Chambers's Journal, December 4, 1886 5 – Various · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
Chambers's Journal, December 4, 1886 5Some Anecdotes of American Children
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Literature · Romance
Chambers's Journal, December 4, 1886 5
Some Anecdotes of American Children
VariousEnglish
The subject of children is one in which every one is more or less interested; for even those who have none of their own were babies themselves in some dim period of the past, and probably most of us have wondered at times what sort of babies we were. Happy they who have it on the authority of those who ought to know, that they were ‘well-behaved children’—lumps of good-nature, and never addicted to crying. How kindly does Charles Lamb revert to the days of his childhood, dwelling with something of reverence on the image of that ‘young master’ whom he could scarcely believe to have been indeed himself, and whose pure memory he cherished as tenderly ‘as if it had been a child of some other house,’ and not of his parents. So perhaps some of us also have yearned over those little phantoms of the past, our own child-selves.
But it is of American children that we have now a few words to say. Perhaps, however, we make a mistake at the outset in calling them children at all, for many of them seem to belong to some species of fairy changelings, so remarkable and almost uncanny is their precocity, and that, too, from the earliest infancy, while they are still in their nurses’ arms, or at the bottle. Gilbert’s little urchin of the Bab Ballads who chucked his nurse under the chin when she fed him, and vowed by the rap it was excellent pap, was nothing to them. They would be too blasé for such infantine manifestations as these. We have one of them before our ‘mind’s eye’ now, an ideal-looking little maid, with sunny hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks, the youngest darling of a happy household. Being of a wakeful disposition, she was indulged with her bottle at night up to the mature age of nearly two years. Her mother, waking once at midnight, was aware of some disturbance in the cot beside her, where baby seemed to be searching vigorously in the moonlight for something. Hoping the little one might forego her search and drop to sleep, the mother lay quiet, when suddenly baby raised her soft fair head, and with the startling question, ‘Where de debil is my mouf-piece?’ fairly banished all slumber from her fond parent. It must be explained that this occurred in a part of the country where children were liable to overhear the talk of negroes, both indoor and outdoor servants; and this race, as represented in the States of America, are evidently of the opinion of the old sea-captain’s Scotch wife who, while agreeing with her minister as to the advisability of her husband’s giving up the habit of swearing, was yet constrained to acknowledge that ‘nae doubt it was still a great set-off to conversation.’ Baby’s grandmamma, however, on being informed of this last addition to her darling’s vocabulary, remarked somewhat grimly that it was about time the bottle should be given up.
The foregoing was scarcely so bad as what a little two-year-old neighbour was guilty of; for on this young scapegrace being mildly remonstrated with for some misdemeanour by his grandfather—a venerable old doctor, of much repute with all who knew him—he retorted, in his half-articulate baby speech, ‘Gan-pa, you’se a old fool!’—waking a burst of unhallowed merriment from all within hearing distance.
The propensity on the part of their children to use profane language is a source of great uneasiness to American mothers. One lady, the daughter of a clergyman, who had brought her up on strictly old-fashioned principles, was much distressed to note the habit growing on her only child, a fine manly little boy of four years. At her wits’ end for a timely cure, she at last resorted to the expedient of a whipping, threatening, with the most unmistakable air of sincerity, that it would be repeated if ever a certain word were used by him again. The morning after this occurrence, Georgie was, as usual, at his spelling lesson with his mother, the task for the day consisting of a string of words all rhyming with ‘am.’ The first few of them had been accomplished with praiseworthy accuracy, when suddenly the young student came to a dead-stop. ‘Go on, sonny,’ said his mother encouragingly, not seeing for the moment where the difficulty lay. ‘C-a-m—cam,’ repeated Georgie in evident embarrassment, the next word apparently presenting some insurmountable obstacle. ‘Go on!’ insisted his mother—when, with a sudden blurt, out came the monosyllable ‘D-a-m—dam, a millpond dam,’ added Georgie, the threatened punishment being uppermost in his mind.
