Household Education Part 3

CHAPTER X.

CARE OF THE POWERS CONTINUED:--FEAR.

There is nothing in which children differ more than in their capacity for Fear. But every child has it more or less,--or ought to have it: for nothing can be made of a human being who has never experienced it. A child who has never known any kind of fear can have no power of Imagination;--can feel no wonder, no impulse of life, no awe or veneration. Such a case probably does not exist, except in a condition of idiotcy. A child who is called fearless, and who is congratulated upon this,--who shows no shyness of strangers, who does not mind cold water, or falls, or being in the dark, who runs after animals, and plays with ugly insects, may yet cower under a starry sky, or tremble at thunder, or be impressed for life by a mysterious dream. It is for the parents to watch the degree and direction of an infant's fear, firmly a.s.sured that whatever be this degree and direction, all may end well under prudent care.

The least favourable case is that of the apathetic child. When it appears indifferent to whatever may happen to it, and shrinks from nothing, it must be as incapable of hope and enjoyment as of fear, and there must be something amiss in its health,--in its nervous system; and its health is what must be looked to first. It must be well nourished and amused; its perceptive faculties must be exercised, and every sort of activity must be encouraged. If this succeeds, and its feelings begin to show themselves, fear will come with the rest; and then its education in that respect must begin. But it must ever be carefully remembered that fear often puts on the appearance of apathy,--especially in a proud child. No creature is so intensely reserved as a proud and timid child: and the cases are few in which the parents know anything of the agonies of its little heart, the spasms of its nerves, the soul-sickness of its days, the horrors of its nights. It hides its miseries under an appearance of indifference or obstinacy, till its habitual terror impairs its health, or drives it into a temper of defiance or recklessness. I can speak with some certainty of this, from my own experience. I was as timid a child as ever was born; yet n.o.body knew or could know, the extent of this timidity; for though abundantly open about everything else, I was as secret as the grave about this. I had a dream at four years old which terrified me to such an excess that I cannot now recal it without a beating of the heart. I could not look up at the sky on a clear night; for I felt as if it was only just above the tree tops, and must crush me. I could not cross the yard except at a run, from a sort of feeling, with no real belief,--that a bear was after me. The horrors of my nights were inexpressible. The main terror however was a magic-lantern which we were treated with once a year, and sometimes twice. We used to talk of this exhibition as a prodigious pleasure; and I contrived to reckon on it as such: but I never saw the white cloth, with its circle of yellow light, without being in a cold perspiration from head to foot. One of the pictures on the slides was always suppressed by my father, lest it should frighten the little ones;--a dragon's head, vomiting flames. He little thought that a girl of thirteen could be terrified by this: but when I was thirteen,--old enough to be put in charge of some children who were to see the magic lantern,--this slide was exhibited by one of my brothers among the rest.

I had found it hard enough to look and laugh before; and now I turned so faint that I could not stand, but by grasping a chair. But for the intensity of my shame, I should have dropped. Much of the benefit of instruction was lost to me during all the years that I had masters: my memory failed me when they knocked at the door, and I could never ask a question, or get voice to make a remark. I could never play to my music master, or sing with a clear voice but when I was sure n.o.body could hear me. Under all this, my health was bad; my behaviour was dogged and provoking, and my temper became for a time insufferable. Its improvement began from the year when I first obtained some release from habitual fear. During these critical years I misled everybody about me by a habit of concealment on this one subject which I am sure I should not now have strength for under any inducement whatever. Because I climbed our apple tree, and ran along the top of a high wall, and took great leaps, and was easily won by benevolent strangers, and because I was never known to hint or own myself afraid, no one suspected that fear was at the bottom of the immoveable indifference and apparently unfeeling obstinacy by which I perplexed and annoyed everybody about me.

I make these confessions willingly, in the hope that some inexperienced or busy parent may be awakened by them to observe whether the seeming apathy of a child be really from indifference, or the outward working of some hidden pa.s.sion of fear.

