one case, the comestible 
 can be purveyed by the baker, while the 
 commodity of character, which may be 
 traded upon, though neither bought nor 
 sold, is the mother's own affair and re-
 
 74 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 sponsibility, assuming that she has not 
 brought into the world a child with a 
 moral lesion. 
 
 If one takes her responsibility toward 
 her children and society seriously enough, 
 she will grow to regard all the conven- 
 iences of an up-to-date civilisation as ex- 
 isting directly, and for the single purpose 
 of her own child's development. When the 
 itinerant "mender" one of civilisation's 
 new glories comes in on Saturday, it 
 gives woman a new, systematised vaca- 
 tion of a few hours for the good of her 
 children. The ready service of a lux- 
 urious civilisation adds half a day to her 
 twenty-four hours ; thus again Fate has 
 given to her children additional opportu- 
 nities through their mother. One may 
 " have in " everything but a mother. One 
 may "have in" intelligence, specialised 
 ability, general knowledge, discretion, pre- 
 cise care, but one may not " have in " the 
 one element that makes the application of 
 all else certain and advantageous. One 
 may not "have in" that confidence
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 75 
 
 which exists between all women and 
 their children unless one party or the 
 other be abnormal. The application of 
 Maternal Science depends less upon a 
 woman's intellectual capacity than upon 
 her amount of patience and self-control. 
 Almost any woman can be inventive 
 enough to suit any child's requirements, 
 if she has the will and the spiritual 
 strength. Almost any woman can be 
 a successful mother if she begins by recog- 
 nising that her child is an individual, and 
 regards him as an item, rather than as the 
 total. 
 
 I knew a little child, accounted the 
 stupidest of his race, because for a 
 month of Sundays his mother and 
 teacher had travailed to make him 
 understand that one apple and one apple 
 made two apples. To him "one apple 
 and one apple makes one apple," and 
 for many months he could not help it. 
 Maybe he cannot now, although that 
 was ten years ago. Upon one occasion 
 when his mother was proclaiming him
 
 ;6 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 hopeless I heard that little boy exonerate 
 himself forever at least in my eyes. 
 
 " Do you know, Johnnie, if you will not 
 learn that one apple and one apple makes 
 two apples you will grow up to be just 
 like those men who are digging that drain 
 out there. You simply can't be any- 
 thing different. You'll have to dig drains 
 and make roads and carry bricks all of 
 your life. " 
 
 " Well, " said Johnnie, to whom one 
 apple and one apple made one apple, 
 " somebody has to do it. " The light of 
 patience and good intentions, and won- 
 derment was in Johnnie's face as he 
 spoke. It seemed to me that though one 
 apple and one apple should forever and 
 ever make one apple to Johnnie, it was 
 just possible that Johnnie might evolve a 
 good working text book on economics, or 
 something of that kind. I felt a good 
 deal sorrier for Johnnie's mamma at that 
 moment than I did for Johnnie. She 
 had no intimate acquaintance with John- 
 nie, and probably never would have till
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 77 
 
 he began to teach her what a very nice, 
 practical, helpful son she had. 
 
 If a woman cannot afford to take ad- 
 vantage of a new-fangled system of living, 
 there is nothing for it but to convert her 
 Saturday mending into an illuminated 
 missal, while infancy plays at soldiers 
 by the fireplace, and bivouacs on the 
 woven-in dog. At least, she may enroll 
 herself in the ambulance corps, and pre- 
 tend to be making bandages for the 
 soldier over by the fireplace, who 
 has been wounded in the service of his 
 country. 
 
 A child may not be intellectually 
 brilliant, but he can learn his letters, if 
 someone will take time to focus his mind 
 on building blocks, alphabetically con- 
 structed. The attention once attracted, 
 mental assimilation follows. While the 
 mind is still inchoate, building blocks 
 do more than the primer for a child who 
 is stupid or otherwise. Then why not 
 have a kindergarten system for the at- 
 tractive presentation of morals ?
 
 78 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Crumbs' system and mine was irreg- 
 ular, and it kept one of us alert for de- 
 vices night and day. Our conduct of 
 this general plan was along no predestined 
 line. As in the matter of the dog, it was 
 generally an expedient that happened to 
 suggest itself. 
 
 I could say to the dog, when Crumbs 
 was about to take the clock to pieces: 
 "I shall be sorry, Mulvaney, if you take 
 that clock apart; I shall have to punish 
 you and I guess it will about make me 
 sick." Inevitably the clock stayed in its 
 accustomed resting place, inviolated. 
 
 This idea worked its way into Crumbs' 
 system in a fashion which made it seem 
 to him an entirely natural process, but 
 about his fourth year he began to watch 
 me out of the tail of his eye as I talked, 
 and he would depart without committing 
 the offense, yet with a new manner. Then 
 the inevitable day came when he grinned, 
 while I continued to harangue Mulvaney 
 to no purpose. The result was that Mul- 
 vaney for once got the conversation,
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 79 
 
 while Crumbs got what was coming 1 ^o 
 him, after he had placed a loaf of bread 
 stuck full of pins upon my dressing 
 table. 
 
 Crumbs tried to argue the matter with 
 me, when he could draw his attention 
 from the seat of selection, but he did so to 
 no special purpose, except that we more 
 completely understood each other. His 
 argument was all right, in its prehistoric 
 way, but mine was more up-to-date. 
 He pointed out to me that he had not 
 grinned defiantly, but because he had 
 known that I was admonishing Mulvaney 
 for something he neither could do nor 
 had done, and he thought it a good joke 
 on Mulvaney. I suggested a new inter- 
 pretation, and proved beyond question 
 that the joke was on Crumbs. He had 
 long been awake to my generous sub- 
 terfuge, and had not only taken advan- 
 tage of me, but, what was worse, had 
 taken advantage of Mulvaney, permit- 
 ting him to stand for Crumbs' sins after 
 Crumbs had developed a sense of per-
 
 So CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 sonal responsibility. The time had come 
 when his development could progress 
 without further injury to Mulvaney's 
 feelings, and it was about this period 
 that Mulvaney began to stand for 
 Crumbs' moral appendix as it were no 
 longer useful, though still a part of the 
 structure. 
 
 I began continually to point out to 
 Crumbs, that love which in a dog passeth 
 understanding. The dog had borne the 
 burden of his master's sins, while yet 
 his master was too young to be taught 
 by anything more strenuous than ex- 
 ample. 
 
 Before Crumbs or Mulvaney knew, 
 there grew up between them a new- 
 dressed religious era, in which chivalry 
 and self-sacrifice played their usual parts, 
 and Crumbs went upon all-fours, so to 
 speak, at Mulvaney's call. It didn't 
 matter much to Mulvaney Crumbs' new 
 thought and not much more to Crumbs 
 just then; but long afterward, when 
 Crumbs began to learn the relations of
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 81 
 
 things and people to each other, I found 
 that the episode had its place. 
 
 We conducted a good deal of life on 
 the "sposen" plan, Crumbs and I. One 
 of the most diverting "sposen" occasions 
 that I now recall was an impromptu play, 
 which grew out of a morning's distrac- 
 tion, when he and I were in the hands of 
 the maid-of-all-work, when the trades- 
 people failed to arrive on time, when I 
 had a business appointment at the far 
 end of town, and an acquaintance 
 stopped in to lunch. In that oppressive 
 hour, Crumbs was in the way and he 
 resented the exigencies of the situation. 
 For the time being he was effaced from 
 the scene, while I struggled to bring order 
 out of chaos. 
 
 Time in which to take breath came the 
 following day, and I proposed then to 
 Crumbs that we should have a " sposen " 
 time, somewhat after the fashion of 
 yesterday's reality. He was to be I. 
 He was to do all the things that I had 
 done including the ordering of me out
 
 82 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 of his way I being Crumbs. This met 
 with Crumbs' idea of a good time, and 
 he proceeded to say: 
 
 "How do you do, Mrs. Blank," while 
 I shook hands and filled in somewhat 
 after the following fashion : 
 
 "That's right, 'How do you do,'" 
 shaking hands with Crumbs. Then, in 
 my proper person: "Remember! There 
 isn't a thing in the house to eat, Crumbs ! 
 You were going to have luncheon down- 
 town. You have to go to the city, be- 
 cause your little son's living somewhat 
 depends on it. I'm your little son, you 
 know. Margaret does not know how to 
 do anything but keep people from carry- 
 ing off the place, and nobody wants to 
 carry off the place. Go over there in the 
 corner. That chair is Margaret. Ask 
 her if the butcher has come with the 
 meat for dinner. If he has, you will have 
 to use the dinner meat for luncheon, you 
 know. No, no! You can't go off like 
 that. Here! You must first say: 'Will 
 you excuse me for a moment Mrs.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 83 
 
 Blank?' Oh here! Comeback here! Not 
 like that not as if your mind were on 
 the butcher. Take plenty of time be 
 reposeful don't hurry till you are out of 
 the room the rug's the doorway that's 
 right! 
 
 "Excuse me Mrs. Blank." 
 
 "There! Now you are on the other 
 side of the door skedaddle! Remem- 
 ber, the butcher didn't come! Mar- 
 garet must go for something. What? 
 Oh, you will have to think that up. 
 Bear in mind that she cannot re- 
 member a blessed thing. You'll have 
 to stop and write out a list. Don't 
 forget anything. Of course you haven't 
 a pencil you must look for one don't 
 forget Mrs. Blank. You mustn't forget 
 her Don't let her suspect there is 
 nothing in the house to eat or that you 
 were going out. Hurry, hurry! You 
 must get to the telephone and call up 
 oooo Nemo, and fix that engagement of 
 yours or you wont be able to pay the 
 butcher on your little boy's account to-
 
 8 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 morrow! bill's just come in! there, on 
 the desk! You must remember that you 
 are the mother as well as the father of a 
 family now. 
 
 There! The butcher is at the ele- 
 vator! Run! that's it the piano bench 
 is the elevator! Think what you want 
 to order and remember that Mrs. Blank 
 thinks by this time you run your house 
 in a very irregular fashion also your 
 little boy I'm your little boy, and I'm 
 turning Mulvaney's ears wrong-side out 
 and making him growl! Mrs. Blank 
 is right in thinking you are a very irreg- 
 ular housekeeper and mother and every- 
 thing: so you are you can't help it! 
 I your little boy was coughing with 
 his cold all last night, and you my 
 mother were about the place giving me 
 all sorts of things for it, and asking if I 
 felt chilly and if I was covered up don't 
 feel perfectly fit yourself, to-day! Mrs. 
 Blank cannot possibly know all about it 
 however; she has troubles of her own 
 probably has come to tell you of them!
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 85 
 
 They are different from yours, that is all! 
 Come ! Be nice to me ! I am Mrs. Blank. 
 Go to the 'phone and ring up oooo Nemo ; 
 now say something that will tell to Mrs. 
 Blank that you had an important en- 
 gagement, and that you mean to break it 
 because you wish to be here with her. " 
 
 Crumbs, at piano bench telephoning: 
 "Mrs. Blank 's here an' I can't come. 
 I'm awful sorry. " 
 
 "Oh my goodness no! That is true, 
 but it would hurt Mrs. Blank's feelings. 
 Something different. Oh, I can't tell. 
 How can your little boy tell? He didn't 
 tell me yesterday. He just raised Cain 
 all the time I was trying to think ! You'll 
 have to think of the right thing. Some- 
 thing different ! You can't! Well 
 you'll have to! I couldn't either, yes- 
 terday, but I did. That is a part of 
 your business if you are I, and I am Mrs. 
 Blank and am here for lunch. 
 