The same little boy had a cousin, a year older than himself, and ages ahead of him in knowledge of the world, so much so, that he would sometimes assume the part of mentor towards his more unsophisticated junior. When the two were together one day, the elder announced his intention of paying a visit to a family living near them. ‘But I won’t take you with me,’ said he. ‘Why not?’ asked Georgie, disconcerted. ‘Because they’ll teach you to swear,’ returned the other gravely. ‘But you go there yourself,’ argued little George. ‘O yes,’ rejoined his senior with a world-worn air; ‘I swear already.’
Young America does not take kindly to correction in any form, probably resenting it as an infringement of natural liberties. One little boy having been punished for some childish transgression, astonished his family by coming down suddenly from his room up-stairs with a small bundle under his arm, saying, ‘I’m going to leave this blessed house.’
American children are, as a rule, more practical and less imaginative than those of the old country—inclined from the very beginning to look on life as a struggle, though a pleasant one on the whole, and on the world as their oyster, which they, with their sharp-set wits, must open. They bring this matter-of-fact element even into their devotions. A little girl was promised by her father, on his leaving home for a few days, that he would bring dolls for her and her sister when he came back. That night, when at her prayers, she put in the very laudable petition, ‘Pray God, bring papa home safely;’ but somewhat compromised the effect by adding with great emphasis, after a moment’s rapt reflection—‘with the dolls.’ But this was devotion itself compared with the following. A little mite of a creature running out of her room one morning was called back by her mother: ‘Dolly, you haven’t said your prayers.’ ‘I dess Dod tan wait,’ returned little Miss Irreverence; ‘I’se in a hurry.’ In both these cases, the utter unconsciousness of presumption on the part of the tiny speakers took away the effect of profanity from their words.
Reverence is certainly not the strong point of our small kinsfolk across the water. Almost from their entrance into the world, they begin to assume airs of equality with all around them. One sweet little damsel, who was of peculiarly small and fairy-like proportions, could with difficulty be prevailed upon to call her parents otherwise than by their Christian names; and the effect was quaint to hear her, when offered candy or such-like forbidden dainties, refuse them with a wistful look and the words: ‘Willie not likes it’ (Willie being her father); or, ‘Annie’ (her mother) ‘said no.’ Nay, she did not scruple even to call her grandmother by her name, as far as she could pronounce it, for ‘Margaret’ offered some obstacles to the baby lips. You would have fancied this same little maiden too soft and gentle to brush the down from a butterfly’s wing; but on one occasion she shocked the sensibilities of her young cousin, fresh from England, by exclaiming, on an innocent, newly fledged chicken being brought in for the inspection of the family: ‘Me have dat pitty bird for my dinner!’
From the youngest age, American children are ready to share—as Wordsworth once expressed it—‘in anything going.’ A visitor injudiciously offering a little boy some wine at dinner, was requested by his watchful mother not to give him ‘too much;’ when young Hopeful took the words out of her mouth by protesting with vehement eagerness: ‘I like too much!’
It is no easy task to impose any restrictions, even of time or place, on one of these little free-born Americans, or to impress them with any sense of restraint or regard of persons. One little daughter of Eve, brought up for baptism at the ripe age of two—episcopal visits being rare in the part of the country where she lived—somewhat scandalised the bishop by calling his attention, just before the ceremony, to her attire, thus: ‘Look at my new dess;’ and drawing it back to display her dainty feet—‘Look, bissop, at my pitty new boots!’ The good father took it all in very amiable part, though he remarked to her mother afterwards, that the little one had evidently no intention of giving up the vanities of the world just yet.
But we must say good-bye for the present to our little American cousins, on whom we must not be understood to have cast the shadow of an aspersion. Their intelligence and quickness, indeed, combined with the other charms of infancy—of which they have their full share—make them as attractive, to say the least, as any of their kind. We can assert, moreover, from our own knowledge, that some of these tiny gentry, with whose scarce-conscious childish profanity we have dallied for a while, are growing up at this present moment into decent and in every way excellent members of society.