Bold children are good and promising subjects; and it is a delightful thing to a parent's heart to see an infant fairly trying its powers against difficulties and obstacles--confronting nature in all seasons of light and darkness, of suns.h.i.+ne and tempest, in the face of strangers and friends alike, free and fearless. It is delightful to think how much misery and embarra.s.sment he is spared, by his happy const.i.tution of nerves and brain. But, while the proud parent sees in him the future discoverer or sailor, or leader among men, it must be remembered that in order to become great, in order to become truly a man at all, he must learn and endure much that can be learned and endured only through fear, and the conquest of it. That there is some fear in him is certain; and the parent must silently search it out, and train it up into that awe and modesty which are necessary to the high courage of a whole life. No man or woman can be a faithful servant of Duty, qualified to live, suffer, and die for it, who has not grown up in awe of something higher than himself--in veneration of some powers greater than he can understand; and this awe and veneration have in them a large element of fear at the beginning. What this element is, in each case, the parents must set themselves to understand. Too many think it their duty to make a child afraid, if fear does not seem to come of itself: and too many do this without thinking it their duty, from the spirit of opposition being excited in themselves, from the experience of inconvenient fearlessness in the child. I have known a tutor avow his practice of beating a bold boy till he broke two canes over him, because the boy ought to learn that he is under a power (a power of arm) greater than his own, and must, through fear of it, apply himself to his appointed business. Such inflictions make a boy reckless, or obstinate, or deceitful. And I have seen far too many instances of irritable parents who have tried to manage a high-spirited child by threats; and, the threats failing, by blows, or shutting up in the dark, or hobgoblin prophecies, which have created no real awe or obedience, but only defiance, or forced and sullen submission. This will never do. A tender parent will never have the heart to breed fear in a child, knowing that "fear hath torment." A truly loving parent will know that it would be less unkind to bruise his child's limbs, or burn its flesh, than to plant torturing feelings in his mind. The most effectual way, for all purposes, is to discover the fear that is already there, in order to relieve him from it, by changing this weakness into a source of strength and comfort. What is it--this fear that lies hidden in him? A boy who is not afraid of the dark, or of a bull, or of a ghost, may tremble at the sight of a drunken man, or at the hearing of an oath. A girl who is not afraid of a spider or a toad, nor of thieves, nor of climbing ladders, may tremble at the moaning of the wind in the chimney, or at a frown from her mother, or at entering a sick chamber. Whatever be the fear, let the parents watch, carefully but silently, till they have found it out: and, having found it out, let them lead on the child to conquest, both by reason and by bringing such courage as he has to bear on the weak point. In any case, whether of a bold or a timid child, the only completely effectual training comes from the parents' example. If the every day life of the parents shows that they dread nothing but doing wrong, for either themselves or their children, the fears of the most timid and of the boldest will alike take this direction, sooner or later: and the courage of both will, with more or less delay, become adequate to bear and do anything for conscience'

sake. If it be the clear rule and habit of an entire household to dread and detest only one thing, the fear and dislike of every mind in the household will become concentred upon that one thing, and every heart will become stout to avoid and repel it. And if the one dreaded thing be sin, it is well; for the courage of each and all will be perpetually reinforced by the whole strength of the best faculties of every mind.

As for the case of the timid child,--let not the parent be disheartened, for the n.o.blest courage of man or woman has often grown out of the excessive fears of the child. It is true, the little creature is destined to undergo many a moment of agony, many an hour of misery, many a day of discouragement; but all this pain may be more than compensated for by the attainment of such a freedom and strength at last as may make it feel as if it had pa.s.sed from h.e.l.l to heaven. Think what it must be for a being who once scarcely dared to look round from fear of lights on the ceiling or shadows on the wall, who started at the patter of the rain, or the rustle of the birds leaving the spray, who felt suffocated by the breeze and maddened by the summer lightning, to pa.s.s free, fearless and glad through all seasons and their change,--all climes and their mysteries and dangers;--to pa.s.s exhilarated through raging seas, over glaring deserts, and among wild forests! Think what it must be for a creature who once trembled before a new voice or a grave countenance, and writhed under a laugh of ridicule, and lied, at the cost of deep mental agony, to avoid a rebuke,--think what it must be to such a creature to find itself at last free and fearless,--enjoying such calm satisfaction within as to suffer nothing from the ridicule or the blame of those who do not know his mind, and so thoroughly acquainted with the true values of things as to have no dread of sickness or poverty, or the world's opinion, because no evil that can befal him can touch his peace!

Think what a n.o.ble work it will be to raise your trembling little one to such a condition as this, and you will be eager to begin the task at once, and patient and watchful to continue it from day to day.