 "'Say Mama!' (Now, I'm your little 
 boy). "I'm going to take my engine 
 over in the park an' I'm going now! 1 "
 
 86 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " Now you mustn't let me do it because 
 I'll get run over when I cross the tracks on 
 Eighth Avenue: I'm just a little boy." 
 (Crumbs began to giggle.) " 'Well, I'm 
 going to! see if I don't!'" 
 
 "Here you are letting me go! Grab me 
 by the shoulder and say 'Walk into that 
 room this instant and don't you put 
 your feet in Mrs. Blank's lap nor make 
 ridiculous sounds nor faces and don't you 
 say another word about the park or that 
 engine or I'll spank you!' Hurry and 
 say that to me now! and then I'll go 
 and pull Mulvaney's stump-tail in front 
 of Mrs. Blank, and look smart to see if 
 she notices what a wonder I am! And 
 Mrs. Blank will think I have a nice kind 
 of a mother. Margaret's taking the 
 romaine out of the water and putting it in 
 the bowl without drying it! rush! 
 stop her! Talk a little to Mrs. Blank as 
 you go into the hall so she will think your 
 mind is at rest. Now, here! I'm Mrs. 
 Blank! Hurry! the salad! Don't turn 
 round and round like that the salad's
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 87 
 
 over there! Don't forget the telephone 
 say something through it that will make 
 Mrs. Blank go before lunch : you are half 
 crazy \ Say something that will make 
 her go, yet will not make her think you 
 regret she came. You really do not re- 
 gret it but it is necessary for you to 
 keep your appointment you are a work- 
 ing woman and have to work spry or 
 something will happen to your little boy. 
 I'm your little boy. You love me better 
 than any thing in the world. Now your 
 little boy is making a ticket-chopper 
 of the inside blinds and using a letter 
 off the desk for his tickets, and there 
 might as well be a cheque inside that 
 letter as not, if your mother was any- 
 body on earth but your mother You 
 must come here and stop me. You 
 must think of the right thing to say over 
 the 'phone. Think about that all the 
 time you are doing everything else 
 you'll get an idea after a while your 
 mother does sometimes! Now I am Mrs. 
 Blank:
 
 88 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " 'Oh, you have an engagement ? Now 
 don't think of breaking it. I only 
 ran in for a minute anyway. Lunch? 
 Oh, I couldn't going to the children's 
 club they discuss how to bring up 
 mothers, I believe. Crumbs doesn't be- 
 long ? No ! Really ! Now I should think 
 
 " She's gone! Run tell Margaret to go 
 down and stop the oysterman oysters 
 wont be fit for dinner if they send them 
 up now. No she'll mix things! You'll 
 have to ring up oooo Nemo again and say 
 you are coming and then stop on your 
 way to the car and tell the oyster people 
 yourself. Hurry hurry hurry! Can't 
 you remember the telephone is the piano 
 bench? the elevator is the oh good- 
 ness ! oh " 
 
 By this time Crumbs was prostrate and 
 shouting with joy and excitement. 
 
 This was his favourite "sposen" game, 
 till he became fairly expert in doing 
 everything in sight with lightning rapid- 
 ity; and all possible variants were rung 
 into the performance. We worked the
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 89 
 
 drama up to a climax each time till 
 finally, one day, Crumbs sat down 
 winded, and remarked that it was lots of 
 fun, ' but you get awful tired. ' Then 
 it was my time to mention that his 
 mother often thought so too, and that 
 his wife would think so frequently; and 
 I have had Crumbs living up to his wife 
 ever since. 
 
 Crumbs learned several things by this 
 game of " 'sposen." He learned to keep 
 his wits about him, learned to get the 
 mechanism of his mind going, and in time 
 he interpolated a good deal of action on 
 his own account. 
 
 What I couldn't think of in the line of 
 distractions, he could. He learned to be 
 fairly discreet, and at the same time to 
 appreciate the necessity for sincerity 
 with Mrs. Blank and those whom she 
 represented. " 'Sposen " times, like Mul- 
 vaney, became one of our valued exped- 
 ients. 
 
 It is so much better for a child to 
 " 'sposen " the decencies of life than to
 
 9 o CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 occupy himself with unpleasing actual- 
 ities. 
 
 I intend that Crumbs shall learn to 
 cook a dinner of six courses; just an 
 everyday, decently prepared dinner, such 
 as he will expect his wife to serve to him 
 one day; or such as she should wish to 
 serve to him, if he cannot provide the 
 service and the viands too. It will be 
 the worse for her if she must try to make 
 him believe that he has dined, after she 
 has made soup out of chicken's feet, and 
 a piece de resistance out of the ghost of 
 Sunday's roast. He shall learn, if I keep 
 him at it till he is twenty-one. By that 
 time he will have added several things 
 to his curriculum how to cook a dinner 
 (and the chemistry of dining is no bad 
 thing for a man to know) and how much 
 to be revered the cook is. Incidentally, 
 he will not be too critical some day. when 
 the roast is overdone.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE QUESTION OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 'TWERE are a lot of things that make 
 * for good morals which a child may 
 learn as its mother goes along, but 
 the mother cannot waste any time. The 
 economy of time is one of the most 
 important things on earth when one has 
 only seven years in which to get a man 
 or woman started, and started right. A 
 woman, herself, will acquire a deal of 
 higher education in the process, and by 
 the time she is fifty, she can take it to 
 mothers' clubs, where she can compare 
 notes with other mothers of the same 
 age. That is about all a mothers' club 
 can amount to a place for the com- 
 parison of notes after a woman's children 
 have cast their first votes or had their 
 first babies. Up to that time she hasn't
 
 92 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 any leisure in which to tell anybody but 
 her children what to do. It keeps an 
 intelligent .mother on the tightrope a 
 large part of her life this effort to help 
 her children to happiness but some 
 women think it pays. 
 
 Crumbs was elemental, therefore as 
 full of the spirit of experiment as any 
 other boy, and it would have been as 
 effectual to tell him to turn black as to 
 tell him to be good. Arbitrary state- 
 ments do not specially appeal to child- 
 ren; not even the arbitrary statement 
 that they must obey. Children must 
 obey, but they are going to know why 
 they must, else they will obey without 
 good to their souls and with considerable 
 detriment to their intelligence. Obe- 
 dience is only half the proposition, and 
 the weakest half at that. The desire to 
 obey means that the child has arrived. 
 
 Crumbs never did obey in the fashion 
 of the martinet, but the spirit of obe- 
 dience was his after he found out the part 
 obedience played in the economy of love
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 93 
 
 and opportunity. His illumination came 
 about in the usual irregular fashion. 
 
 Since Crumbs and I were mostly com- 
 pany for each other, and enjoyed each 
 other's society immensely, it was my 
 habit always to put my desires in the 
 form of requests, and invariably to thank 
 him for his services. As a creature of 
 habit, I never have laid aside this un- 
 seemly method of request and thanks 
 not even after being criticised by those 
 who had "never heard of such a thing 
 in my time. In my time, when children 
 were told to do a thing they did it, and 
 that was the end of it. " It was generally 
 only the beginning of it with Crumbs 
 and me, yet we got on very well, till 
 we had a visitor who frequently re- 
 verted to the ancient, unmannerly order 
 of things. 
 
 She was a kind, gentle-minded person, 
 withal, if somewhat austere in her meth- 
 ods, and the first I knew of Crumbs' 
 delinquencies was when a froward voice 
 said:
 
 94 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 "Don't you fank boys when they do 
 fings for you?" 
 
 After this Crumbs and I talked to- 
 gether. I pointed out to him that there 
 were other ways than ours; ways as 
 worthy, if different. I tried to explain 
 the part which intention plays in all 
 things; but this illustration happened 
 later, when Crumbs learned something of 
 the proper classification of people. It 
 was not a thing which I was able, ar- 
 bitrarily, to teach him. I had to wait 
 till the time came when his intellect 
 could be helped out by actual personal 
 demonstration. That was how Crumbs 
 learned everything. 
 
 But I began to perceive that, on the 
 whole, Crumbs would have to learn to 
 obey without questioning. After the 
 process of obedience began, he continued 
 for many days to ask "Why?" and I 
 could hardly blame him. I, too, always 
 liked to know why. Then, one day the 
 gas-log apparatus was changed in 
 Crumbs' absence and the new arrange-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 95 
 
 ment had some drawback. It was nec- 
 essary to use the gas-lighter in starting 
 it because the combustion was imper- 
 fect, but the log could be used before it 
 was entirely adjusted, if proper care were 
 taken. 
 
 When Crumbs returned home he was 
 cold, and according to custom he began 
 to light the log as he had lighted the 
 former one. I spoke sharply to him 
 from the next room, as he was in the act 
 of striking a match, and by the time 
 he had asked "why" he found him- 
 self a good way off, with portions of 
 the stove. 
 
 It was a costly and hazardous way to 
 teach a child the value of obedience, but 
 since it did not kill him and his eye- 
 brows grew again, it paid. If I, myself, 
 had realised the value of arbitrary com- 
 mand and obedience, Crumbs would 
 have learned his lesson, not less im- 
 pressively but long before, with less 
 danger and along the line of the least 
 resistance.
 
 96 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 The accident was my opportunity, and 
 I did not ignore it. I made it plain forever 
 that I was in no way trying to impose 
 upon his intelligence or good nature; 
 that there might frequently be times 
 when I could not explain, yet when 
 obedience would be valuable to him; 
 that he had just had this demonstrated ; 
 that no one could contract the habit of 
 instant obedience without practice; 
 therefore it would be necessary for him 
 to begin at once to obey without excep- 
 tion; to obey on the instant, and that 
 was "WHY?" I had supplied, or acci- 
 dent had, the reason why he should obey, 
 and Crumbs, being a reasonable sort, 
 liked the idea very well indeed, and we 
 did not delay beginning the new game. 
 
 He still asked "why?" and I pointed 
 to the gas-log if we were within sight of 
 it; or maybe I remarked that it took 
 his eyebrows a long time to grow. At 
 such times Crumbs just giggled; later, 
 he grinned and obeyed; and, finally, he 
 obeyed with mechanical precision; but
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 97 
 
 I never could forgive myself for my own 
 shortcoming. The way of obedience 
 should have been discussed about 
 his sixth month when he had a colic 
 from over-eating, against my best judg- 
 ment. 
 
 If a woman lives but to avert the 
 consequences of misconduct from her 
 children (and if she has any children she 
 has no time to live for anything else) she 
 must provide horrible examples for them 
 right along; examples made dramatic, 
 interesting and impressive ; and she must 
 have tact enough not to reveal that she 
 has turned preceptress. 
 
 I am assuming that the mother knows 
 that love which passeth understanding. 
 There will never be a text-book on 
 "Motherhood Made Easy" that will 
 be a good working model. Mother- 
 hood, wide awake and doing some- 
 thing all the time is the only 
 motherhood that will turn out anything 
 worth having had. With cause and 
 effect continually before a child from the
 
 98 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 time he can sit up and take notice, a woman 
 is certain to establish in such a child, a 
 continual capacity for independent and in- 
 telligent thought. Lacking this power of 
 comparison and reflection, another child, 
 who has had the conditions of life passed 
 before the sensitive plate of his mind 
 without explanation of the relations of 
 things, will fall off the roof with no pro- 
 founder purpose than to see how it seems. 
 
