Part 5

Tony was able to read, "over to school," such excerpts as the following: "The gingerbreadboy went clickety-clack down the road." "Sail far, sail far, o'er the fabulous main!" "Consider, goat, consider!" "You have made a mistake, Mr. Alligator." Just why, I reflected, should "Mr. Alligator" and "fabulous" be introduced to a pleasant child like Tony, who had not as yet been allowed to meet "cat," "dog," "hen," "red," "boy," "bad," and a great many other creatures really necessary to a little boy's existence?

His mother knew that Tony was not learning to read very fast. She argued with me a little on principle. She said that James Whitcomb Riley wrote "fabulous." I reminded her in a neighborly way that Mr. Milton wrote the "Areopagitica," thought by some to be a good sort, but that, until Tony knew his letters, the "Areopagitica" would be almost wasted on him. I would have stepped in at this point myself and ponied him a bit, for pure love, had it not been for the fact that I hated to have him get a sensible A, B, or C mixed up with such corrupting associates as a considering goat or a mistaken alligator. And he would certainly have mixed them up. He would never have been able in this world to decide in his little mind what relation "consider" had to A,B,C. And he would have been quite excusable.

I began to think that his mother was too optimistic. She was trying to console herself by the fact that, if she should die, Tony could at least order gingerbread off a menu card. But could he? The sad fact that my neighbor overlooked was that he didn't know "gingerbread" when he saw it, but just "gingerbread_boy_"! Perhaps even at that, Tony might not have starved, for even gingerbread_boys_ are edible, if Tony really could have recognized that. But he couldn't. Not outside the confines of his "reading-book"--Heaven save the mark! A modern word-fiend tried to explain to me here, that, after having learned "gingerbreadboy," a child comes naturally by three words (and even four if they allowed "gin" in the school curriculum)--namely, "ginger," "bread," and "boy." But Tony didn't. I tried him. He looked upon "ginger" as an entire stranger, interesting in form, perhaps, but still foreign. Something, I was convinced, was wrong. And I attributed this state to the fact that Tony didn't know A, B, and C.

Just as I reached the high noon of this conviction, I was drawn by the most curious of circumstances into the business of teaching little children to read. I held the novel position of being besought to bring all my heresies and all my notions, and join the influenza-thinned ranks of the teaching profession. The Board of Education said that it was desperate. It must have been.

I suppose that no other power on earth could have converted me so quickly to the decried method, as my being forced, out of loyalty to my employers, to support it. I was plunged on the first day--not into "clickety-clack," but "slippety-slip." It was my first object lesson to hear the laughter of many little children, as the small gray cat swallowed slippety-slip in rapid succession the white goose, the cinnamon bear, the great, big pig, and others which have "slippety-slipped" my mind just now. It was easy to teach them which fantastic word said "slippety-slip." It was very hard to teach them which plain-faced word said "and." I was happy to find many fine old words ranging themselves in the same category as "slippety-slip." "Goose" is intrinsically easier to learn than "duck"; "red" is a bagatelle beside "blue." But the easiest word of all is "slippety-slip."

I took notes of phenomena like these, for use later in dealing with critics who theorized as I had theorized on the day previous. I was not quite ready with any solution on this first day when a visiting mother assured me that she, when a girl, was wont to read much better when her book was open before her. Her son, on the contrary, read better, she told me, and with more interpretation and fine feeling, without his book. "People think," said my visitor, "that when a child has his book open and says aloud the words printed on that page, that he is reading. He may be," she added mildly, "and then again, of course, he mayn't."

I determined that, when this logical lady should come again, her son should be reading. So I taught him to read. I taught him via the method I had disparaged; via "Mrs. Teapot," "Goosey-Poosey-Loosey," and the goat that would not go home, without once mentioning the names of A, B, or C. This boy is in the third grade now, skimming the "Literary Digest" for material for his oral language.

The second step in my conversion occurred when one of the overworked teachers showed me hastily how to teach Phonics. She drew a flight of stairs on the blackboard, and on each step she placed a letter of the alphabet. I did not find "A" among them, but I discerned both B and C. To my surprise, the little children knew these, but they called them (as nearly as the printed page can convey the sound) _buh_ and _kuh_. They called "R" _err_, and "H" they called _huh_.

When I reached home, I looked up a few letters in the Dictionary, and received new light. Of what use is it, after all, to know that "W" is called "Double-you," unless you know first the sound for which it stands? The Dictionary, in fact, explains that the proper sound of this letter is really a "half u" instead of a "double u." Certainly "W" is a more helpful tool to a child when he has been taught to pucker up his lips like the howling wind when he sees this letter coming, than when he has been taught to get set for a "d" sound which is not there. Why confuse a child's mind at first with what a letter is arbitrarily called by some one else? Surely it is more sensible to show him what noise to make when he sees it.