First, how to begin. The most essential thing for a timid infant is to have an absolutely unfailing refuge in its mother. It may seem unnecessary to say this. It may appear impossible that a mother's tenderness should ever fail towards a helpless little creature who has nothing but that tenderness to look to: but alas! it is not so. I know a lady who is considered very sweet-tempered, and who usually is so--kind and hospitable, and fond of her children. Her infant under six months old was lying on her arm one day when the dessert was on the table; and the child was eager after the bright gla.s.ses and spoons, and more restless than was convenient. After several attempts to make it lie quiet, the mother slapped it--slapped it hard. This was from an emotion of disappointed vanity, from vexation that the child was not "good"

before visitors. If such a thing could happen, may we not fear that other mothers may fail in tenderness,--in the middle of the night, for instance, after a toilsome day, when kept awake by the child's restlessness, or amidst the hurry of the day, when business presses, and the little creature will not take its sleep? Little do such mothers know the fatal mischief they do by impairing their child's security with them. If they did, they would undergo anything before they would let a harsh word or a sharp tone escape them, or indulge in a severe look or a hasty movement. A child's heart responds to the tones of its mother's voice like a harp to the wind; and its only hope for peace and courage is in hearing nothing but gentleness from her, and experiencing nothing but unremitting love, whatever may be its troubles elsewhere. Supposing this to be all right, the mother will feel herself from the first the depositary of its confidence;--a confidence as sacred as any other, though tacit, and about matters which may appear to all but itself and her infinitely small. Entering by sympathy into its fears, she will incessantly charm them away, till the child becomes open to reason,--and even afterwards; for the most terrible fears are precisely those which have nothing to do with reason. She will bring it acquainted with every object in the room or house, letting it handle in merry play everything which could look mysterious to its fearful eyes, and rendering it familiar with every household sound. Some of my worst fears in infancy were from lights and shadows. The lamp-lighter's torch on a winter's afternoon, as he ran along the street, used to cast a gleam, and the shadows of the window frames on the ceiling; and my blood ran cold at the sight, every day, even though I was on my father's knee, or on the rug in the middle of the circle round the fire. Nothing but compulsion could make me enter our drawing-room before breakfast on a summer morning; and if carried there by the maid, I hid my face in a chair that I might not see what was dancing on the wall. If the sun shone (as it did at that time of day,) on the gla.s.s l.u.s.tres on the mantel-piece, fragments of gay colour were cast on the wall; and as they danced when the gla.s.s drops were shaken, I thought they were alive,--a sort of imps.

But, as I never told any body what I felt, these fears could not be met, or charmed away; and I grew up to an age which I will not mention before I could look steadily at prismatic colours dancing on the wall. Suffice it that it was long after I had read enough of Optics to have taught any child how such colours came there. Many an infant is terrified at the shadow of a perforated night-lamp, with its round s.p.a.ces of light.

Many a child lives in perpetual terror of the eyes of portraits on the walls,--or of some grotesque shape in the pattern of the paper-hangings.

Sometimes the terror is of the clack of the distant loom, or of the clink from the tinman's, or of the rumble of carts under a gateway, or of the creak of a water-wheel, or the gush of a mill-race. Everything is or may be terrifying to a timid infant; and it is therefore a mother's charge to familiarise it gently and playfully with everything that it can possibly notice, making sport with all sights, and inciting it to imitation of all sounds--from the drone of the pretty bee to the awful cry of the old clothes-man;--from the twitter of the sparrows on the roof to the toll of the distant church bell.

It is a matter of course that no mother will allow any ignorant person to have access to her child who will frighten it with goblin stories, or threats of the old black man. She might as well throw up her charge at once, and leave off thinking of household education altogether, as permit her child to be exposed to such maddening inhumanity as this. The instances are not few of idiotcy or death from terror so caused.

While thus preventing or scattering fears which arise from the imagination, both parents should be constantly using the little occasions which are always arising, for exercising their child's courage. The most timid children have always courage in one direction or another. While I was trembling and fainting under magic-lanterns and street cries, I could have suffered any pain and died any death without fear, the circ.u.mstances being fairly laid before me. Let the timid child be made hardy in its play by example and encouragement. Let it be cheered on to meet necessary pain without flinching,--the taking out a thorn, or pulling out a tooth. Let it early hear of real heroic deeds,--hear them spoken of with all the affectionate admiration with which we naturally speak of such acts. If a life is saved from fire or drowning, let the children hear of it as a joyful fact. Let them hear how steadily William Tell's little son stood, for his father to shoot through the apple. Let them hear how the good man who was on his way to be burnt for his religion took off his shoes, and gave them to a barefooted man who came to stare at him, saying that the poor man wanted the shoes, but he could do without them now. Let them hear of the other good man who was burnt for his religion, and who promised some friends, in danger of the same fate, that he would clasp his hands above his head in the midst of the fire, if he found the pain so bearable that he did not repent, and who did lift up his arms and join them after his hands were consumed,--so giving his friends on the hill-side comfort and strength. If any child of your acquaintance does a brave thing, or bears pain cheerfully, let your children hear of it as a good and happy thing.