 Crumbs eventually became inordin- 
 ately proud of his instantaneous obe- 
 dience ; I learned this from a conversation 
 I overheard. 
 
 " I obey right off immediuntly, now, " 
 he offered, with a deal of pride in his 
 achievement. "First off I didn't, but 
 nowl Why I just don't know I'm doin' 
 it; I can do it bully." 
 
 His vis a vis could not understand 
 Crumbs' point of view. The key to that 
 was known only to my son and myself. 
 Crumbs had been treated always as an 
 individual, not as an oyster. The ac- 
 quaintance said:
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 99 
 
 "Of course you obey. I'm sure you 
 do, nice boy like you. " 
 
 "I'm not a nice boy; the janitor says 
 so. And I don't obey to be nice, " 
 Crumbs frowned. He was always im- 
 patient of stupidity ; he learned patience 
 later. 
 
 "What? You don't want to be a nice 
 boy ? " 
 
 "Yes but I can't. I'm just telling 
 you that I obey right off. " 
 
 "Didn't you always obey?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because you owe it to your mother 
 to obey." 
 
 " I don't owe my muver anyfing. We 
 just owe th' grocery man. " This was 
 not strictly true because we also owed 
 the butcher. 
 
 "What, you do not owe your dear 
 mother obedience? Don't say such 
 a thing. It pains me to hear little 
 boys speak in that manner. " 
 
 "If you're sick it's too bad, but don't 
 you say I owe my muver anyfing."
 
 ioo CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Crumbs scowled. ' ' You bet my muver and 
 I wove each other awful. We don't owe 
 each other anyfing. We just wove each 
 other. We owe the grocery man." 
 Crumbs had made so fine and beautiful 
 a distinction that I could not hope to 
 help him do better. 
 
 He had got down to the basic principles 
 of human and emotional classification, 
 unaided by anything but his own clear 
 sight. He had heard the word "owe" 
 in relation to the groceryman doubtless; 
 but it was certain that he had never 
 heard of it in its extraordinary applica- 
 tion to the "give and take" of affec- 
 tion 
 
 "I do obey," Crumbs persisted, en- 
 deavouring to enlighten the woman who 
 conceived some queer, alien obligation 
 on the part of children to their parents. 
 "I obey because my muver says its 
 good sense an' it is, because I didn't, 
 and th* gas blew me sky-high. " Crumbs' 
 language from infancy had always been 
 more picturesque than elegant.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 101 
 
 "You should not need any reasons 
 for obeying your mother. I do not like 
 to hear little boys speak as you do. " 
 
 "Yes, I do need reasons for every - 
 everyfing. " 
 
 " Don't you think your mother knows 
 what is best for you. " 
 
 " Well, " said Crumbs, trying to think 
 impartially, "she might be mistaken. 
 She has been sometimes, because she told 
 me so. " Crumbs spoke truthfully as usual. 
 
 Upon all propositions of do and dare, 
 we consulted when it was practicable: 
 it helped Crumbs and it helped me. He 
 never obeyed less willingly, promptly 
 and proudly because he didn't "owe" 
 me anything. Later, Crumbs told me of 
 this conversation. 
 
 " She said I owed you somefing ; do I ? " 
 
 "Well, not that I know of, Crumbs. 
 I believe I am in your debt about three 
 cents, since you heped me to make change 
 for the shell-fish man, last week. I shall 
 pay it this minute. I should have done 
 so before,"
 
 102 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " Oh you needn't bover about that. I 
 wasn't talkin' about owin' because, be- 
 cause " Crumbs' gentlemanly instincts 
 were apparent, but he did not as yet 
 know precisely the way to express them. 
 
 "Why did she say I owed somefmg? 
 I finked about the free cents, but I 
 wouldn't tell her. " He spoke with 
 scorn. He had begun to mention his 
 mature friends as "Her" and "She," 
 a form which always marked his dis- 
 approbation. 
 
 " I will tell you, " I always explained 
 such heresies as I could, lest Crumbs 
 learn less acceptably from some other 
 source. "There are people who believe 
 that little children owe something or 
 other. I, myself, do not know precisely 
 what, but they are supposed to owe 
 something to their fathers and mothers, 
 because of the care parents are expected 
 to give their children. " Crumbs was 
 deeply interested: it was a new point of 
 view, this classification of parents with 
 tradespeople.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 103 
 
 " Owe 'em money ?" he asked, uneasily : 
 " I shan't have any money for a long time, 
 shall I?" 
 
 "Not if I keep borrowing of you, 
 Crumbs, which is really a great shame " 
 
 " No it isn't. I wikes you to borrow 
 but it isn't borrowing it's just the 
 same as yours my rings just as your 
 rings are mine. " 
 
 " Maybe that is the better way to look 
 at it. But I'll try to deal fairly." 
 
 "Do children owe 'em money?" 
 
 "No, some people think their children 
 owe them love and kindness and honour 
 and oh a lot of things. " Crumbs was 
 visibly swelling. 
 
 ' ' Bu-u-u-b-u-t ' ' Crumbs always 
 
 stammered like his mother when he be- 
 came agitated. 
 
 " I do wove you 'n' be kind to you 
 
 aren't I?" And I don't know what's 
 
 honour " Crumbs was becoming 
 
 tearful and angry and altogether dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 " You do love me and are kind to me,
 
 io 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 just as surely as you live! " I told him. 
 The more I discussed the matter, the 
 more dangerously near to Crumbs' own 
 condition I became. 
 
 "But that's not owin' things. / 
 can't help it ! 
 
 I tried to explain that he need not try 
 to help it, that he could never owe me 
 anything in all his life; that as between 
 mother and son, we took no account of 
 benefits; that if there were obligations 
 between us, they were on my side; that 
 if it were not my dearest privilege to live 
 for him all the time, we might then open 
 a debit and credit side in Humanity's 
 account; that I alone was responsible 
 that he lived and had a mind to make or 
 to destroy; that he should experience 
 happiness or despair as the case should 
 prove me to have been capable or other- 
 wise; that the great problem of human 
 obligation began and ended with his love 
 forme and mine for him; and at last, if 
 he were not good enough to be happy all 
 his life, it would kill me.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 105 
 
 I do not know how much of this 
 Crumbs understood, but I know that the 
 last words of the peroration were mighty 
 to him, and I fancy neither of us quite 
 forgot our discussion of another woman's 
 well-meaning but badly aborted philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 Thus, even the assininities of our 
 friends often served us. We learned to 
 turn almost everything to account soon 
 or late.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A CURE FOR THE TANTRUMS 
 
 '"PHE slight impression which forces 
 * and facts make upon a child, un- 
 less he had found in them a personal 
 application, was brought to my mind, and 
 cost me one dollar and sixty-five cents 
 one morning when Crumbs was five years 
 old. In infancy the dangers of burning 
 had been fended from Crumbs until the 
 instinct of self-preservation sufficed to 
 protect him. Afterward, the full potency 
 of fire never had been borne in upon 
 him. I do not know how it happened 
 to be that the knowledge came to him 
 so tardily, but, as a matter of fact, fire 
 was one of the things of which Crumbs 
 at five years of age, still had an imper- 
 sonal knowledge. The gas-log episode 
 had served merely as a sign-board to the 
 way of Obedience.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 107 
 
 On the occasion when fire became a 
 fact to him he had wetted a new pair of 
 shoes. It was early morning, and before 
 I was out of bed, he had come to me to 
 ask what he should do to dry them. I 
 told him what to do, being at the time 
 about half awake; then I dismissed the 
 incident till he returned to say that they 
 had told him below if he put his shoes on 
 the stove he would burn them up. He 
 had left them there, however, because I 
 had told him to, and he guessed I knew 
 "better'n they did." 
 
 This was a mistake. I had directed 
 him differently, but he had misunder- 
 stood me, and his shoes were cooking on 
 a hot stove griddle. Before they were 
 rescued, the soles were burned com- 
 pletely off. 
 
 Certain members of the family sug- 
 gested that he be thrashed. Crumbs 
 had been whipped by me a few times in 
 his life, but not so often that it had 
 ceased to be an episode of importance. 
 About this time I had begun to think I
 
 io8 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 should never thrash Crumbs again 
 greatly to the disappointment and dis- 
 approval of those about me, who believed 
 in obligation on the part of children 
 toward their parents the notion so 
 distrusted and despised by Crumbs and 
 me. 
 
 When Crumbs burned his shoes, I be- 
 lieved that I could turn the incident to 
 better account than a whipping, even if 
 Crumbs had been at fault, which he was 
 not. At our tete a tele breakfast, on the 
 morning of the tragedy of the shoes, 
 Crumbs first got fixed within him the rela- 
 tion of heat to things his things inci- 
 dentally, everything. I found that he 
 had never before realised what heat 
 meant in the economy of cookery. 
 
 This seems incredible stupidity on the 
 part of a five-year-old child, perhaps, but 
 then Crumbs had a great many things to 
 think about. It was all he could do to 
 absorb facts as they came along, and 
 absorb them rightly. When he saw a 
 parade in the street he had to know the
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 109 
 
 reason for it, also the reason for the 
 reason. When he was in the sea, having 
 the time of his life, and his teeth began to 
 chatter while he still " felt warm, " he 
 had to know the reason for coming back 
 to dry land. This compelled him to 
 learn a few basic facts about his circu- 
 lation. Yes, Crumbs' busy day was all 
 the time, and it so happened that he had 
 not till now got so far as the subject of 
 fire. 
 
 Now he learned that that which would 
 cook meat would also put his shoes out 
 of commission; and en passant, he ab- 
 sorbed some facts about leather; which 
 would help him to judge in future years 
 if his man were capable; or it would 
 enable him to make one pair of shoes do 
 the work of two, by reason of his own care. 
 
 Crumbs knew a good deal about fire 
 and leather by the time we had break- 
 fasted. I had the satisfaction of knowing 
 that he was more or less comforted, and 
 that the blow of having caused me extra 
 expense and trouble was softened to
 
 no CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 him. Nevertheless, my own nervous 
 system and his being so inextricably in- 
 volved, we reacted upon each other, even 
 under the most favourable circumstances. 
 This particular morning I had been none 
 too " fit " at the outset, and the incident 
 of the shoes had not improved Crumbs' 
 temper nor emotions. 
 
 He knew perfectly well what it cost to 
 buy a pair of shoes not in dollars, but 
 in effort on somebody's part. His grief 
 had been diverted across the breakfast 
 table; but still he was on edge. About 
 this time Mulvaney committed some 
 doggy crime for which he had to be pun- 
 ished. I was not fit to punish a dog 
 that morning. My own inclination was 
 towards excess, and I should have pun- 
 ished even Crumbs, wickedly. Hence 
 I handed the dog over to the man- 
 about-the-place, who had no nerves, 
 presumably, and he did have a great deal 
 of discretion about dogs. Then followed 
 one of those dire, explosive moments 
 which revealed all the original sin in an
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES in 
 
 ordinarily perhaps an extraordinarily 
 good boy. Crumbs reviled me. 
 
