The American Child | Page 7

their parents had, nor what their parents try to give them; it is
"what other children have."
Perhaps all children are conventional; certainly American children are.
They wish to have what the other children of their acquaintance have,
they wish to do what those other children do. It is not because mother
wanted a bracelet, and never had it, that the little girl would have a
bracelet; it is because "the other girls have bracelets." Not on account
of the rules that forbade father's dog the house is the small boy happy in
the nightly companionship of his dog; he takes the dog to bed with him
for the reason that "the other boys' dogs sleep with them."
Even unto honors, if they must carry them alone, children in America
would rather not be born. A little girl who lives in my neighborhood
came home from school in tears one day not long ago. Her father is a
celebrated writer. The school-teacher, happening to select one of his

stories to read aloud to the class, mentioned the fact that the author of
the story was the father of my small friend.
"But why are you crying about it, sweetheart?" her father asked. "Do
you think it's such a bad story?"
"Oh, no," the little girl answered; "it is a good enough story. But none
of the other children's fathers write stories! Why do you, daddy? It's so
peculiar!"
It may be that all children, whatever their nationalities, are like this
little girl. We, in America, have a fuller opportunity to become
intimately acquainted with the minds of children than have the people
of any other nation of the earth. For more completely than any other
people do American fathers and mothers make friends and companions
of their children, asking from them, first, love; then, trust; and, last of
all, the deference due them as "elders." Any child may feel as did my
small neighbor about a "peculiar" father; only a child who had been his
comrade as well as his child would so freely have voiced her feeling.
We all remember the little boy in Stevenson's poem, "My Treasures,"
whose dearest treasure, a chisel, was dearest because "very few
children possess such a thing."
Had he been an American child, that chisel would not have been a
"treasure" at all, unless all of the children possessed such a thing.
Not only do the children of our Nation want what the other children of
their circle have when they can use it; they want it even when they
cannot use it. I have a little girl friend who, owing to an accident in her
infancy, is slightly lame. Fortunately, she is not obliged to depend upon
crutches; but she cannot run about, and she walks with a pathetically
halting step.
One autumn this child came to her mother and said: "Mamma, I'd like
to go to dancing-school."
"But, my dearest, I'm afraid--I don't believe--you could learn to dance

--very well," her mother faltered.
"Oh, mamma, I couldn't learn to dance at all!" the little girl exclaimed,
as if surprised that her mother did not fully realize this fact.
"Then, dearest, why do you want to go to dancing-school?" her mother
asked gently.
"The other girls in my class at school are all going," the child said.
Her mother was silent; and the little girl came closer and lifted pleading
eyes to her face. "Please let me go!" she begged. "The others are all
going," she repeated.
"I could not bear to refuse her," the mother wrote to me later. "I let her
go. I feared that it would only make her feel her lameness the more
keenly and be a source of distress to her. But it isn't; she enjoys it. She
cannot even try to learn to dance; but she takes pleasure in being
present and watching the others, to say nothing of wearing a 'dancing-
school dress,' as they do. This morning she said to her father: 'I can't
dance, Papa; but I can talk about it. I learn how at dancing-school. Oh, I
love dancing-school!'"
Her particular accomplishment maybe of minute value in itself; but is
not her content in it a priceless good? If she can continue to enjoy
learning only to talk about the pleasures her lameness will not permit
her otherwise to share, her dancing-school lessons will have taught her
better things than they taught "the other children," who could dance.
That mother was her little girl's confidential friend as well as her
mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and
why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a
genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual--even
though that individual was merely a little child--that led