Above all, let them see, as I said before, all their lives long, that _you_ fear nothing but wrong-doing,--neither tempests nor comets, nor reports of famine or fever, nor the tongues of the quarrelsome, nor any other of the accidents of life,--no pain, in short, but pain of conscience,--and the same spirit will strengthen in them. Their fear will follow the direction of yours; their courage will come in sympathy with yours; and their minds will fill more and more with thoughts of hope and heroism which must in time drive out such remaining terrors as cannot be met by fact or reason.

In this fearlessness of yours is included fearlessness for your children, as well as for yourselves. While their limbs are soft and feeble, of course you must be strength and safety to them: but when they arrive at a free use of their limbs and senses, let them fully enjoy that free use. We English are behind almost every nation in the strength and hardihood of the race of children. In America, I have seen little boys and girls perched in trees overhanging fearful precipices, and crawling about great holes in bridges, while the torrent was rus.h.i.+ng below; and I could not learn that accidents from such practices were ever heard of. In Switzerland I have seen mere infants scrambling among the rocks after the goats,--themselves as safe as kids, from the early habit of relying on their own powers. In Egypt and Nubia I have seen five-year old boys poppling about like ducks in the rapids of the Nile, while some, not much older, were not satisfied with hauling and pus.h.i.+ng, as our boat ascended the cataract, but swam and dived, to heave off her keel from sunken rocks. Such children are saved from danger, as much as from fear, by an early use of all the powers they have: and it would be a happy thing for many an English child if its parents were brave enough to encourage it to try how much it can do with its wonderful little body. Of this, however, we shall have to say more under another head.

CHAPTER XI.

CARE OF THE POWERS CONTINUED:--PATIENCE.

Some may be surprised to find Patience spoken of among the Powers of Man. They have been accustomed to consider it a pa.s.sive quality, and not as involving action of the mind. They do not find it in any catalogue of the organs of the brain, and have always supposed it a mere negation of the action of those organs.

But patience is no negation. It is the vigorous and sustained action, amidst outward stillness, of some of the most powerful faculties with which the human being is endowed; and primarily of its powers of Firmness and Resistance. The man who holds up his head, quiet and serene, through a season of unavoidable poverty or undeserved disgrace, is exercising his power of Firmness as vigorously as the general who pursues his warfare without change of purpose through a long campaign; and a lame child, strong and spirited, who sits by cheerfully to see his companions leaping ditches, is or has been engaged in as keen a combat with opposing forces as a couple of pugilists. In the case of the patient, the resolution and resistance are brought to bear against invisible enemies, which are the more, and not the less, hard to conquer from their a.s.saults being made in silence, and having to be met in the solitude of the inner being. The man patient under poverty or disgrace has to carry on an active interior conflict with his baffled hope, his grieved domestic affections, his natural love of ease and enjoyment, his mortified ambition, his shaken self-esteem, and his yearning after sympathy. And the lame child among the leapers has to contend alone with most of these mortifications, and with his stimulating animal spirits besides. Nothing can be further from pa.s.siveness than his state in his hour of trial, though he may sit without moving a muscle. He is putting down the swellings of his little heart, and taming his instincts, and rousing his will, and searching out n.o.ble supports among his highest ideas and best feelings--putting on his invisible armour as eagerly as any hero whom the trumpet calls from his rest.

Patience is no more like pa.s.siveness in its smallest exercises than in these great ones. Look at the ill-nursed pa.s.sive infant,--how it hangs over its mother's shoulder, or slouches on her arm,--its eye dull, its face still, its movements slow: see how, when old enough to amuse itself, it sits on the floor by the hour together, jangling a bunch of keys, lulling itself with that noise, instead of making any of its own!

Contrast with this the lively infant beginning to be trained to patience. It does not cry for its food or toy, as it used to do, but its limbs are all active, it fidgets, and it searches its mother's face for hope and encouragement not to cry. And when more advanced, how busy is its little soul while it makes no noise, and postpones its play for the sake of the baby. If it sits at watch beside the cradle, how it glances about to warn away the kitten, or puts its finger on its lips if the door opens, or watches so intently for baby's eye-lids to open as to start when it jerks its hand. If waiting for play till baby has had its meal, how it stands at its mother's knee, making folds in her gown,--see-sawing its body perhaps, and fetching deep sighs, to throw off its impatience, but speaking no word--making no complaint till baby has had its dues. And when its turn is come, baby being laid down, what a spring into the lap, what a clasp of the neck is there! while the child with the keys has to be lifted from the floor like a bag of sand.

