Part 8
There is a place for fiction in the matter of a child’s reading. Good impressions can be made on a child’s mind, and his feelings can be swayed in the direction of the right, by means of a story that is fictitious without being false. And thus it is that the average Sunday-school library book has its mission in the work of child-training. But fiction ought not to be the chief factor in any child’s reading, nor can influence and impressions take the place of instruction and information in the proper filling of his mind’s treasure-chambers. Even if a child were to read only the best religious “story-books” which the world’s literature proffers to him, this reading by itself would not tend to the development of his highest mental faculties, or to the fostering of his truest manhood. Unless he reads also that which adds to his stock of knowledge, and which gives him a fresh interest in the events and personages of the world’s history, a child cannot obey the Divine injunction to grow in knowledge as well as in grace, and he will be the loser by his lack.
That a child is inclined by nature to prefer an amusing or an exciting story-book to a book of straightforward fact, everybody knows. But that is no reason why a child should follow his own unguided tastes in the matter of reading, any more than he should be permitted to indulge at all times his preference, in the realm of appetite, for sweet cakes instead of bread and butter, or for candies rather than meat and potatoes. “A child left to himself causeth shame to his mother,”—and dishonor to himself, in one sphere of action as in another; and unless a parent cultivates a taste for right reading of every sort on a child’s part, that child can never be at his best in the world, nor can his parents have such delight in his attainments as otherwise they might have.
A wise parent can train his children to an interest in any book in which they ought to be interested. He can cultivate in their minds such a taste for books of history, of biography, of travel, of popular science, and of other useful knowledge, that they will find in these books a higher and more satisfying pleasure than is found by their companions in the exciting or delusive narrations of fiction and fancy. Illustrations of this possibility are to be seen on every side. There are boys and girls of ten and twelve years of age whose chief delight in reading is in the realm of instructive fact, and who count it beneath them to take time for the reading of fictitious story-books—religious or sensational. And if more parents were wise and faithful in this department of child-training, there would be more children with this elevated taste in their reading.
It is, however, by no means an easy matter, even though it be a simple one, for a parent to cultivate wisely the taste of his children in their reading. He must, to begin with, recognize the importance and magnitude of his work so far, and must give himself to it from the earlier years of his children until they are well established in the good habits he has aided them to form. He must know what books his children ought to read, and what books ought to be kept away from them. Then he must set himself to make the good books attractive to his children, while he resolutely shuts out from their range of reading those books which are pernicious. All this takes time, and thought, and patience, and determination, and intelligent endeavor on his part; but it is work that is remunerative beyond its extremest cost.
The exclusion of that which is evil is peculiarly important in this realm of effort; for if a child has once gained a love of the exciting incidents of the book of sensational fiction, it is doubly difficult to win him to a love of narrations of sober and instructive fact. Hence every parent should see to it that his child is permitted no indulgence in the reading of high-colored and over-wrought works of fiction presented in the guise of truth—with or without a moral; whether they come in books from a neighbor’s house, or as a Christmas or birthday gift from a relative, or are brought from the Sunday-school library. Fairy tales are well enough in their time and way, if they are read as fairy tales, and are worth the reading—are the best of their kind. Fiction has its place in a child’s reading, within due bounds of measure and quality. But neither fancy nor fiction is to be tolerated in a child’s reading in such a form as to excite the mind, or to vitiate the taste of the child. And for the limitation of such reading by a child the child’s parent must hold himself always responsible. No pains should be spared to guard the child from mental as well as from physical poison.
Keeping bad books away from a child is, however, only one part of the work to be done in the effort at cultivating a child’s taste in reading. A child must be led to have an intelligent interest in books that are likely to be helpful to him; and this task calls for skill and tact, as well as patience and persistency on the parent’s part. Good books must be looked up by the parent, and when they are put into the child’s hand it must be with such words of commendation and explanation as to awaken in the child’s mind a desire to become possessed of their contents. The sex and age and characteristics and tendencies of the child, as well as the circumstances and associations of the hour, must all be borne in mind in the choice and presentation of the book or books for a child’s reading; and a due regard to these incidents will have its effect on the mind of the child under training.
