The American Child | Page 4

see how they look!"
The boy's father did not finish the rustic bench that day. When a
neighboring camper, who stopped in to call toward the end of the
afternoon, expressed surprise at his apparent dilatoriness, and asked for
an explanation, the father simply said, "I did mean to finish it to- day,
but I had to do something for my boy instead."
One of the things we grown-ups do for children that has been rather
severely criticized is the lavishing upon them of toys,--intricate and

costly toys. "What, as a child, I used to pretend the toys I had, were, the
toys my children have now, are!" an acquaintance of mine was saying
to me recently. "For instance," she went on, "I had a box with a hole in
one end of it; I used to pretend that it was a camera, and pretend to take
pictures with it! I cannot imagine my children doing that! They have
real cameras and take real pictures."
The camera would seem to be typical of the toys we give to the
children of to-day; they can do something with it,--something real.
The dearest treasure of my childhood was a tiny gold locket, shaped,
and even engraved, like a watch. Not long ago I was showing it to a
little girl who lives in New York. "I used to pretend it was a watch," I
said; "I used to pretend telling the time by it."
She gazed at it with interested eyes. "It is very nice," she observed
politely; "but wouldn't you have liked to have a real watch? I have one;
and I really tell the time by it."
"But you cannot pretend with it!" I found myself saying.
"Oh, yes, I can," the little girl exclaimed in surprise; "and I do! I hang it
on the cupola of my dolls' house and pretend that it is the clock in the
Metropolitan Tower!"
The alarmists warn us that what we do for the children in the direction
of costly and complicated toys may, even while helping them do
something for themselves, mar their priceless simplicity. Need we fear
this? Is it not likely that the "real" watches which we give them that
they may "really" tell time, will be used, also, for more than one of the
other simple purposes of childhood?
The English woman said that we Americans did so much, so very much,
for the children of our nation. There have been other foreigners who
asserted that we did too much. Indubitably, we do a great deal. But,
since we do it all that the children may learn to do, and, through doing,
to be, can we ever possibly do too much? "It is possible to converse
with any American on the American child," the English woman said.

Certainly every American has something to say on that subject, because
every American is trying to do something for some American child, or
group of children, to do much, very much.

I

THE CHILD AT HOME
In one of the letters of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, to her mother,
Queen Victoria, she writes: "I try to give my children in their home
what I had in my childhood's home. As well as I am able, I copy what
you did."
There is something essentially British in this point of view. The English
mother, whatever her rank, tries to give her children in their home what
she had in her childhood's home; as well as she is able, she copies what
her mother did. The conditions of her life may be entirely different
from those of her mother, her children may be unlike herself in
disposition; yet she still holds to tradition in regard to their upbringing;
she tries to make their home a reproduction of her mother's home.
The American mother, whatever her station, does the exact
opposite--she attempts to bestow upon her children what she did not
possess; and she makes an effort to imitate as little as possible what her
mother did. She desires her children to have that which she did not
have, and for which she longed; or that which she now thinks so much
better a possession than anything she did have. Her ambition is to train
her children, not after her mother's way, but in accordance with "the
most approved modern method." This method is apt, on analysis, to
turn out to be merely the reverse side of her mother's procedure.
I have an acquaintance, the mother of a plump, jolly little tomboy of a
girl; which child my acquaintance dresses in dainty embroideries and
laces, delicately colored ribbons, velvet cloaks, and feathered hats.
These garments are not "becoming" to the little girl, and they are a

distinct hindrance to her hoydenish activities. They are not