But I found that some of the children did not connect the delightful game of the blackboard stairs with their reading at all. Tony was among this number. Right here I was electrified to find out the real trouble with Tony. I found that it had not occurred to him that the letter "g," at the beginning of the word "good," for instance, could have any part in distinguishing this word from the Little Red Hen. I found also that many of the children were recognizing "good-day to you" wholly by the quaint little dash in the middle of "good-day." They shouted heartily "good-day to you" whenever I showed them any word containing a hyphen.

To remedy this difficulty, I abstracted Phonics bodily from my afternoon session, and inserted it directly before the reading period in the morning. In fact, I allowed a few Phonics to spill over into Reading, and commenced to read a little before the children were quite finished with the staircase. I can say that the greatest triumphal moment of my life was when an entire class saw, independently and suddenly and of themselves, that "ice-cream" could not possibly be "good-day to you." And the fact that the children now knew these apart by a phonetic tool did not prevent them from saying "good-day to you" just as cordially and just as fast as before. Moreover, they had not compelled the school system to wait for them to spell out the words letter by letter.

This is the only stage in a modern phrase-and-sentence method which contains a pitfall. If this is solidly bridged, most children will learn to read more understandingly than we used to. They will read twice as well, and three times as fast.

At the end of the school year, after Tony had read nineteen books, I did throw in the alphabet itself as a classic. We even sang it to the good old-fashioned tune.

Tony will use A, B, and C, in the Second Grade to spell with, and in the Fourth Grade to look up words in the Dictionary with; but he did not need them, after all, in the First Grade, to learn to read with.

UNDERSTANDING THE HEALTHY

The healthy in all centuries have misunderstood the sick. In the days when sickness was supposed to be the result of possession by devils, the healthy gathered around the invalid, beating upon drums. When all disease was supposed to be the chastening of the Lord, they gathered at the bedside again, teaching repentance of sins. And in our own generation, they come again around the sufferer telling him to take his mind off himself.

I myself, being healthy, have never been the victim of that form of ministration. I have simply observed the effect of it on others. And since there is no hope of converting the healthy from this habit, the next best thing is to explain the obscure workings of the healthy mind.

Of course, no two healthy people are quite alike, and general statements about any great composite type are dangerous. But no matter how divergent their styles, all up-to-date, unspoiled, healthy persons can be trusted to make certain stock remarks to or about the sick. The context may vary, but sooner or later the following phrases will crop up: "pulling yourself together"; "bracing up"; "standing a little real hardship"; "forgetting all about your aches and pains"; "people who never have _time_ to be sick"; "people who are worse off than you are"; and, "taking your mind off yourself."

At any one of these cheery phrases, the spirited sick man feels his gorge begin to rise. He knows that if his gorge rises, so will his temperature. With a mighty effort he swallows his temper, and his temperature goes up anyway at the exertion. All this time he knows that his visitor meant well, and he despises himself for his irritation. He has no way of defending himself, for, if he should describe how ill he really is, would not that convict him of having his mind on himself, of craving sympathy, of "enjoying poor health"? Over and over the words of his visitor go ringing in his ears--words intended tactfully to stimulate recuperation. "It's fine to see you looking so well. All you need to do now is to get something to take up your mind. I know how hard it will be, for I have been there myself, but circumstances were such that _I_ just _had_ to brace up. It would be the best thing in the world for you if you only had to rough it a little."

Any one of these remarks is guaranteed to leave the person who is really suffering in a very storm-beaten state of mind, unless by the luckiest chance he understands two basic facts about the healthy: first, our healthy imagination; second, our healthy ignorance.

The healthy imagination, in the first place, cannot bear to move in circles. Any novelist knows that a story must progress. If the action is dramatic, the final downfall or the final victory must follow swiftly upon the heels of conflict. The attention wanders if the story goes monotonously along in the style of "Another grasshopper came and brought another grain of corn. And then another grasshopper came and brought another grain of corn."

On the same principle, the general public gives intelligent understanding to the great dangerous diseases where there is a grand struggle of life and death, where the sufferer grows rapidly worse, reaches the crisis, hangs for a moment between time and eternity, and then either dies or gets well. Here is the stuff of contest, the essence of Greek drama: pity and fear, unity of action, and dignity of conflict. The imagination rises to it as to whirlwinds and the noise of waterspouts. But when it comes to the good friend who neither dies nor gets well, who begins to recover and succumbs again, travelling the monotonous round of one ill after another, none of them fatal,--then the healthy imagination stops following the circles.