For example, when the Fourth of July is at hand, or is in some way brought into notice, then is a good time to tell a child briefly about the war of the American Revolution, and to give him a book about the Boys of Seventy-six. When his attention is called to a picture of the Tower of London, he is in a good mood to read some of the more impressive stories of English history. If he is at the seashore, or among the mountains, on a visit, he can be shown some object of nature,—a shell or a crab, a rock or a tree,—as a means of interesting him in a little book about this or that phase of natural history or of woodcraft.
A child’s question about Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome, may be improved to his advantage by pointing him to the narrative of the Children’s Crusade, or to some of the collections of classic stories in guise for children. An incidental reference to Africa, or India, or the South Sea Islands, may open the way for a talk with a child about missions in those parts of the world, and may be used to give him an interest in some of the more attractive books in description of missionary heroes ancient and modern. The every-day mentions of men and things may, each and all of them, in their order, be turned to good account, as a help in cultivating a taste in reading, by a parent who is alert to make use of such opportunities.
A parent ought to be constantly on the watch to suggest books that are suitable for his child’s reading, and to incite his child to an interest in those books. It is a good plan to talk with a child in advance about the subject treated in a book, which the parent is disposed to commend, and to tell the child that which will tend to awaken his wish to know more about it, as preparatory to handing the book to him. Reading with the child, and questioning the child concerning his reading, will intensify the child’s interest in his reading, and will promote his enjoyment as he reads.
And so it is that a child’s taste in reading will be cultivated steadily and effectively in the right direction by any parent who is willing to do the work that is needful, and who is able to do it wisely. A child needs help in this sphere, and he welcomes help when it is brought to him. If the help be given him, he will find pleasure as well as profit in its using; but if he goes on without help, he is liable to go astray, and to be a lifetime sufferer in consequence.
XIX.
_THE VALUE OF TABLE-TALK._
In proportion as man rises in the intellectual scale, does he give prominence to mental and moral enjoyments in conjunction with his daily meals. He who looks upon the table merely as a place for feeding the body, is so far upon the level of the lower order of animals. He who would improve his time there for the advantage of his mind and character, as well as for the supply of his physical wants, recognizes a standard of utility in the humbler offices of daily life that is perceptible only to one whose higher nature is always striving for supremacy above the lower.
With all the tendency to excesses in the line of appetite among the Greeks and Romans in classic times, there were even then gleams of a higher enjoyment at the table through social intercourse than that which mere eating and drinking supplied. When the Perfect Man was here among men, he showed the possibility of making the household meal a means of mental and spiritual improving; and there are no profounder or more precious truths in the record of our Lord’s earthly teachings, than those which are found in his words spoken to those who sat with him eating and drinking at their common meal. The “table talk” of great men has, for centuries, been recognized as having a freeness, a simplicity, and a forcefulness, not to be found in their words spoken elsewhere.
There are obvious reasons why the social talk at daily meals should possess a value not attainable under other circumstances, in the ordinary Christian household. Just there is the place where all the members of the family must be together. However closely and however diversely they may be occupied at other times, when the hour for the household meal has arrived, everything else must be dropped by them all for the one duty of eating and drinking; and they must all come together for that common purpose. In the very nature of things, too, those who have gathered at the family table must, for the time being, have left all their work behind them, and be in a state of relaxation and of kindlier feeling accordingly. Now it is, therefore, that they are freest to speak with one another of matters having a common interest to all, rather than to dwell in absorbed thought on the special duties from which they have, severally, turned away, or toward which they must turn at the meal’s close.
It is a matter of fact that those who sit together at a family table, whether as members of the household or as guests there for a season, learn to understand one another, and to give and receive help and inspiration in their social converse, as they could not without the advantage of this distinctive opportunity. It is also a fact that only now and then is there a family circle the members of which recognize at the fullest, and make available at the best, the value of table-talk as a training agency for all who have a share in it, or who are under its immediate influence. Yet he who would train his children as they should be trained, cannot ignore this important training agency without serious and permanent loss to them.