 He called me a cruel woman, a wicked 
 woman, the kind "who would shoot 
 more birds 'n' she wanted, just be- 
 cause. " 
 
 This was the extreme of vituperation 
 with him. It referred to one of those 
 unsportsmanlike crimes reviled by his 
 father, and the detestation of which was 
 absorbed by Crumbs in his earliest mo- 
 ments of understanding. He had taken 
 it in as he had sat beside his father 
 while gun-cleaning was in progress ; when 
 he watched his father from the wagon 
 in the fields ; when he, while no more 
 than three years old, remained en cache 
 in the blind beside his father; when 
 he pulled the trigger while his father 
 sighted for him. In short, the ethics 
 of field and stream, the peculiar human- 
 ities of the gunner, the love of nature 
 that is like the love of nature known 
 to no other the love that sees the 
 grass grow and finds elation in the drum-
 
 H2 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ming of a pheasant's wings, emotion 
 in the rippling of a stream all these 
 things were Crumbs' heritage; and on 
 that eventful morning when I handed 
 Mulvaney over to be whipped, I was the 
 " cruelest woman " I'd shoot more birds 
 than I wanted, just because! 
 
 The assembled family regarded me 
 with amazement and disapproval be- 
 cause I spoke no word, but appeared to 
 find interest in the morning paper. Un- 
 less I had chosen to kill Crumbs, I could 
 not have stopped him. At that moment 
 death had no terrors for him, neither 
 had anyone's disapproval. If I had 
 spoken, I should have given an import- 
 ance to the situation which it deserved, 
 and which couldn't at that moment have 
 been safely given. 
 
 Also, I should have become unfitted 
 for any further responsibility the rest of 
 the day. The frightful cursings and 
 revilements of Crumbs were giving me 
 nausea and vertigo; and I knew that 
 salvation lay in the morning paper.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 113 
 
 Crumbs had before now, with regret 
 but with reasonableness, witnessed the 
 unavoidable punishment of Mulvaney. 
 He loved me. He knew that I was not 
 cruel. He would have died for me, but 
 nothing except the grave would have 
 stopped him at that moment. He had 
 run amuck. He had temporarily lost 
 his mind. Altogether, our condition of 
 hysteria was mutual, and I had the ad- 
 vantage of Crumbs by several years. 
 Surely the most exacting of judges 
 might have considered Crumbs' handicap 
 of extreme youth. 
 
 It seemed to me that if age, exper- 
 ience and practice had not given to 
 me control over my own hysterical 
 tendencies, I could not properly call 
 Crumbs to account for a like affliction. 
 He needed assistance rather than abuse; 
 and the only helpful course to pursue just 
 then was to ignore advice and keep 
 silent. Presently, Crumbs withdrew and 
 stormed himself into a state of exhaus- 
 tion, quite alone.
 
 n 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Then, just before dinner, Crumbs and 
 I both being in disgrace with the imme- 
 diate family, we went to walk apart; 
 at least I did. Crumbs, who had iso- 
 lated himself all day, presently joined me. 
 His face was no longer purple ; it had the 
 pallor of long illness, and dark circles 
 were underneath his eyes. At first we 
 walked without speaking, but Crumbs' 
 hand sought mine. We wanted to re- 
 assure each other but did not know 
 how. 
 
 After a while Crumbs said : 
 
 " I can't talk about it but I wove 
 you. " He was by now very well grown 
 at least seven years tall but he re- 
 tained much of his infant alphabet. 
 
 There was no need of explanation be- 
 tween us. Crumbs knew that I did not 
 doubt his affection, and that, so far as it 
 personally concerned me, the incident of 
 the morning was closed; but it became 
 my opportunity. In that hour Crumbs 
 acquired a new view of his own possi- 
 bilities. We talked comprehensively of
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 115 
 
 what such moments might mean in the 
 course of a lifetime. 
 
 Crumbs aspired to many things to be 
 a motorman, most of all a soldier, because 
 of the marching and the Rough Rider 
 hat, a mounted policeman because of the 
 horse, and finally a "boss" who walked 
 round while men built "flats," an occu- 
 pation which with he was familiar, 
 having interviewed several "bosses" 
 while " flats " were in process of construc- 
 tion near his home. 
 
 On this dread day when things went 
 so radically wrong from morning till 
 night, it was made plain to Crumbs that 
 no man who knew such moments as he 
 had just experienced could, by any possi- 
 ble means, become a "boss" of anything 
 not even of a dog. That which till 
 now had been largely a theory, confronted 
 him as a condition necessary to his per- 
 sonal interest, and self-control became a 
 matter of correspondingly large import- 
 ance. Love alone could not mend his 
 temperamental weaknesses. He needed
 
 n6 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 to call in, or to have called in, all the 
 forces possible love, self-interest, van- 
 ity and fear. All these were required 
 for his rescue. He began to perceive 
 that in such a moment of abandon he 
 might kill a man, destroy property, 
 beat his horse to death, or run a car-load 
 of people off the track. He perceived 
 that he should become hated for a 
 bad man, despised for a weak one, 
 jeered at for a foolish one and finally 
 come to naught, even if he did not get so 
 far as the penitentiary. 
 
 To be sure, there was the very reason- 
 able and true statement that maybe he 
 could not help his tantrums. The scene 
 of the morning certainly had not been 
 premeditated. He explained to me that 
 it was " something inside, " and to this I 
 agreed. Then we decided that, if wicked 
 impulses already had the upper hand, 
 he was a sick boy and must go to some 
 place reserved for those who could not 
 control themselves; but we also agreed 
 that it was only fair he should have a
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 117 
 
 chance to find out just how far the matter 
 of self-control was in his own hands, 
 before he was sent into retirement. In 
 trying mutually to think out a way to 
 help him, it was determined that at such 
 times of uncontrol, he was instantly to 
 think of motormen, " bosses, " mounted 
 policemen and soldiers; of how they 
 marched and how he would like to have 
 a Rough Rider hat. In short, he was 
 instantly to put his mind upon the 
 pageantry of life and to keep it there till 
 I or something could come to his rescue. 
 We went in and composed a march 
 tune that was to belong to Crumbs alone. 
 He was to think of this and march to 
 decency and good intentions by it when- 
 ever he felt the horror of blind wicked- 
 ness coming upon him. The tune was a 
 kind of combination of La Marseillaise, 
 America and Coronation. We learned 
 it together; at least Crumbs, who had a 
 martial sense of time, and who according 
 to requirements sang "up," when it 
 went up and " down " when it went down,
 
 u8 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 learned something which was not a tune, 
 but which could not be mistaken for 
 any thing but our " Good Times" march. 
 That was what we decided to call 
 it our Good Times march! 
 
 Crumbs and I must learn to march to 
 that impromptu measure or there would 
 be no good times for us. The day came 
 when storms were averted by the mere 
 stamping of my feet according to the 
 "good times" measure. It was better 
 to stamp than to sing; because it had 
 the effect of instantly surprising the 
 mind, and of causing an emotional 
 pause. 
 
 At six years of age, Crumbs would 
 grow purple with vicious, hysterical im- 
 pulse, then pause, recognise the measure, 
 turn white with sudden emotional re- 
 vulsion and grin in a sickly way. The 
 difficulties of his problem were apparent 
 in the physical exhibition that accom- 
 panied his effort to control himself; but 
 Crumbs was learning that tendencies 
 toward original sin can be wiped out
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 119 
 
 with practice and with strong enough 
 incentive. 
 
 I learned something to my own advan- 
 tage the evening after the episode of 
 the shoes. In the night because sleep 
 did not visit either of us promptly 
 Crumbs told me solemnly that he had 
 "got good again" because he had not 
 been whipped as I had been advised to 
 whip him. 
 
 "When they were telling you to whip 
 me, I made up my mind just to kill my- 
 self as soon as you had done it not to 
 make you feel bad, but because it 
 wouldn't be any use to live any more 
 again. It wouldn't be any use any more, 
 because you see I did love you all the 
 time I was saying I didn't, but I couldn't 
 stop. And if you'd whipped me, I'd 
 known you couldn't ever understood if 
 I tried to 'splain. I felt so bad, I couldn't 
 'splain. And if I couldn't 'splain I was 
 going to be dead right off. " 
 
 " But there are going to be times when 
 it is needful to whip you I think. Am
 
 120 CRUMR3 AND HIS TIMES 
 
 I to believe that you mean to kill your- 
 self if I must whip you? " 
 
 " No, you just spank me and it will be 
 all right; use judgment. Your judg- 
 ment, not anybody's else. " (I would 
 not have smiled even under cover of the 
 dark, for a fortune). "I don't want 
 you ever to let anybody know if you 
 must whip me because he mightn't ever 
 know after that, that we loved each other 
 and I couldn't stand it. " 
 
 Crumbs was jealous of the dignity of 
 our relations, and no sane person could 
 find fault with that. If I could just 
 keep that regard for our mutual affection 
 and friendship big within him, I believed 
 that Crumbs and I might come out all 
 right after all. And oh, the dear gentle- 
 man! who sometimes still forgot to 
 take off his hat, but who would never, 
 never wash his linen in public because he 
 " couldn't stand it. "
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 GENEROSITY AND SELF CONTROL 
 
 T LEARNED early that one of Crumb's 
 strongest original tendencies was ap- 
 preciation, or gratitude, and that he 
 was naturally generous, so it followed that 
 one of his chief delights would lie in the 
 well-being of others. However, in one 
 so young, generosity was only a tendency, 
 to be developed or lost as the case might 
 be. There came times when he inevi- 
 tably preferred to find his best happiness 
 in more direct ways than in the good of 
 others; but the "still small voice," hav- 
 ing once made itself strongly heard, gave 
 Crumbs no peace, however much his 
 generous tendency became subordinated. 
 While he might elect ultimately to go 
 through life pleasing himself at the ex- 
 pense of others, he could never like many 
 another, do so without experiencing a 
 torturing reaction.
 
 122 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 If Crumbs were going to live for self 
 alone, I could have preferred he should do 
 so without regret. A state of complete 
 indifference would be better for himself 
 as well as for the people whom he might 
 ruin. I recalled certain notable examples 
 of perversity to whose weakness of dis- 
 position crime was impossible, remorse 
 always imminent, but who averted des- 
 pair and unhappiness from no one. 
 Such people make eternal demands upon 
 sympathy, give nothing, but require the 
 combined moral force of an entire family 
 to support them. I desired that Crumbs 
 should be something definite, and it 
 seemed quite likely that he would so 
 turn out. 
 
 After I discovered his generous ten- 
 dency, it became my habit to give exces- 
 sive expression to my appreciation, when 
 he thrust upon me something coveted by 
 himself. It struck me that there could 
 be no more successful lure than the cer- 
 tain evidence of an accomplished pur- 
 pose. This method worked very well
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 123 
 
 for a long time. It always answered 
 with myself, but there came a time, in 
 his seventh year, when alien surroundings 
 brought to the surface hitherto un- 
 suspected tendencies and very human 
 weaknesses, such as revenge, retaliation 
 and the like. 
 
 In speaking of Crumbs and His Times, 
 it now becomes easier to present them in 
 their negations than in their positive 
 aspects. There was a point of view 
 never taught him, which he had ab- 
 sorbed, and this was to become apparent 
 only when his mind was antagonised by 
 a wholly strange presentment of life. 
 