As patience includes strong action of the mind, the vivacious child has a much better chance of becoming patient than the pa.s.sive one;--so far are pa.s.siveness and patience from being alike. Patience is indeed the natural first step in that self-government which is essential to the whole purpose of human life. It is impossible to overrate the importance of this self-government; and therefore it is impossible to overrate the importance of this first step,--the training to patience. And the vivacious child is happy above the apathetic one in being fitted to enter at once upon the training from the earliest moment that the will is naturally capable of action.

And now about this training.

It must begin before the little creature is capable of voluntary effort.

The mother must take its little troubles upon herself, and help it all she can, till the habit of patience is completely formed;--which will be long. She must not only comfort it in its restlessness and inability to wait, but beguile it of its impatience. She must amuse it, and turn away its attention from its grievance, or its object of desire,--never yielding what it ought not to have, and always indulging it where there is no reason for denial. In time, the infant will learn that it can wait, and in what cases it must wait; and from that time, its work of self-control begins. I have before my mind's eye a little child of sensitive nerves and strong will who early showed by her loud impatient cry how she might suffer in after life, if the habit of patience were not timely formed. It was timely formed. She died of scarlet fever before she was four years old; and the self-command that little creature showed amidst the restlessness of her fever and the grievous pain of her sore-throat, was a comfort which will remain for ever to those who mourn her. It of course lessened her own suffering, and it cheered the heart of her wise mother with a joy which lights up her memory. Here the great condition was fulfilled which is essential to the work;--the parents are themselves patient and consistent. Self-control can never be taught without example. From the beginning an infant can perceive whether the moral atmosphere around it is calm or stormy, and will naturally become calm or stormy accordingly. If its mother scolds the servant, if its father gets into a pa.s.sion with the elder children, if there is disturbance of mind because a meal is delayed,--if voices grow loud and angry in argument, or there is gloom in the face or manner of any grown person who has a headache, how is the infant to learn to wait and be cheerful under its little troubles?--these little troubles being to it misfortunes as great as it is at all able to bear.

I would not cite the old quaker discipline of families as a pattern of what is to be wished in all things. There was too often a want of tenderness, and of freedom and of mirth--such as children, need, and as are quite compatible with the formation of a habit of patience: but in that one respect,--of patience,--how admirable are the examples that many of us have seen! The cultivation of serenity being a primary religious duty with the parents, how the spirit and the habit spread through the children! Before they could understand that the grown people about them were waiting for the guidance of "the Inward Witness," they saw and felt that the temper was that of humble waiting; and they too learned to wait. When set up on a high stool from which they could not get down, and bid to sit still without toys for a prescribed time, how many a restless child learned to subdue his inward chafing, and to sit still till the hand of the clock showed that he might ask to come down!

This exercise was a preparation for the silent meeting, where there would be less to amuse his eyes, and no one could tell how long he might have to sit; and how well the majority of quaker children went through this severer test! Few of us will approve of this kind of discipline. We think it bad, because unnatural. We think that the trials of a child's patience which come of themselves every day are quite enough for its powers, and, if rightly used, for its training; but the instance shows how powerful is the example of the parents and the habit of the household in training little children to self-control.

Yes,--the little occasions of every day are quite enough: and if they were not, little could be gained, and much would be lost, by inventing more. There is tyranny in making a lively child sit on a high stool with nothing to do, even though the thing is ordained for its own good; and every child has a keen sense of tyranny. The patience taught by such means cannot be thorough. It cannot be an amiable and cheerful patience, pervading the whole temper. It is much better to use those natural occasions which it is clear that the parent does not create. There is seldom or never a day when something does not happen to irritate a child;--it is hungry, or thirsty, or tired; it gets a tumble, or dislikes cold water, or wants to be petted when its mother is busy; or breaks a toy, or the rain comes when it wants to go out, or p.u.s.s.y runs away from play, or it has an ache or a pain somewhere. All these are great misfortunes for the time to a little child: and if it can learn by degrees to bear them, first by being beguiled of them, and then by being helped through them, and at last by sustaining them alone, there is every hope that the severe trials of after life will be sustained with less effort than is required by these trifles now. A four-year-old child that can turn away and find amus.e.m.e.nt for itself when its mother cannot attend to it,--and swallow its tears when the rain will not let it sow its garden seeds, and stifle its sobs when it has knocked its elbow, and forgive any one who has broken its toy, and lie still without complaining when it is ill, gives the fairest promise of being able to bear serenely the severest calamities of after life. For my own part, I feel that no spectacle of fort.i.tude in man or woman is more animating and touching than what may be seen in little children, who have seriously entered upon the great work of self-government,--sustained by wise and tender parental help. Some time ago, I was in the house with a little girl of three years old, whose throat was one day very sore. She tried in vain to get down some dinner,--cried, was amused, and went to sleep. On waking, some of the soft rice-pudding from our table was tried; but the throat was now worse, and she cried again. To amuse her, she was set up at our table in her little chair, between her mama and me. I saw the desperate efforts she was making to keep down her sobs: and when she looked over to her father, and said softly "I mean to be dood," it was too much for others besides me. Her tender father helped her well through it. He told her a long long story about something he had seen that morning; and as her large eyes were fixed on his face, the sobs subsided, and she became absorbed in what he was telling her. That child was as truly an object of reverence to us as any patient sufferer of mature age.