With family customs as they are in the United States, there is more of an opportunity here than abroad, for the training of children by means of table-talk. In England, and in Europe generally, young children are likely to be by themselves with nurses or governesses, at meal-time, rather than at the table with their parents. But in this country children are, as a rule, brought to the family table at a very early age, and are permitted to be there not merely while the members of the family are there gathered, but on occasions when a guest is, for the time being, made a member of the household circle. Therefore it is that an important feature of child-training in American families is the table-talk in those families. This feature varies much in different homes; but at its best it is one of the most potent factors in the intellectual and moral training of the young.
Fifty years ago a gentleman of New England had, as a philanthropist, an educator, and an author, an exceptional acquaintance with men of prominence in similar fields of endeavor in this country and abroad. His home was a place of resort for them. He had a large family of children, all of whom were permitted to be at the family table while those guests were present, as well as at other times. The table-talk in that home, between the parents and the guests, or between the parents and their children when no guests were present, was in itself “a liberal education.” It gave to those children a general knowledge such as they could hardly have obtained otherwise. It was a source of promptings and of inspiration to them in a multitude of directions. Now that they are themselves parents and grandparents, they perceive how greatly they were the gainers by their training through the table-talk of their early home; and they are doing what they can to have the value of table-talk as a training agency for the young recognized and made effective in the homes which they direct or influence.
In another New England home, the father was a man of quiet thoughtfulness, and at ordinary times a man of peculiar reticence before his children. But at the family table he was accustomed to unbend as nowhere else. He, also, had a large family of children, and there were frequent visitors among them. The utmost freedom of question and of expression was cultivated in the table-talk of that home. The spirited discussions carried on there, between father and mother and children and visitors, were instructive, suggestive, and stimulating, in a very high degree. The family table was, in fact, the intellectual and moral center of that home. No other place was so attractive as that. Not a person, young or old, would leave that table until he had to; and now that the survivors of that happy circle are scattered widely, every one of them will say that no training agency did more for him in his early life than the table-talk of his childhood’s home.
In one home, where parents and children enjoy themselves in familiar and profitable table-talk, it is a custom to settle on the spot every question that may be incidentally raised as to the pronunciation or meaning of a word, the date of a personage in ancient or modern history, the location of a geographical site, or anything else of that nature that comes into discussion at the family table. As an aid to knowledge in these lines, there stands in a corner of the dining-room a book-rest, on the top of which lies an English dictionary, while on the shelves below are a biographical dictionary and a pronouncing gazetteer of the world, ready for instant reference in every case of dispute or doubt.
At the breakfast-table, in that home, the father runs his eye over the morning paper, and gives to his family the main points of its news which he deems worthy of special note in the family circle. The children there are free to tell of what they have studied in school, or to ask about points that have been raised by their teachers or companions. And in such ways the children are trained to an intelligent interest in a variety and range of subjects that would otherwise be quite beyond their ordinary observation.
One father has been accustomed to treasure up the best things of his experience or studies for each day, with a view to bringing them attractively to the attention of his children at the family table, at the day’s close, or at the next day’s beginning. Another has had the habit of selecting a special topic for conversation at the dinner-table a day in advance, in order that the children may prepare themselves, by thinking or reading, for a share in the conversation. Thus an item in the morning paper may suggest an inquiry about Bismarck, or Gladstone, or Parnell, or Henry M. Stanley; and the father will say, “Now let us have that man before us for our talk to-morrow at dinner. Find out all you can about him, and we will help one another to a fuller knowledge of him.” In this way the children are being trained to an ever-broadening interest in men and things in the world’s affairs, and to methods of thought and study in their search for knowledge.
There is no end to the modes of conducting table-talk as a means of child-training; and there is no end to the influence of table-talk in this direction, however conducted. Indeed, it may be said with truth, that table-talk is quite as likely to be influential as a means of child-training when the parents have no thought of using it to this end, as when they seek to use it accordingly. At every family table there is sure to be talking; and the talk that is heard at the family table is sure to have its part in a child’s training, whether the parents wish it to be so or not.
There are fathers whose table-talk is chiefly in complaint of the family cooking, or in criticism of the mother’s method of managing the household. There are mothers who are more given to asking where on earth their children learned to talk and act as they do, than to inquiring in what part of the earth the most important archæological discoveries are just now in progress. And there are still more fathers and mothers whose table-talk is wholly between themselves, except as they turn aside, occasionally, to say sharply to their little ones, “Why don’t you keep still, children, while your father and mother are talking?” All this table-talk has its influence on the children. It leads them to have less respect for their parents, and less interest in the home table except as a place of satisfying their natural hunger. It is potent, even though it be not profitable.