 There is a give and take, which we of 
 large wisdom and far-seeing habit recog- 
 nise without making demonstration ; the 
 give and take which is a part of our 
 method of self-preservation. But that 
 "give" of reciprocity is a "give" quite 
 apart from the "give" of privilege; it is 
 a matter of expediency. There are 
 people to whom the joy of generous 
 impulse is all unknown, but they may be
 
 i2 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Justice itself, and give the full measure 
 of what they receive by sheer force of 
 selfish intent. This sort of punctillious 
 plan works very well indeed where life is 
 reduced to its largest material terms 
 but it leaves the heart cold. It ignores 
 the existence of disinterested benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 It was just before his seventh birthday 
 that Crumbs fell foul of this unprofitable 
 class. The irresistible demand from 
 within to more than share, even utterly 
 to sacrifice their own bread in the inter- 
 ests of others, was absent among those 
 with whom Crumbs was now associated, 
 but I dare say a share-and-share-alike 
 system prevailed, in its most painful 
 precision. Up to this time, he had not 
 learned that as applied to things material 
 there was any other conduct in life than 
 generous conduct. Now he witnessed 
 a new regime. 
 
 Henceforth, was Crumbs to be either 
 superlatively fair for love of generosity, 
 or was he to be exacting in his own in-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 125 
 
 terests? which, I did not know and he 
 did not know. 
 
 For many days the new regime was a 
 source of marvel to him. Later, it 
 roused in him a spirit of hate and of re- 
 bellion. The cause of his disturbance 
 was quite unformulated by him, but it 
 was very real. He did not even know to 
 what he should attribute his distraction ; 
 but one day his misery found voice 
 thus: 
 
 " I don't like it. I hate it. I won't 
 give anybody anything. Don't nobody 
 care ! " For the first time, the philosophy 
 contained in those three words became 
 a menace to his dear future. 
 
 Don't nobody care! 
 
 Something should have been done by a 
 wise mother, but Crumbs and I had no 
 wisdom to fall back upon only his 
 three words of philosophy and our af- 
 fection. I determined not to pervert 
 his moral sense by standing for that 
 which he resented and which was con- 
 trary to our familiar practice of six years :
 
 126 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 I would not thus avert from him the 
 Ancient Chance. 
 
 I could not assure Crumbs that he was 
 wrong: he was right. With the oppres- 
 sive condition of precise and measured 
 justice about us, I began to believe it 
 was better to be wrong than to be just. 
 There is a certain high-sounding preach- 
 ment to the effect that one should be just 
 before one is generous, but without the 
 spirit of generosity as a pusher, I have 
 never known anything like symmetrical 
 justice. One shoulder is nearly always 
 higher than the other. Conscience is 
 there, and Intention is there, but Dis- 
 crimination is off gathering flowers for 
 the funeral. 
 
 We were at this time in the mountains, 
 where the butcher and baker and 
 candlestick-maker came over the hills 
 periodically, instead of habitually, and 
 delivered to us whatever they saw fit. 
 Crumbs and these people were friends. 
 Alas for Crumbs! It was the butcher who 
 brought about the inevitable.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 127 
 
 He robbed someone's cherry tree in 
 Crumb's behalf, and brought him the 
 first cherries of the season. They were 
 still on the branch, red and luscious. 
 Crumbs stripped them all off with de- 
 liberation, except four. Then he took 
 the branch within and divided up with 
 the head of the family who tasted, 
 pronounced the cherries good and in- 
 advertently reached for more. 
 
 " Can't have any more, " said Crumbs. 
 "There are only four 'n' that's your 
 share. " 
 
 The head of the family apologised. 
 Shortly afterward Crumbs wandered in- 
 differently into my precincts and closed 
 the door; immediately his conduct under- 
 went a mighty change. It rained cher- 
 ries. The affluence of Crumb's pockets 
 was surprising, the redness of his face, 
 the trembling of his hands were painful. 
 It was a fruity and emotional crisis. 
 
 "I was just bein' fair with her," he 
 quavered. "There weren't but four on 
 that limb but there's bushels for you. "
 
 i 2 8 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 And Crumbs with only two cherries 
 inside a small boy's capacity, placed his 
 all at my disposal. 
 
 " I am afraid you were not fair, " I 
 suggested. " It was not fair to say that 
 you had only four. " 
 
 "Didn't, just four on that limb. 
 These weren't mine. They were yours. " 
 
 "Not then." 
 
 "Yep made up my mind about 'em 
 when I picked 'em off outside. " 
 
 " That is the letter not the spirit of the 
 law, " I said, but this was out of Crumb's 
 depth. He was momentarily silenced 
 but rose, triumphant: 
 
 "Don't nobody care!" Life was possi- 
 bly beer and skittles for us in those days, 
 but it was not cakes and ale. 
 
 It was Crumb's first real brush with 
 the world. The conditions were un- 
 lovely to him, although there was much 
 good to admire in them, but for a broad- 
 gauge boy they were bound to be in- 
 jurious. So they were, but if hurtful in 
 some ways they revealed a delightful
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 129 
 
 truth which took root in a generous soil. 
 When conditions were not altogether 
 favourable to happiness, Crumbs not in- 
 frequently said: 
 
 "You go a-walking an' I'll stay and 
 bear it. " 
 
 Thus I saw that though unfavourable 
 conditions are seldom helpful to anyone, 
 those at least went to prove that the 
 plan of living up to a child's individu- 
 ality is not abortive. 
 
 After a first resistence to conditions, 
 conducted on the lines of the incident 
 of the cherries, Crumbs seemed to accept 
 the situation in a non-committal way. 
 That one of his pronounced characteris- 
 tics should appear passive gave me more 
 food for thought. In short, Crumbs 
 never let me weary for lack of material ; 
 my chief trouble being that I could not 
 think fast enough to keep up with the 
 progression of his mind; yet in com- 
 parison with some people I was a light- 
 ning calculator. 
 
 Eventually, the problem resolved it-
 
 1 3 o CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 self thus: the time had come when 
 Crumbs must love virtue for itself alone. 
 That state of mind, when all is said, 
 implies conceit; a kind of Thank-God-I- 
 am-not-as-other-men attitude, which may 
 be deplorable, but its criminality must 
 be relatively considered. In comparison 
 with some things, it is godly! 
 
 I must either permit Crumbs actively 
 to hate his surroundings, or else accept his 
 passive contempt for them. He had to 
 learn that unlovely things are the acci- 
 dents of life, the exceptions to its nice 
 refinements which prove the rule that 
 all the world is beautiful. Cynicism and 
 Crumbs were not so far apart that I 
 could safely count upon their never 
 meeting. " Don't nobody care " was 
 pretty frequently in my ears and in my 
 thoughts, in this transition stage. 
 Crumbs must be taught the difference 
 between the demands of ordinary civ- 
 ility and insincerity. He had to learn 
 that civility to others was after all a 
 tribute to his own dignity, while insin-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 131 
 
 cerity was an attribute of the unre- 
 generate. They were nice propositions 
 that could be elucidated only by acci- 
 dent. 
 
 For a long time, Crumbs had to take 
 my word for it that seemly demeanour 
 toward people of whom he did not ap- 
 prove, was not "just lies." His dis- 
 approval would "out "in hazardous ways. 
 He would make ingenious faces in 
 secret, when nature too strongly rebelled ; 
 grimaces sometimes openly surprised, 
 and which covered both him and me with 
 confusion. Indeed tragedy became so im- 
 minent that once Crumbs and I withdrew 
 to the lake-side nearby for a thrashing. 
 I explained that it would hurt me more 
 than it did him ; and he told me tearfully 
 "I'll let you off this time. " The session 
 was a strange mingling of the comic and 
 tragic, but it presented a proposition 
 and instituted a new regime. 
 
 He was unaware that he had done 
 anything positively wrong and so was I; 
 but I explained that he had fallen into a
 
 1 32 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 way quite unbeautiful, and while that 
 which was about to happen was not pre- 
 cisely punishment, it was to be con- 
 sidered by him in the light of a reminder. 
 For the first time, I was compelled to 
 approach the problem in a manner 
 personal and first hand. I asked Crumbs 
 if he desired to be in all respects like 
 those worthy but unsatisfactory people 
 who had caused his restiveness. He 
 eagerly did not. Then I made clear to 
 him that a long season of self-control, to 
 end only with the grave, must begin at 
 once; that flesh and spirit were liable 
 to riot upon occasion and almost without 
 warning, and that it must more than ever 
 become my business in life to cure his 
 uncontrol. I made it plain that I knew 
 from personal experience how uncontrol 
 brought its own punishment; a punish- 
 ment so bitter that it deserved none 
 other, and by making this personal 
 history picturesque I held Crumbs' atten- 
 tion. To avert intolerable consequences, 
 I must help him to remember. Some-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 133 
 
 times the reminder to walk in the straight 
 and narrow way would take one form, 
 sometimes another, We should have to 
 be governed by circumstances. 
 
 He took his thrashing patiently, and 
 we shed tears together, but after it was 
 over, Crumbs perked up instantly and 
 remarked : 
 
 "Don't you cry. You didn't make 
 any faces and don't have to be reminded, 
 'n' I've got licked 'n' I can't stand any 
 more. " 
 
 Dear Crumbs! So small, so honest a 
 gentleman ! If only he had had a set of 
 good manners to go with it but then 
 he hadn't as yet. 
 
 As he walked toward the house in 
 silence, he remarked: 
 
 "That's like Mulvaney getting licked 
 for my badness when I was young, isn't 
 it ? " I saw the relation of ideas, but did 
 not think it well to admit it. 
 
 "Do you think so?" I asked. 
 
 " Huh-huh ! If nobody had made me 
 feel queer, I wouldn t 'a made faces. I
 
 i 3 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 think it isn't square, but don't nobody 
 care!" 
 
 The stoical touch made the night wind 
 colder to me, but I hoped there would be 
 enough of affection in reserve for Crumbs 
 as he went through life, to raise the tem- 
 perature. 
 
 Thus, he resigned himself. His po- 
 liteness did not become oppressive but 
 neither did his conduct remain unseemly. 
 
 Crumbs got whipped oftener during 
 that seventh year than in any other 
 one of his life; but I do not recall that 
 upon any occasion did a whipping take 
 the form of punishment. It was too seri- 
 ous a matter with us for that. It stood for 
 regret, for a chastened mind, for a re- 
 minder, for a great many things that bore 
 no smack of brutality. These whippings 
 were flagellations of the soul, so to speak, 
 and the physical suffering was secondary. 
 If this had not been true, I could not 
 have whipped him at all, any time after 
 his fifth year, because Crumbs was, 
 physically, too strong for me. I think
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 135 
 
 he perceived this, and that was the reason 
 why he stood up so like a gentlemen at 
 those moments. I explained to him 
 once that unless he made it very con- 
 venient for me indeed, I should not be 
 able to whip him at all. The situation 
 may not have been usual, but I fancy it 
 could be brought about with almost any 
 child. It is a simply a matter of the 
 " point of view, " unfaltering patience, 
 and love to spare. 
 
 The seventh year led to many con- 
 fidences and quiet causeries between us. 
 Among other things Crumbs learned to 
 stick to conversational abstractions, to 
 avoid personalities. Certain conditions 
 warranted many intimate conversations 
 between us, and Crumbs learned early in 
 the game that only the unregenerate dis- 
 cuss the personal eccentricities of people ; 
 that by intelligent effort, almost any- 
 thing can be turned into an abstraction. 
 All this led to numerous pros] and 
 cons. 
 