The finest opportunity for the cultivation of patience in a household is where there are many children,--boys and girls,--with no great difference of years between them. Here, in the first place, the parents have need of all the faith and patience they have, to bear hopefully with the impatience of some of their children. There are moments, hours, and days, in the best households, when the conscientious and tender mother feels her heart rent by the spectacle of the quarrels of her children. It is a truth which had better be at once fully admitted, that where there are many children nearly approaching each other in age, their wills must clash, their pa.s.sions become excited, and their affections be for the time over-borne. When a mother sees her children scratch and strike, when her ear catches the bitter words of pa.s.sion between brothers, her heart stands still with grief and dread. But she must be comforted. All may be well if she overrules this terrible necessity as she may. She must remember that the strength of will thus shown is a great power for use in the acquisition of patience. She must remember that the odiousness of pa.s.sion is not yet evident to her children, as it is to her. She must remember how small is the moral comprehension of a child, and therefore how intense are its desires, and how strong is the provocation when those desires are thwarted. She must remember that time and enlargement of views are what children want to make them men: and that time and enlargement are sure to come to these young creatures, and make men of them, if the parents do their part. Her part to-day is to separate the children who cannot agree; to give time and opportunity for their pa.s.sions to subside, the desire of the moment to pa.s.s away, and the affections and the reason to be aroused. She must obtain their confidence apart, and bring them together again when they can forgive and agree. If she finds that such troubles enable her to understand her children better, and reveal their own minds to themselves, and if such failures help them to a more careful self-rule, the event may be well worth the pain.

I have said that there are few or no large families of children in which quarrelling does not sometimes occur. But if the quarrelling does not early cease--if the liability does not pa.s.s away like the diseases of childhood, it is sadly plain that the fair opportunity of cultivating a habit of patience has been lost or misused. It must be early and watchfully used. Every member of the household must be habituated, constantly and as a privilege, to wait and forbear for the sake of others. The father takes the lead--as he ought to do in all good things.

His children see in him, from year to year, an example of patient toil--patient and cheerful toil--whether he be statesman, merchant, farmer, shop-keeper, artizan or labourer. The mother comes next,--seen to wait patiently on her sick or helpless infant, and to be forbearing with servants and children, enduring in illness and fatigue, and cheerful through everything. Then come the elder children, who must have been long and steadily trained, through early self-control, to wait, not only in tenderness on the helpless infant, but in forbearance on the weakness of those younger and frailer than themselves. Then come those of the middle age, who have to wait in such patience as they are capable of under their own personal trials, and the will and pleasure of their parents and elders. And lastly come the little ones, who are likely to have plenty of opportunity for self-command amidst the business and chances of a large family, and the variety of influences ever at work therein. So various a household is a complete little world to children--the discipline of which is no small privilege as being preparatory to that of the larger world upon which they must enter after their habits of mind are formed. To the parents the advantage is inestimable of having this little world, not only under their eye, so that they may timely see how their children are likely to fare morally in the great world of adult life, but under their hand, so that they can, according to their discretion, adapt its influences to the needs of their charge.

Some households,--and not a few--are made a harsh school, or a sweet home of Patience, by the presence of some infirmity of body or mind in some one member. This is a case so frequent, and the circ.u.mstance is so important, that I must devote my next pages to it.

CHAPTER XII.

CARE OF THE POWERS: PATIENCE--INFIRMITY.