It is time by every calculation that our friend recovered. We hope that he will soon be well and strong. He hopes so, too, we admit broad-mindedly. But most of us fall into generalities at this point. We are not impatient _with_ our friend; we are impatient for him. A delayed convalescence, we have heard, is usually the result of mismanagement somewhere; the wrong doctor, perhaps, a family inclined to spoil by kindness, or mind over matter imperfectly understood. Suppose our sick friend could get away from his anxious relatives, and be suddenly cast upon a desert island; would he not have to brace up and rattle down his own cocoanuts with a will? We have known such cases--paralytics who got thrown overboard and nimbly swam ashore, rescuing women and children on their way. Our friend is not an extreme case like that, but, if he actually had to get to work, would he not forget all about his troubles, and suddenly find himself cured?

Once having put him into the class of needless suffering, we roll along merrily to the moment when we decide that it is time for us to speak. Let us speak tactfully, by all means. Let us auto-suggest as it were! Let those of us who are amateurs do what we can in a quiet way.

At this point, the healthy do three things. We diagnose, we prescribe, and we tell you to take your mind off yourself.

This is where the healthy ignorance comes in. When we are well, we think of the mind as a convenient tool; in Huxley's words, "a cool, clear, logic engine." We know that minor ailments of our own have vanished when we have vigorously taken our mind off our symptoms and gone to the movies. We are at our best, we know, when we have given our whole attention to something absorbing, quite outside ourselves; business, friendship, good works. We feel that our acquaintance will be the better for this valuable thought. We do not know that every other healthy person in town has also decided that it is time to pass on the same idea. Neither do we realize that the ability to do as we suggest is the sick person's idea of heaven.

Thinking thus masterfully of the mind, we speak glibly of doing things with it. We do not know how slippery and complex a thing the mind is when assailed by suffering. "Take off your mind." Take off your hat. We do not know what long hours every invalid spends driving his mind along on every pleasant topic under the sun, only to feel it skidding, skidding, from side to side, just as you feel yourself steering for the nearest tree when you begin to drive a car. And after all this effort, what has he been doing but putting his mind on his mind? Less exhausting to put it on the pain and be done with it. When we urge our friend not to steer for the tree, we feel that we are presenting him with a new idea.

Healthy ignorance, in the second place, assumes that the mind of a sick person is more than normally susceptible to suggestion. We have heard that, if you say to a patient, "How thin you are," he will instantly feel thinner and thinner, will droop and wilt and brood morbidly upon his state. Very well, then. We go to visit our friend resolved to make no such unfortunate remark. We conceal our shock at the changed appearance of our friend, but we cannot help thinking about it. Every healthy person is a trifle taken aback when he sees anybody else laid low. The neat white corners of the counterpane lend an awe-inspiring geometrical effect; if the patient is a man, he looks subtly changed without his high collar; if the patient is a lady, she is transformed with her hair in braids. We know that we must not cry, "How changed you are, Grandmother," lest we send the patient into a relapse. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways. If a comment on frail appearance would thus depress our friend, surely the contrary assurance ought to chirk him up in proportion. We therefore say blithely, "Well, you certainly do look fine!" Then later we perhaps repeat it, to make sure that auto-suggestion has a chance to set in.

Now, personally, if somebody told me that I looked well, I feel that I could manage to bear up. But in the sick-room, the remark seldom makes a hit. Nine chances out of ten the patient does not understand the healthy. He feels that we suspect him of rusticating in bed under false pretences. He does not want to be ill, nor to look ill; but since he _is_ ill, he would be sorry to have us think that he might as well be up and about. He does not know that we adopt the cheery note to avoid the fatal opposite, and to encourage him. He does not know how helpless we are, nor how sure of the susceptibility of the stricken mind.

All these traits of the healthy imagination and the healthy ignorance are magnified tenfold if the invalid's disorder is nervous. To the untutored layman, a nervous disorder means an imaginary disorder. What nervous wreck has not prayed to exchange his baffling torments for something showy and spectacular, like broken bones or Spotted Fever? The healthiest imagination can grasp a broken leg. The healthiest ignorance can see that it should lie for a while in splints, and that we cannot help our friend by urging him, however tactfully, to forget all about his fracture and join us on a hike. But disordered nerves are different. Everybody admits that. We feel instantly competent to prescribe. We have read up on psychotherapy, in the magazines.

Having diagnosed the case, having prescribed remedies, we feel a trace of impatience if our friend seems not quite cured.