 "If you behave so 'queer' that you
 
 i 3 6 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 aren't loved, what happens?" was 
 Crumbs' inquiry. 
 
 " Well, sometimes one thing and some- 
 times another; but very often totally 
 innocent persons have to be taken down 
 to the beach and birched. " Crumbs 
 turned his eyes upon me, and slowly 
 nodded. 
 
 " Like Mul getting licked for me when 
 I was young. " Vicarious punishment 
 continued to be an element altogether 
 startling and impressive to him. I 
 hoped he would never develop the vi- 
 carious conscience, however. 
 
 " It seems to me if you don't behave 
 so you are woved awfully, you don't 
 have such a dreadful good time yourself," 
 he reflected. I knew of whom and 
 what he was thinking, but I answered: 
 
 " Oh, I don't know: I've noticed that 
 some people who are not specially lovable, 
 worry less than those who love and are 
 more beloved. " 
 
 Crumbs thought along his own lines for 
 a moment before elucidating his point.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 137 
 
 "Well, Aunt" he paused, remem- 
 bering to stick to abstractions. " I have 
 seen people, " he went on " who weren't 
 woved in our style, and if they do get 
 most everything they want, they don't 
 sound wike it and they don't wook 
 wike it. I've seen people, " he contin- 
 ued, speaking judicially, "who never 
 could a had the big feeling in their 
 throats wike I have when you and I wook 
 at each other. I wook at you and and 
 it's just bully. " He nodded solemnly 
 and put his hand to his throat, while his 
 eyes became suffused. 
 
 " I feel it now," he said. 
 
 Crumbs had got to the bottom of things 
 after all, and it almost reconciled me to 
 his gaucheries of conduct. It had been a 
 lively question with me whether he was 
 going to assimilate the new thoughts, and 
 the emotional sterility surrounding him, 
 or whether these conditions would serve 
 their turn as a fearsome example. It 
 began to look as if Crumbs were going 
 to learn of adversity. I was sorry if
 
 i 3 8 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 it had to be so, but rejoiced that all 
 things seemed to work together for good 
 to those who loved somebody or 
 something. Crumbs loved me beyond all 
 doubt.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FACT VERSUS TRUTH 
 
 TN course of time I found something 
 as important as Crumb's emotions to 
 be in danger. His excellent intelligence 
 was being tampered with. He knew 
 well how to be sophistical for his own pur- 
 poses, and the problem of truth in the 
 letter as in the spirit, had of late become 
 a serious one. While I was doing my 
 best, I suddenly discovered that the 
 enemy Literality, was in camp and must 
 be ousted. Those about us were slaves 
 both to Fact and to Truth, but they 
 could not discriminate the one from the 
 other. In their own cases perhaps it no 
 longer mattered very much. Their lives 
 would of necessity always be circum- 
 scribed and they were mature people, 
 who had learned their limited lessons in a 
 way that they could never unlearn, but
 
 1 40 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 in Crumbs' case, it mattered very much. 
 
 I had found out for a certainty that 
 Crumbs was going to be something defi- 
 nite as I wished him to be ; and if he was 
 not going to be definitely good then he 
 was going to be definitely bad, so here 
 confronting him and me, was that horrid 
 shame of well-made minds, Literality. 
 It seemed to fill all space. 
 
 I recognised this first when I heard 
 Crumbs, whose ideas of a joke were only 
 seven years old at best, say to a member 
 of the family with whom we were placed : 
 
 "Wook at Mulvaney saying his pray- 
 ers. " The distressing reply came: 
 
 " Don't you know that is a lie, Crumbs? 
 Don't you know if you tell a lie it is 
 wicked, and children should be whipped 
 for it?" Crumbs had no answer. For 
 once he was paralysed into silence. 
 
 Crumbs had been taught to tell the 
 truth first, last and all the time, but 
 truth did not include any conclusion such 
 as this. Probably "taught" is not the 
 correct expression, when the manner of
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 141 
 
 Crumbs' education is under discussion; 
 " insinuated, " is more nearly right. A 
 regard for truth had been insinuated into 
 Crumbs' system since his first hour, 
 therefore he might be called constitu- 
 tionally truthful. He wore truth as he 
 did his shirt as something that could 
 not be dispensed with. 
 
 Literality was one of those original 
 tendencies which I had grubbed up, and 
 which I meant to root out if Crumbs, 
 himself, came with it. 
 
 The literal mind does a large amount 
 of harm to other people, even if it 
 be not the symbol of hopeless limi- 
 tation. Crumbs need not be literal in 
 his interpretations, when it was kinder 
 to be otherwise, nor in his statements, 
 when it was more civil not to be. 
 If he became literal he would never 
 be a good business man, nor an artist, 
 nor an agreeable friend, nor a tolerable 
 husband, nor a just father, nor "good 
 form," nor be inspired with the real 
 spirit of truth; in short he could
 
 142 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 never be anything that was profitable or 
 nice. 
 
 Truthful Crumbs had said that his dog 
 was saying his prayers, and had been 
 literally called a liar which was neither 
 true nor polite. I was accustomed to 
 let Crumbs take the initiative : he was so 
 much cleverer than I. In time he 
 sought me. 
 
 "Say, is she crazy?" he asked, still 
 too disturbed to elaborate his thought. 
 
 There are not many things which can 
 be explained to a little child with telling, 
 lasting results. Life to such a one is 
 drama comedy-drama or tragedy ac- 
 cording to the manner of presentation; 
 but, however presented, it is all action. 
 He reasons after the fact, and from the 
 fact; seldom before the fact. It was 
 beyond my powers to explain to Crumbs 
 how Literalness had stepped in and 
 spoiled the good game of Truth. The 
 knowledge would have to be insinuated 
 by actual demonstration, and thinking 
 how to do it kept me awake nights.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 143 
 
 " If she isn't crazy, then I think she is 
 telling lies, '' said Crumbs resuming the 
 subject. "Because you see she knew Mul- 
 vaney couldn't be saying prayers. She 
 knew if he could say 'em, I wouldn't tell 
 her so unless he was doing it for sure. " 
 Crumbs was so completely satisfied with 
 his own impregnability, since his truth- 
 fulness was under discussion, thathe could 
 argue only from one side, but Fate was to 
 rescue us once more. It happened thus : 
 
 A day later, while the incident was 
 still fresh in our minds, a message was 
 conveyed to me in Crumbs' presence: 
 
 " A said for you to meet her in town 
 at half past three" we were living in the 
 country "and if you don't want to 
 you need not. " Crumbs was particularly 
 fond of " A '' and he arose in wrath. 
 
 "She didn't say any such thing, and 
 she was as loving as could be. I heard 
 her" once more nothing but death 
 could stop him. "She said if if " 
 He stopped of his own accord. Life had 
 become too much for him.
 
 1 4 4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 "Weil,'' said the Member of the 
 Family, sternly, " I will hear from you 
 iust what she did say." But Crumbs 
 could not speak. I knew all about it, 
 but he did not, nor did the Member of the 
 Family. All her life her tone and words 
 had been literal, and by those of us who 
 knew her uncompromising goodness, this 
 was understood. 
 
 '* Yes, Crumbs, we will hear just what 
 A said. " 
 
 "She said what Aunt G said but 
 didn't mean it; and so iust the same 
 Aunt G has told a lie on her. " Deep! 
 deep! and what was to be done? Well, 
 this helped along with a good many 
 other examples to teach Crumbs that 
 good Fact is not necessarily good Truth. 
 
 When quite alone, I asked him to tell 
 me in confidence precisely what "A " 
 had seemed to him to say, which was 
 this: " If H feels like coming into town 
 to-day at half-past three, I will be at such 
 a point, and we can put in a little time 
 together. Tell her not to come at any
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 145 
 
 inconvenience to herself. " Now. this 
 was a good deal to deduce from a couple 
 of dozen words, but then Crumbs' love 
 of Truth, and his understanding of it, had 
 made him include the tone and manner 
 in which those words were uttered. In 
 the absence of tone and manner, the bald 
 statement resulted in a perversion of the 
 Truth for which he would not stand, be- 
 ing in love with his cousin. 
 
 Could I expect Crumbs to be beloved 
 by anybody but me? Hardly. His 
 methods were too crude, even if not 
 quite literal. And again, Crumbs, who 
 was to be a good man or a bad one ac- 
 cording to the emotional conditions 
 about him, promised to create conditions 
 for himself from which no human being 
 could rescue him. 
 
 According to theory and rule, un- 
 emotional conditions and literal living 
 were the proper environment to neutral- 
 ise his excessive tendencies. Theoret- 
 ically, Crumbs' nervous system should 
 have been greatly benefited by the sit-
 
 1 4 6 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 uation. Well, you may pour oil and 
 water together, but you've got to have 
 a third agent to make an emulsion. 
 Crumbs' third agent was affection, ap- 
 proval, and he had almost destroyed his 
 agent. Nobody heartily approved of 
 Crumbs but me and Mulvaney perhaps, 
 and I could not blame anybody but 
 Crumbs and myself. His personality 
 was fascinating at times, attractive al- 
 ways, hence it was not appearances that 
 were against him but his " point of view, " 
 unrelieved by good manners. 
 
 I could not find fault with the point 
 of view, because I had been insinuating 
 that upon him since he was born, and I 
 was still unconvinced that it was wrong. 
 I was able to see that the real trouble lay 
 not with his point of view, which was 
 much like that of all decent folk, but 
 with his method, and I could not provide 
 a silk-finish method, for a seven-year-old 
 boy. 
 
 Before he was seven, he had not even 
 the superficial graces which make bad
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 147 
 
 children endurable which even make 
 them ornaments to society. I had not 
 been able to earn Crumbs' living, to care 
 for him in sickness and in health, to make 
 him happy, and to give him A i manners, 
 all at the same time. I had to do a good 
 deal in sections the nursing and the 
 living ; but the loving and its substantial 
 results had to go on all the time, even in 
 our sleep. 
 
 Frequently, after I had got him 
 trained not to put his feet on the ceiling, 
 he would seek that form of repose in some 
 thoughtful moment, after some serious 
 passage between us. He sought it all 
 unconscious of its inelegance; and I 
 never felt justified in interrupting 
 Crumbs' train of thought in those eventful 
 moments. I knew he had arrived at con- 
 clusions when in that position that were 
 someday to put out a fire, save another 
 man's life or just a human being's feel- 
 ings. He evolved some large ideas while 
 in this inverted, unpleasing position, and 
 while others were writhing under the
 
 148 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 monstrousness of his conduct. I knew 
 he was doing wrong, but I could not 
 help it. 
 
 When Crumbs has chosen to think, I 
 have held my breath, and have frequently 
 put a newspaper between his heels and 
 the French polish, when I have thought I 
 could do so without interrupting him. 
 Sometimes, as I have done this, Crumbs 
 has come to; has taken down his feet 
 and said; "I didn't think." This 
 proved that he had no antagonism to 
 decent forms, only he " didn't think. " 
 
 Maybe I should have thrashed him; I 
 don't know. I know that I hoped good 
 form would some day seem to Crumbs to 
 be one of the most worthy and serious 
 problems of life. I more or less believed 
 that he would be alert enough to observe 
 that good form was really that symbol of 
 good feeling and good conscience neces- 
 sary to the preservation of peace between 
 nations and people. 
 