Table-talk ought to be such, in every family, as to make the hour of home meal-time one of the most attractive as well as one of the most beneficial hours of the day to all the children. But in order to make table-talk valuable, parents must have something to talk about at the table, must be willing to talk about it there, and must have the children lovingly in mind as they do their table-talking.
XX.
_GUIDING A CHILD IN COMPANIONSHIPS._
A child cannot easily go on through childhood without companions, even if it were desirable for him to do so. Moreover, it is not desirable for a child to go on through childhood without companions, even if it were every way practicable for him to do so. Companions are a necessity to a child, whether the case be looked at in the light of the world as it is, or in the light of the world as it ought to be. Hence, as a child will have companions, and as he needs to have them, it is doubly important that a parent be alive to the importance of guiding his every child in the choice of his companions and in his relations to those companions whom he has without choosing.
No child can be rightly trained all by himself, nor yet wholly by means of those agencies and influences that come to him directly from above his head. There are forces which operate for a child’s training through being brought to bear upon him laterally rather than perpendicularly; coming in upon him by way of his sympathies, instead of by way of his natural desire for knowledge. There are lessons which a child cannot learn so well from an elder teacher above him as from a young teacher alongside of him. There are impulses which can never be at their fullest with a child when he is alone as a child, but which will fill and sway him when they are operative upon him as one of a little company of children. Only as he learns these lessons from, and receives these impulses with, wisely chosen and fitting companions, can a child have the benefit of them to which he is fairly entitled.
Any observing parent will testify that, on more than one occasion, his child has come to him with a new interest in a thought or a theme, inspired by the words or example of a young companion, to the surprise of the parent—who had before sought in vain to excite an interest in that very direction. All that the parent had said on the subject had been of no value, in comparison with that which had been said or done by the child’s companion, as another self. Again, there are few parents who have not found to their regret that their child has received lessons and impulses directly opposed to all the parental counsel and purposes, through a brief and comparatively unnoticed companionship that ought to have been guarded against. And these are but illustrations of the instructive and swaying power of child companionships. Such a power as this ought not to be ignored or slighted by any parent who would do most and best for his child’s wise training.
Any thoughtful parent will realize that a child cannot be trained to be unselfishly considerate of his companions; to bear and forbear with companions who are weak or impatient or exacting; to show sympathy with companions who need sympathy, and to minister lovingly to companions who deserve a loving ministry,—unless he has companions toward whom he can thus exercise and evidence a right spirit at all times. And no parent will say, or think, that it would be well for a child to be without these elements of character-training in his life-progress.
An only child is naturally at a disadvantage in his home, because he is an only child. He lacks the lessons which playmates there would give him; the impulses and inspirations which he would receive from their fellowship; the demands on his better nature, and the calls on his self-control and self-denial, which would come from their requirements. Parents who have but one child ought to see to it that the lack in this regard is, in a measure, supplied by the companionships of children from other homes. It is, indeed, a mistake for any parent to attempt the training of his child without the help of child companionships. No child can be so inspiringly and symmetrically trained without, as with, these. Even where there are half a dozen or more children in one family, there is still a need of outside companions for each child, of the same age and wants of that child; for it is not possible for any person to bring himself into the same relations with a child as can be entered into by a child of his own years and requirements.
Because a child’s companionships are so influential, it is the more important that they be closely watched and carefully guided by the child’s parents. In choosing a neighborhood—for a residence or for a summer vacation; in choosing a week-day school; in choosing a Sunday-school, where a choice is open to the parents, the companionships thus secured to their child ought to have prominence in the minds of the parents. And when the neighborhood, and week-day school, and Sunday-school, are finally fixed upon, the responsibility is still upon the parent to see to it that the best available companionships there are cultivated, and the most undesirable ones are shunned, by the child. Neglect or carelessness at this point may be a means of harm to the child for his lifetime. Attention just here may do more for him than were possible through any other agency.