In addition to our eager way of giving advice, we who are healthy have also a way of confusing cause and effect. When our patient finally does succeed in building up his vitality to the point where he can resume his work, when we see him going busily about the world again taking his share of hard knocks without flinching, then we say, "There! Didn't we say he'd be better the minute he had something to do?" We know nothing about the times when he hoped that he had recovered, attempted to take up work again, and succumbed. We see only the triumphant emerging of his renewed vitality. To us the cause is obvious, just what we had been prescribing all along. When he was idle, he was ill. Now that he is busy, he is well. Could anything be more logical? Therefore, when we find him working hard at his old profession, we smile indulgently upon him and we say, "That's right! It will do you good! _Now_ you have something to take your mind off your--"

But I will not repeat it. Never in all my life shall I say that beautiful and grammatical phrase again. There is probably a good deal in it--how much, I, for one, have not the least idea. Probably there are invalids in the world who would be completely cured if they could be worried into hard work at all costs, "roughing it" with a vengeance. We stray perilously near the fields contested by experts when we come to that. The point is that the subject will always be a field for experts, and that never in the long history of suffering was very much accomplished by the well-meant exhortations of friends. As far back as Old Testament days, friends came to see a patient man, and reasoned at length with him. And he cried unto the Lord.

Nearly every invalid loves his friends. He cannot bear to have them misunderstand him. And yet, if he only understands _them_--if he understands the healthy as a class, with our healthy imaginations, our healthy ignorance, our superstitions, and all our simple ways, the most desolate Job in a friend-strewn world can afford to brandish his potsherd and take cheer. He will know the explanation of our kindly words, and their proper discount at the bank. And perhaps he may be able finally, with a prodigious effort of his will, to take them off his mind.

CARVING AT TABLE

Carving at table is one of the most virile things that a man can do, and yet it usually has to be done according to feminine standards. It is a primitive art overlaid with a complex technique, a pioneer act in a dainty environment. For so masterful a deed with an edged tool, a man should be allowed the space and freedom of the Maine woods. Environed by the modern tablecloth, he must be not only masterful but cautious; not so much fearless as adroit.

The process tests not only the man himself, but also his relations with his wife. When a married couple feel equally responsible for an act at which only one of them can officiate, they are tempted to exchange remarks. The most tactful wife yields now and then to the impulse to do a little coaching from the side-lines, and many husbands have been known to reply with a few well-chosen words about the knife. They sometimes carry on quite a little responsive service. This happens occasionally even when the husband is an artist at his work. The ideals of two artists will occasionally conflict. And even the model wife, who ignores the carving and engages the guests in conversation until the worst is over, will at times find herself clutching the tablecloth or holding her breath at the critical points--when the drum-stick is being detached from the second joint, for instance, or when the knife hovers over the guest's portion of the steak. These two crises are the great moments for the man who carves.

In fact, you have not taken the complete measure of a man until you have seen him carve both steak and fowl. These two make totally different demands upon the worker. The chicken calls for a sense of structure, a versatile skill in manoeuvring for position, and the delicate wrist of the violinist. But your true porterhouse calls for shrewd judgment and clear-cut decisions, with no halfway measures or reconsiderations at all. With the chicken, you can modify, slice, combine, arrange to best advantage on the plate. With the steak, you work in the flat and in one color; every stroke must count. There are men who would rather parcel out the Balkans than map a steak.

Great artists in carving are of several classes: those who stand up to their work and those who remain seated; those who talk and those who do not. I recall one noble old aristocrat, with the eye of a connoisseur and the suavity of an Italian grandee, who stood above the great turkey that he had to carve and discoursed with us as follows, pronouncing every word with the dramatic vigor that I try to indicate by the spelling, and illustrating each remark with one deft motion of his knife; this was his monologue: "Now, we cut off his Legg.... Now, we take his Winng!... And now,--we _Slice_ him."

To my mind, this conversation is about the only sort in which the successful carver can afford to indulge. The nervous amateur thinks it necessary to keep up a run of wise comment on the topics of the day to show that he is at ease; or perhaps he does it as the magician talks when he puts the rabbits into his hat, to distract the spectators' attention from his minor tactics. But he might as well learn that he cannot distract us. The matter is too close to our hearts. It is natural to watch the carving intently, not necessarily with an eye to our own interests, but because for the moment the platter is the dramatic centre of the group. Action, especially in an affair demanding skill, irresistibly holds the eye. The well-bred guest chats along of one thing and another, but his eye strays absently toward the roast.

This is very hard upon the newly married husband. Spectators add immensely to his difficulties. Some years ago, one such bridegroom, now an experienced host and patriarch, was about to carve a chicken for his bride and her one guest. I was the guest, and at that time I held theories about the married state. While we were setting the table, I had mentioned a few of these, among them my belief that all little boys should be taught the rudiments of carving, so that when married they would know how to preside correctly at their own tables. My friend the bride agreed with me, and supported my views by anecdotes from real life. The anecdotes were about boys who had not been so trained. Meanwhile the bridegroom listened intently from his post on the kitchen table. Young women are likely to forget that young men have feelings, especially if they have been trained by brothers who displayed none. We therefore went on at great length. Carving, we said, was not an instinct, but a craft.