 However it was to be at his noon-day, 
 at a little before seven Crumbs was still
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 149 
 
 unpopular, quite apart from his conduct, 
 by which alas! we must be judged. 
 
 He truly deserved to be popular, even 
 as he longed to be. Disapproval was al- 
 most as disastrous to him as a congestive 
 chill. Poor Crumbs! Dear Crumbs! 
 
 Yes, I decided that the only way I 
 could make him "think" to be well 
 mannered according to essential form 
 which is all that a little child may be 
 permitted to go by was to make him 
 understand that good manners were 
 invented for the mutual convenience 
 of people. Thus I would be able to put 
 form on the high plane of love for ones 
 neighbour. So we worked around to love 
 in the end, and love was something that 
 Crumbs could understand at any age, 
 because love is elemental. 
 
 This method was a good deal like 
 that of learning languages by learning 
 Dutch first of all, and then acquiring the 
 others by a comparison of the Dutch 
 Bible with the Italian Bible, or the French 
 Bible or the well, Love is the Volapuk
 
 150 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 of all humanity, and it is good that it is 
 so easily learned and so pleasant to 
 remember. Whenever I thought out 
 Crumbs with love for my illuminator, I 
 began to hope again. It was better than 
 wisdom, because from Love, Wisdom 
 may grow; but very frequently Love 
 does not spring full-grown or any other 
 way, from the loins of Wisdom. 
 
 I learned in those days how certainly 
 the best within us responds to the best 
 in others, and how the worst in others is 
 re-echoed in ourselves. Crumbs' word had 
 heretofore been respected. There were 
 times now when it was not, and he devel- 
 oped a tendency to lie. Affection alone 
 was to be the corrective. Crumbs was 
 accused of leaving a peach-pit in an un- 
 seemly place, and he denied having done 
 so. His sense of injustice was bringing 
 the demon into his face, when he appeared 
 before me and explained the matter. 
 He had been accused upon the slender 
 evidence of an unsound judgment which 
 assumed that when things went wrong,
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 151 
 
 or when material was found misplaced 
 it was immaturity that was responsible. 
 
 As a matter of fact, I myself, was the 
 culprit. Crumbs could not exonerate 
 himself, because the witness of another's 
 imagination was so much stronger as 
 evidence, than the word of a boy who 
 had not yet learned the penalties of 
 truth-telling. Accident alone cleared 
 him. It was I who had disgraced the 
 family. I started at once to set the 
 matter right, and have the criticism 
 placed where it belonged, but when 
 Crumbs discovered I was the culprit, he 
 demanded that I be silent because "If 
 you tell, they'll get after you too and 
 / don't mind. " 
 
 If he broke a dish, he assumed that 
 my sympathy was his, because it had 
 never till now occurred to him that any 
 sane person wantonly destroyed things. 
 But now he found out that though older 
 people were pardoned for their accidents, 
 little children were not ; and he expressed 
 his opinion of the matter to me on one
 
 1 52 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 occasion when we had entered into our 
 closet and had shut the door. 
 
 " When I get into trouble any more I'm 
 going to lie about it because I fink all 
 these people are crazy, and it isn't safe to 
 tell 'em what happens to you. " 
 
 Crumbs' reasoning was very primitive 
 straight from effect to cause or from 
 cause to effect, without amelioration 
 or interruption. 
 
 It was not a very bad reasoning, but one 
 had to be brought up to understand it. 
 A lie was no longer an outrage upon fair- 
 ness: it now seemed to him to have be- 
 come necessary, if he would secure fair 
 treatment for himself. 
 
 However Crumbs was pretty well 
 grounded by this seventh year, and he 
 had a good many things to fall back 
 upon by way of help. For example, 
 he had confidence in me, and what 
 he could not translate for himself, he 
 was now willing to accept from me 
 as fact; a thing which he would not 
 have been willing to do in his littlest
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 153 
 
 childhood. After a time or two, Crumbs 
 began to see that even I should be unable 
 to believe him if he made lying one of his 
 accomplishments. I think he did not 
 care particularly if anyone else about 
 him believed him or not, but certainly 
 it would be inconvenient to lose my con- 
 fidence. Thus he dropped lying, as in- 
 expedient, and when he felt the injustice 
 of his conditions he grew into the habit 
 of saying. " Don't nobody care. " Once 
 he remarked to me " Isn't it redickelous? " 
 and so it was. So ' redickelous ' that our 
 sense of humour saved the day. 
 
 Truth was so constitutional with him 
 that one day when he had clipped 
 Mulvaney's hair on one side with my 
 shears, and the dog presented an ap- 
 pearance quite unlike a French poodle 
 which Crumbs had tried to have him 
 emulate, I heard the groceryman say 
 outside: 
 
 " You had better come along with me 
 Mr. Crumbs, before your mother finds 
 out it was you who sheared the dog."
 
 iS4 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 "Do you think she'd make a fuss?" 
 " Sure. You come along down the road 
 with me and she'll think the folks next 
 door did it. " 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" said Crumbs "then I 
 guess I'd better go and tell her quick, " 
 which was satisfactory enough evidence 
 to exonerate him from meanness of spirit, 
 in the eyes of the grand jury, his mother.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SEVENTH YEAR 
 
 CERTAIN things which came along 
 ^ in that seventh year were difficult, 
 but not impossible to accomplish, if 
 a woman sat up nights. One of these 
 was the forming of class distinctions in a 
 little child's mind, without running into 
 snobbishness. There comes a time when 
 a child must learn that there are differ- 
 ences in people, which he must take into 
 account in choosing his friends and in 
 forming his associations. Crumbs was 
 democratic. He loved the grocer's boy, 
 which proved to me that his untram- 
 melled instincts were very good indeed, 
 and that his first exhibition of taste, 
 demonstrated in this friendship, was not 
 to be criticised; but there are grocer- 
 boys and grocer-boys, as there are 
 princes and princes. There came another 
 
 '55
 
 156 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 grocer-boy with whom Crumbs' longed 
 to associate, because he could "swim 
 just like anything. " I knew he also 
 could curse " just like anything " and this 
 time Crumbs' choice was not my choice. 
 I told him that I objected to number 
 two grocer-boy because he was of another 
 class, and should not be fraternised 
 with. Then Crumbs wished to know 
 why he was of another class, and alto- 
 gether we got badly mixed on the 
 question of grocer-boys, good, bad and 
 indifferent; of class, of Crumbs, and of 
 prejudices. The end of it was that 
 Crumbs was made, arbitrarily, to obey, 
 though still hankering after number two 
 grocer-boy. 
 
 One day an automobile stopped at the 
 door and its driver asked for a bucket 
 of water to help out his machinery. 
 The number two grocer-boy was sitting 
 on the curb and he went round to fetch 
 the water, while Crumbs and the chauffeur 
 became engaged in a conversation which 
 greatly pleased Crumbs. It had rela-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 157 
 
 tion to wheels and cogs and carbureters 
 and washers and to other laundry-like 
 things, no doubt. When number two 
 grocer-boy came with the water he said: 
 "Give me fT cents?" and the machine 
 folk cheerfully complied with the request. 
 Then Number Two went off. Crumbs 
 lingered and watched proceedings. 
 When the water had served its purpose 
 and the pail was empty, the driver 
 handed it to Crumbs, asking him if he 
 would kindly take it back. Crumbs 
 assented with alacrity, and certainly 
 with pleasure, since he had a sort of 
 passion for being useful to grown 
 folks. 
 
 Then the driver called out: "Here, 
 my boy! Take this. " He put ten cents 
 into Crumbs' hand and then Crumbs was 
 in trouble. He had the ten cents and the 
 pail, and the machine party was gone. 
 Crumbs had been instructed in the 
 matter of receiving monetary gifts 
 which were always a source of much 
 annoyance both to him and me.
 
 158 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Well-meaning friends who give chil- 
 dren money are the cause of more dis- 
 turbance than they are aware. There 
 were times when it would have been 
 a crime for Crumbs to decline the 
 stray pennies pressed upon him, because 
 the givers would not have grasped any 
 motive whatever for his refusal. There 
 were others who could be politely but 
 firmly set aside. They would not think 
 the boy inappreciative, nor yet "set-up, " 
 but instead his dignity would be res- 
 pected. 
 
 Crumbs had an instinct which half 
 revealed to him the distinction between 
 people and people. He returned to the 
 house, worried. "I have the money 
 and they are gone, " he said. " What 
 ought I to do?" 
 
 "I guess you can't very well do any- 
 thing upon this occasion. You were 
 with Number Two who asked for money 
 because he had rendered a service. 
 People are known by the company they 
 keep. I guess you'll have to stand it.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 159 
 
 Those people didn't think much of you 
 probably, or they wouldn't have offered 
 you money for a personal favour. Of 
 course they thought you wanted it 
 there was Number Two who had asked 
 for it, and you were with him." 
 
 Crumbs made his own class distinctions 
 after that. It was a peculiarly complete 
 demonstration of cause and effect; but 
 this matter of unearned increment was 
 a touchy point with Crumbs. 
 
 Later on there arose considerable dif- 
 ficulty anent the matter of material 
 honesty. Crumbs had long since learned 
 that things which were not his were to be 
 let alone, but the basic principle of hon- 
 esty was not particularly understood by 
 him. As he had comprehended such 
 matters, the things of others were to be 
 avoided because others would be incon- 
 venienced if deprived of them ; but there 
 came a day when he so coveted 
 what was not his, that he seriously 
 thought out the problem for himself, and 
 he thought wrong. It was the case of the
 
 160 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 spring overcoat so dreaded by me; the 
 subject of my endless fearful imaginings. 
 The incident of the spring overcoat had 
 arrived. 
 
 A building was in process of erection 
 near by, and among other supplies of the 
 contractor's were some iron rods, made 
 with cross pieces, which Crumbs believed 
 would make admirable picks for small 
 boys. He had long coveted a pick. 
 There were hundreds of them at hand. 
 One day he approached the "boss" and 
 presented the case to him. He offered 
 three cents all he at that moment 
 possessed for one. The "boss" told 
 him to be off, that the "picks" were 
 needed in building, and were not for 
 covetous creatures like Crumbs. 
 
 The explanation was unsatisfactory to 
 Crumbs and his disappointment keen. 
 He told me that he had offered to pay 
 for the man's " picks, " that the man had 
 hundreds of them, and he guessed the 
 man was a pretty mean man. I paid no 
 special attention to the incident, hardly
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 161 
 
 heard Crumbs' statement, and dismissed 
 the matter from my mind. A day later 
 Crumbs came to me in -excitement, exhib- 
 ited a "pick," and explained with elation 
 how he had grabbed the instrument when 
 the "boss" wasn't looking. I asked him 
 why he had stolen. He was outraged. 
 
 " I haven't stolen. I offered to pay 
 for it an' he was a mean man. He's 
 got hundreds and don't need 'em all. 
 He can't need 'em all. And when he 
 wouldn't sell 'em nor be kind, I just 
 thought out how to get it for myself . If he 
 hadn't but a few I wouldn't have done it, 
 but he's just mean. I'd give him half of 
 'em if they were mine and he asked for 
 one." Fortunately, the officers at the 
 police station over the way, were not 
 entirely strange to me. I explained to 
 Crumbs that he must either go back and 
 openly restore the "pick" or he must 
 stand the chances of arrest. If he should 
 escape arrest he would have to endure 
 isolation; and my contempt for him 
 would be eternal.
 