Though the great majority of children born into the world have five senses and four limbs, a full-formed brain, and a well-formed frame, there are many thousands in every civilised country that have not: and so many more thousands are interested in their lot, that it is, or ought to be, a subject of wide and deep concern how their case should be treated, for their own sake, and that of all connected with them. It is a matter of great and increasing surprise, when elections of objects for Blind and Deaf and Dumb Inst.i.tutions, or a special census for the purpose occurs, how very numerous are the Blind and Deaf and Dumb: and much greater still is the proportion of persons who, through ill health or accident, lose a limb, or grow up deformed. And I believe the cases of total or partial idiotcy are more numerous even than these. The number of persons thus interested in the subject of bodily infirmity is very large indeed; and it would be a great omission in treating of Household Education, not to speak of what concerns so many homes.

The first impulse of a parental heart, on becoming aware of the infirmity of a child, is to lavish on the sufferer all its tenderness, and thus to strive to compensate to it for what it must forego and suffer from its peculiarity. The impulse, being natural and unselfish, is right; but it is not enough. It is very far indeed from being all that is due to a creature whose helplessness gives it a sacred claim upon its whole race for whatever aid can be afforded it. If it were good that a mother should nurse an infirm child through the day, and guard it all the night:--that she should devote all her time and all her love, and sacrifice all her pleasures to it, and minister to its wishes every hour of its life;--if it were good that she should do all this, it would not be enough. It is not good, and it is not enough.

The true claim of an infirm child, as of every other child, is to be made the most of. And no human being was ever yet made the most of by lavish and unchastened indulgence. Every human being,--not excepting even the idiot,--has a world of its own, wherein to act and enjoy: and the parent's charge is to enable it to act and enjoy in its own world in the fullest and freest manner possible.

Let us take the worst case first:--that of the idiot.

It is never the case that a human being has no faculties at all. A child whose brain did not act at all, could not live. It could not move, nor swallow or digest food, nor see, nor hear, nor breathe. And it seldom or never happens that it has not many faculties, though the want, in an idiot, of what we call Sense makes us too careless in observing what powers he has, and in making what we can of them. From the deficiency of some faculties, and the consequent want of co-operation and balance among his powers, the idiot lacks sense, and must therefore be taken care of all his days, like an infant: but it does not follow that he can never do and enjoy more than an infant. On the contrary, we see, oftener than not, that an idiot has some strong faculties. One may be shockingly gluttonous and sensual: another is desperately orderly: another is always singing: another is wonderful in arithmetic, though n.o.body can conceive how he learned: another draws every thing he sees: another imitates everything he hears: another is always building clay houses, or cutting wood or paper into shapes: another can always tell the time--day or night--even where there is no clock in the house or within hearing.

One will share everything he has to eat with the dog, or the cat, or the bird: another caresses his mother, or brothers and sisters, and follows them about wherever they go; while another gives no heed to anybody, but stands out of doors for hours listening to the wind or the birds, and sits a whole winter evening watching the blazing fire. One will not be ruled, and fights everybody who tries to control him, while another is in a transport or an agony, according as his mother looks pleased or displeased with him. All these tendencies show that some part or other of the brain is alive and active: and it is the parent's business, with this child as with the rest, to make the most that can be made of his brain.

As reason cannot be used in his case, there must be all the more diligence in the use of Habit: and as he has no reason of his own, that of his family must be made available to him to the utmost. He must be made the family charge; and every member of the household must be admitted into the council held in his behalf. There is hardly a child so young but that it can understand the main points of the special training required, and the reasons for them. There is hardly a child so young but that it can understand that John does not know, as other people do, when to leave off eating; and that this is why the proper quant.i.ty is set before him, and no more is given: and there are not a few little ones who will refrain from asking for more of a good thing at table because John is to be trained not to ask for more. If the object is to make John clean and tidy, the youngest will bear cold water, and the trouble of dressing cheerfully, that John may see what other people do, and perhaps learn to imitate them. If John ever sings, some little one will begin to sing when John looks dull; and the family will learn as many tunes as they can to give him a variety. If he is fond of arranging things, they will lead him to the cupboard or the play-room, when it wants putting in order. When he mopes, they will bring him the scissors and paper, or the slate and pencil, or they will empty the box of bricks on the floor, that the pleasant rattle may tempt him to come and build. If, happily, the time should arrive when John may learn to do something useful, every one takes pride in it. At worst, he may perhaps be trained to work the mangle, or to turn the wheel at the rope-walk. His faculty of order may be turned to account by letting him set the dinner and tea-table, and clear away. By a faculty of constructiveness, he may become a fair basket-maker. By his power of imitation, he may learn to dig in the field, or to saw wood, or blow gla.s.s, or do other such mechanical work.

