The American Child | Page 9

of ourselves
at the table.
"I have been seeing 'The Blue Bird,'" he at once answered. "Have you
seen it?" he next asked.
No sooner had she replied than he turned to me. "I suppose, of course,
you've seen it," he said.
"Not yet," I told him; "but I have read it--"
"Oh, so have I!" exclaimed one of the other boys; "and I've seen it, too.
There is one act in the play that isn't in the book--'The Land of
Happiness' it is. My mother says she doesn't think Mr. Maeterlinck
could have written it; it is so different from the rest of the play."
Those present, old and young, who had seen "The Blue Bird" debated
this possibility at some length.
Then the boy who had introduced it said to me: "I wonder, when you
see it, whether you'll think Mr. Maeterlinck wrote 'The Land of
Happiness' act, or not."
"I haven't seen 'The Blue Bird,'" the third boy remarked, "but I've seen

the Coronation pictures." Whereupon we fell to discussing
moving-picture shows.
During the progress of that dinner we considered many other subjects,
lighting upon them casually; touching upon them lightly; and--most
significant of all--discoursing upon them as familiars and equals. None
of us who were grown-up "talked down" to the boys, and certainly none
of the boys "talked up" to us. Each one of them at home was a "dear
partner" of every other member of the family, younger and older, larger
and smaller. Inevitably, each one when away from home became quite
spontaneously an equal shareholder in whatever was to be possessed at
all.
A day or two after the Sunday of that dinner I met one of my boy
guests on the street. "I've seen 'The Blue Bird,'" I said to him; "and I'm
inclined to think that, if Mr. Maeterlinck did write the act 'The Land of
Happiness,' he wrote it long after he had written the rest of the play. I
think perhaps that is why it is so different from the other acts."
"Why, I never thought of that!" the boy cried, with absolute
unaffectedness. He appeared to consider it for a moment, and then he
said: "I'll tell my mother; she'll be interested."
Foreign visitors of distinction not infrequently have accused American
children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated."
Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own
Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are
children in America, as there are children in every land, who are pert,
and lacking in reverence, and sophisticated; but they are in the small
minority, and they are not the children to whom foreigners refer when
they make their sweeping arraignments.
The most gently reared, the most carefully nurtured, of our children are
those usually seen by distinguished foreign visitors; for such foreigners
are apt to be guests of the families to which these children belong. The
spirit of frank camaraderie displayed by the children they mistake for
"pertness"; the trustful freedom of their attitude toward their elders they
interpret as "lack of reverence"; and their eager interest in subjects

ostensibly beyond their years they misread as "sophistication."
It must be admitted that American small boys have not the quaint
courtliness of French small boys; that American little girls are without
the pretty shyness of English little girls. We are compelled to grant that
in America between the nursery and the drawing-room there is no great
gulf fixed. This condition of things has its real disadvantages and trials;
but has it not also its ideal advantages and blessings? Coöperative
living together, in spite of individual differences, is one of these
advantages; tender intimacy between persons of varying ages is one of
these blessings.
A German woman on her first visit to America said to me, as we talked
about children, that, with our National habit of treating them as what
we Americans call "chums," she wondered how parents kept any
authority over them, and especially maintained any government of them,
and for them, without letting it lapse into a government by them.
"I should think that the commandment 'Children, obey your parents'
might be in danger of being overlooked or thrust aside," she said, "in a
country in which children and parents are 'chums,' as Americans say."
That ancient commandment would seem to be too toweringly large to
be overlooked, too firmly embedded in the world to be thrust aside. It is
a very Rock of Gibraltar of a commandment.
American parents do not relinquish their authority over their children.
As for government--like other wise parents, they aim to help it to
develop, as soon as it properly can, from a government of and for their
children into a government by them. Self-government is the