 1 62 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Wouldn't I let him stay with me any 
 more? His tone was awesome. 
 
 Yes, he could stay, but he would be to 
 me after that as if he were some strange 
 boy one I should never learn to like. 
 This was a serious proposition. There 
 was Crumbs' side of the case as well as 
 the legitimate side. To him, it was a 
 matter of having possessed himself of 
 that to which he had a right, since he be- 
 lieved no one else needed it, and since the 
 world was so hard that it refused a boy 
 even those joys he was ready to pay for. 
 
 "Are you going down to give that man 
 his pick?" I asked. 
 
 " I don't know, " he answered. " I'm 
 going to think about it. " 
 
 "And if I never love you again as long 
 as we live?" Crumbs turned his eyes 
 upon me. 
 
 " I don't know, " he said. " I'm going 
 to think about that, too. Maybe if you 
 wont ever love me anymore I shall decide 
 you are wrongin' me. " It was a bad day 
 for us. Frequently I looked out of the
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 163 
 
 window at the police station, and 
 Crumbs began to grow uneasy. 
 
 " What are you looking over there for ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " I am anxious about your case. I 
 think you will be arrested. " 
 
 "I'll 'splain it all to the ossifers, 'n* 
 they're my friends and they'll believe 
 me, and tell the 'boss' he ought to be 
 ashamed. " 
 
 " You have done something that your 
 friends cannot save you from. The 
 goods belong to the man. He can have 
 you arrested. Your friends at the police 
 station will feel very badly about it but 
 they cannot help you. " Crumbs became 
 disquieted. Before night I sent a note to 
 the police station, and within the hour 
 one of Crumbs' friends came over. He 
 was a discriminating "ossifer" and the 
 matter did not take long. He had 
 come to arrest the young man who 
 had taken the contractor's goods. He 
 seemed about to weep and Crumbs was 
 frightened.
 
 164 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " I'll give it back " he said, and started 
 to get it. 
 
 "I'm afraid that will not do," the 
 officer explained. " As I am your friend 
 and as the sergeant is your friend, we 
 wont put this matter down in our big 
 book over there, till we have done all we 
 can for you. If we should put it on the 
 blotter, of course you would never get 
 over it. Everybody would hear about it, 
 and it would go pretty hard with a young 
 man like you. You could never get a 
 job in the world guess you'd starve to 
 death after you got out of jail. But I'll 
 tell you, if the ' boss ' will consent to take 
 this back, and will forgive you, you'll 
 get off. But if he won't take it back and 
 drop the case, you're up against it, 
 Crumbs. " 
 
 Crumbs was so frightened that he did 
 not rightly know what he was doing, but 
 he found his cap, took the pick and with 
 sparkling, feverish eyes, he started to the 
 door. If Crumbs lived through it, I was 
 afraid I shouldn't.
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 165 
 
 "Wait son, and I'll go with you, "I 
 said, and followed him. He grasped my 
 hand with a spasmodic clutch and we 
 got half way down the stairs, a solemn 
 procession indeed ; then Crumbs stopped. 
 
 "Say ossifer, you said if I get put in 
 the big book the sergeant writes in, I'll 
 never get a job nor anything, and it'll be 
 awful as long as I live. " The officer 
 nodded solemnly. 
 
 "Then you go back" the boy said. 
 "I'll I'll stand it alone," and he led 
 me back up the stairs to the door. 
 
 Surely if such a child grows to harmful 
 manhood, even with all the handicap of 
 erraticism and emotional excess, the 
 mother will be to blame! 
 
 Crumbs returned a little later, but 
 could not say much. He threw himself 
 into a chair, nodded many times, and 
 sobbed, but with no exhibition of tears. 
 
 "The Boss said I was a good boy to 
 come right up to him with it, anyhow, " 
 he breathed. Inwardly I anathematized 
 the Boss. It was no time for extenua-
 
 1 66 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 tions nor ameliorations nor suavity. It 
 was a moment in which Crumbs should 
 have met the worst. Later, we had our 
 familiar talk about those things which 
 constitute good citizenship; and in the 
 end Crumbs voiced the opinion of several 
 of us: " Life's no cinch! " 
 
 Crumbs, as he grew to his seven years, 
 seemed most of all to desire to be a good 
 citizen, public spirit being large within 
 him. He is still little more than seven, 
 and may take the spring overcoat yet, 
 but there are no alarming indications. 
 
 A child is capable of almost any 
 development if its original tendencies 
 are forever under advisement, and if a 
 woman regards the making of a man or 
 woman as a serious matter. Such a 
 mother will encounter resistance in her 
 child from the moment it experi- 
 ences the first colic, unless it be 
 a-typic. A rudimentary moral educa- 
 tion must be conducted along the lines 
 of least resistance until enough char- 
 acter has been insinuated into the sys-
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 167 
 
 tern to stand for something on its own 
 account. 
 
 Morals can be developed irrespective 
 of a child's mental alertness, to a very 
 large extent; because morals may be 
 insinuated through the affections. But 
 the process calls for something like a 
 creative faculty on the mother's part, 
 and she will probably never have a 
 vacation this side of the grave; but, 
 given a fair intelligence and the power 
 of affection not entirely lacking, a gen- 
 eration of maternal application will raise 
 the average, both of morals and of intel- 
 ligence. 
 
 One of the surest things is that a child 
 cannot be taught arbitrarily to be 
 " good, " with lasting results. Hence, in 
 implanting a moral character, one is 
 bound to develop what of intelligence a 
 child has. The nearest approach to 
 arbitrary teaching of right that can be 
 done, is to make appeal to the affections 
 and to remember all the time that the 
 child is born with some kind of brain
 
 168 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 even if it could be at first little better 
 than unconvoluted guava jelly instead of 
 what it is the greatest thing in the 
 world. To teach along these lines can- 
 not be called an arbitrary method. It 
 is a continual demonstration of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 There are several moral vestigia that 
 may set up an inflammatory process, as 
 certainly as that there are left-overs of 
 anatomy ; and these consist of hereditary 
 traits and taints. Given a debauched 
 parent, one must be on the watch for 
 something unexpected in her child. The 
 unexpected need not of a necessity be 
 iniquitous. The heredity may exhibit 
 itself as a wholesale hyperaesthesia of 
 spirit; and this may turn out a genius 
 as well as a devil, but it is likely to turn 
 out something extreme. 
 
 Even if the extreme tendencies are good 
 ones, eternal vigilance on somebody's part 
 is necessary. Tendencies toward excess 
 cannot be left to themselves at any time. 
 Excessive goodness goes off at half-cock
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 169 
 
 and may be either futile or harmful in its 
 application, because unregulated. A 
 child with a debauched ancestry will not 
 necessarily be debauched in turn, but 
 he is likely to have a set of nerves and 
 tendencies which will render him a 
 thousand-fold more vulnerable than his 
 neighbours, and possibly a thousand-fold 
 more capable. Either way it means that 
 a woman must sit up nights with her 
 fears and never once betray to her 
 best beloved that she fears at all. 
 
 Moral confidence is moral assurance. 
 A consciousness of Well-done inspires a 
 capacity for Better-doing. This is not 
 theory but the experience of all con- 
 templative people who have found ex- 
 istence a struggle, and such being in the 
 majority have a right to speak, even to 
 postulate. 
 
 The most distressful factor, not of a 
 subjective character, which a woman 
 must meet, is the innocuous opinions on 
 childhood of those women who have 
 never brought up any children,
 
 170 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 A woman who may be able to deal out 
 abstruse philosophies, but who has not 
 completely demonstrated her sex, and 
 is still childless at forty, can not legiti- 
 mately speak advisorily upon the subject 
 of childhood. Such a woman will, 
 nine times in ten, maintain that a mother 
 is incapable of regarding her child with- 
 out prejudice. This contention is not 
 due to the woman's mental incapacity, 
 but to her inexperience. Nothing on 
 earth but motherhood could make such a 
 statement from that kind of a woman 
 appear in all its absurdity. 
 
 It is not even necessary that a mother 
 should regard her problem unemotionally 
 in order to perceive her child's distressful 
 eccentricities of conduct, and then to 
 sweat drops of blood over them. A 
 mother needs only to be intelligent with 
 the average intelligence. The woman 
 who regards a child without any of a 
 mother's emotions is incapable of un- 
 prejudice in such a case. It would be 
 contrary to human nature if she could
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 171 
 
 regard unprejudicedly that which irri- 
 tates her, since she lacks the sustaining 
 and indulgent mood of motherhood. She 
 not only observes the faults of a child 
 which is not her own, but she is very 
 properly distracted by them. Every 
 one resents personal annoyance, but the 
 woman who suffers it from her children 
 is able to endure with hope. 
 
 No one can regard a child so unpre- 
 judicedly as his mother. She alone, sees 
 the side-lights illumining the good and 
 the bad, for both are with her day and 
 night. That which to a mother may 
 properly be interpreted as a superficial 
 fault of behaviour, due to some experi- 
 ence to which she alone is privy, is likely 
 to mean to the disinterested on-looker 
 some radical defect of character. That 
 which may be an evidence of a gracious 
 spirit to the outsider, may stand to the 
 mother either for a superficiality with- 
 out meaning, or for something which 
 may cause her anxiety. A mother's un- 
 prejudice lies in her affections ; and "Love
 
 172 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 is Vigilance," all other apothegms to the 
 contrary. Fascinations may render us 
 blind, but Love sees. 
 
 The man or woman who sits apart and 
 looks on, wholly uninvolved except in 
 superficial observation, is the least suit- 
 able person in the world to give advice 
 in regard to the control of children. To 
 them children are no more than children. 
 To every intelligent mother the word 
 implies a number of individuals, each 
 entitled to the nicest distinctions in 
 treatment. 
 
 One half the good results in training 
 a child in the way he should go, spring 
 from mother-love; the other half from 
 sound intelligence. The prejudiced, 
 childless woman lacks just half the qual- 
 ification, and her opinion is not worth a 
 cent. 
 
 She may run an orphan asylum, but 
 she can't make men and women, as that 
 is a good deal more than some of us can 
 do, who have all the qualifications. 
 
 Because a woman refuses to discuss too
 
 CRUMBS AND HIS TIMES 
 
 T 73 
 
 intimately her child, thereby revealing 
 all she knows of his shortcomings, it 
 does not follow that she is ignorant of 
 them. Possibly she has some regard for 
 her own dignity as made manifest in her 
 child. A woman may not without ex- 
 cuse canvass her children's faults with 
 anyone but their father or the family 
 physician. The family physician is given 
 place because a child's moral and physical 
 health are sufficiently interdependent to 
 require expert advice a good deal of the 
 time. 
 
 The less a woman permits of personal 
 discussion of her children, the better. 
 Reticence makes for good form, if not for 
 fair dealing. 
 
 First catch your child and then 
 teach him generosity, gratitude, love of 
 his neighbour, regard for personal rights, 
 the fundamental principles of good 
 citizenship, optimism, and the " greatest 
 of these," which is SELF-CONTROL.
 
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