If the whole family not only love their poor brother, but take his interests fairly to heart, his case may be made something of in one way or another. At worst he will probably be saved from being offensive or annoying to those about him;--a thing almost always practicable in cases of idiotcy from birth: and it is very likely that he will be enabled to pa.s.s through life, not only harmless, but busy, and, to some extent, useful, and as happy as his deficient nature permits.

This is not a case in which patience can be spoken of as a solace to the individual. He may be saved from the misery of impatience by wise training,--by the formation of habits of quietness, under the rule of steady, gentle authority. This may often be done: but the n.o.ble and sweet solace of patience under his restrictions is not for him: for he is unconscious, and does not need it. It remains for those who do need it--for those who suffer for him and by him--for the father who sighs that his son can never enjoy the honour and privilege of toil, or the blessing of a home;--for the mother whose pillow is wet with the tears she sheds over her child's privations;--for the children whose occupations and play are disturbed by the poor brother who wants their playthings, and hides or spoils their books or work. They all have need of much patience; and, under good training, they obtain patience according to their need. From what I have seen, I know that the training of such a being may become a cheerful and hopeful object to his parents, and one which strengthens them to repress his whims and deny his animal appet.i.tes, and inflict the pain of their displeasure upon him, in the patient hope of giving him some degree of the privilege of self-government. From what I have seen, I know that the most self-willed and irritable child of such a family may learn never to be angry with John, however pa.s.sionate at times with others. Toys broken by John are not to be cried for;--work spoiled by John is to be cheerfully done over again: and everybody is to help to train John not to do such mischief again.

Poor John knows nothing of life and its uses. He goes through his share of it, like one walking in a dream, and then pa.s.ses away without leave-taking. He pa.s.ses away early; for people in his state rarely live very long. Brain is the great condition of life; and an imperfect brain usually brings early death. It is when he has pa.s.sed away that the importance of poor John's life becomes felt and understood. Neighbours may and do reasonably call his departure a blessing; and the parents and brethren may and do reasonably feel it an unspeakable relief from anxiety and restraint. But they mourn him with a degree of sorrow surprising to themselves. When the parents mark the habits of self-government, and the temper of cheerful patience, generated in their remaining children, they feel as if under deep obligations to their dead son, as the instrument of this. And the youngest of the tribe looks round wistfully for John, and daily wishes that he was here, to do what he was fond of doing, and enjoy the little pleasures which were looked upon as particularly his own.

If the worst case of infirmity may issue thus, we may turn cheerfully to some which are light in comparison, however sad when looked at by themselves--the cases of blind and deaf children. What is to be made of these?

The case of the deaf is unquestionably the worst of the two, when the deficiency is from birth. The subsequent loss of either sense is quite a different matter. Then, blindness is the severest privation of the two, from its compulsory idleness, and total exclusion from the objects of the lost sense, while the deaf can always be busy in mind and hands, and retain the most important part of the world of sound in written and printed speech. It is the privation of language which makes the case of those born deaf worse than that of the born blind. Those born deaf are dumb; and they are rendered incapable of any high degree of intellectual and moral cultivation, by being cut off from all adequate knowledge of the meaning of language, and from the full reception of most abstract ideas. This is not the place for discussion on this subject. It is enough to say here, that every one who has tried knows that though it is easy to teach a deaf and dumb child what is meant by the words "dog,"

"sheep," "spoon," "tree," "table," &c., it is found beyond measure difficult to teach it the meaning of "Monday," "Tuesday," "Wednesday,"

&c., and of "love," "truth," "hatred," "wisdom," and the names of unseen things in general. There is every reason to believe that the most highly educated deaf and dumb persons, who use language readily and prettily, have yet very narrow and superficial minds--from language not being to them natural speech, incessantly bringing them into communication with other minds, but a lesson taught as we teach blind children about colours, which they may speak about without making mistakes, but can never understand.

It is necessary for the parents of the deaf and dumb to be aware of these things, if they are to look their child's lot steadily in the face, and learn what is the best that can be made of it. They must apply themselves chiefly to give it what it is least likely to obtain from others--not so much ideas of sight, touch, smell, and taste, as of unseen things. They must ever bear in mind that the great purpose of the human ear and of speech is not so much to convey ideas of sound--sweet and profitable as is all the natural music of the universe--as of unseen things--of the whole world of the spirit, from which their child is naturally shut out by its infirmity. After all that they can do, there will be a sad deficiency; but they must lessen it as much as they can.