The American Child Part 13

"And who gave you this?" I asked.

"Father," the little girl replied. "See what he has written in it," she added, when the s.h.i.+ning letters on the cover had been duly appreciated.

I turned to the fly-leaf and read this:

"To my daughter on her eighth birthday from her father.

"'I give you the end of a golden string: Only wind it into a ball,-- It will lead you in at Heaven's gate Built in Jerusalem's wall.'"

"Isn't it lovely?" questioned the child, who had stood by, waiting, while I read.

"Yes," I agreed, "very lovely, and very new."

Her mother, who was listening, smiled slowly. "My father gave me a Bible on my birthday, when I was seven"--she began.

"O mother," interrupted her little girl, "what did grandfather write in it?"

"Go and look," her mother said. "You will find it on the table by my bed."

The child eagerly ran out of the room. In a few moments she returned, the Bible of her mother's childhood in her hands. It also was a beautiful book; bound, too, in crimson leather, and with the name of its owner stamped on it in gold. And on the fly-leaf was written,--

"To my daughter, on her seventh birthday, from her father."

Beneath this, however, was inscribed no modern poetry, but

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE INFANT CLa.s.s]

The little girl read it aloud. "It sounds as though you wouldn't be happy if you _didn't_ remember, mother," she said, dubiously.

"Well, darling," her mother replied, "and so you wouldn't."

The child took her own Bible and read aloud the verse her father had written. "But, mother, this sounds as though you _would_ be happy if you _did_ remember."

"And so you will, dear," her mother made reply. "It is the same thing,"

she added.

"Is it?" the little girl exclaimed in some surprise. "It doesn't _seem_ quite the same."

The child did not press the question. She left us, to return her mother's Bible to its wonted place. When she came back, she resumed the exhibiting of her birthday gifts where it had been interrupted. But after she had gone out to play I said to her mother, "Are they _quite_ the same--the text in your Bible and the lines in hers?"

"It _is_ rather a long way from Solomon to William Blake, isn't it?" she exclaimed.

"But I really don't see much difference. The same thing is said, only in the one case it is a command and in the other it is an impelling suggestion."

"Isn't that rather a great deal of difference?" I ventured.

"No, I think not," she said, meditatively. "Of course, I admit," she supplemented, "that the idea of an impelling suggestion appeals to the imagination more than the idea of a command. But that's the _only_ difference."

It seems to me that this "only" difference is at the very foundation of the religious training of the children of the present day in our country. We do our best to awaken their imaginations, to put to them suggestions that will impel, to say to them the "same thing" that was said to the children of more austere times about remembering their Creator; but so to say it that they feel, not that they will be unhappy if they do not remember, but that they will be happy if they do. It is the love of G.o.d rather than the fear of G.o.d that we would have them know.

Is it not, indeed, just because we do so earnestly desire that they should learn this that we leave them so free with regard to what we call their spiritual life? "Read a chapter in your Bible every day, darling,"

I recently heard a mother say to her little girl on the eve of her first visit away from home without her parents. "In Auntie's house they don't have family prayers, as we do, so you won't hear a chapter read every day as you do at home."

"What chapters shall I read, mamma?" the child asked.

"Any you choose, dear," the mother replied.

"And when in the day?" was the next question. "Morning or night?"

"Just as you like, dearest," the mother answered.

But there is a religious liberty beyond this. To no one in America is it so readily, so sympathetically, given as to a child. We are all familiar with the difficulties which attend a grown person, even in America, whose convictions necessitate a change of religious denomination. Such a situation almost invariably means distress to the family, and to the relinquished church of the person the form of whose faith has altered.

In few other matters is so small a measure of liberty understandingly granted a grown person, even in America. But when a child would turn from one form of belief to another, how differently the circ.u.mstance is regarded!

One Sunday, not long ago, visiting an Episcopal Sunday-school, I saw in one of the primary cla.s.ses a little girl whose parents, as I was aware, were members of the Baptist Church.

"Is she a guest?" I asked her teacher.

"Oh, no," she replied; "she is a regular member of the Sunday-school; she comes every Sunday. She was christened at Easter; I am her G.o.dmother."

"But don't her father and mother belong to the Baptist Church?" I questioned.

"Yes," said the child's Sunday-school teacher. "But she came to church one Sunday with some new playmates of hers, whose parents are Episcopalians, to see a baby christened. Then her little friends told her how they had all been christened, as babies; and when she found that she hadn't been, she wanted to be. So her father and mother let her, and she comes to Sunday-school here."

"Where does she go to church?" I found myself inquiring.

"To the Baptist Church, with her father and mother," was the reply. "She asked them to let her come to Sunday-school here; but it never occurred to her to think of going to church excepting with them."

Somewhat later I chanced to meet the child's mother. It was not long before she spoke to me concerning her little girl's members.h.i.+p in the Episcopal Sunday-school. "What were her father and I to do?" the mother said. "We didn't feel justified in standing in her way. She wanted to be christened; it seemed to mean something real to her--" she broke off.

"What _were_ we to do?" she repeated. "It would be a dreadful thing to check a child's aspiration toward G.o.d! Of course she is only a little girl, and she wanted to be like the others. Her father and I thought of that, naturally. But--" Again she stopped. "One can never tell," she went on, "what is in the mind of a child, nor what may be happening to its spirit. Samuel was a very little child when G.o.d spoke to him," she concluded, simply.

Quite as far as that mother, has another mother of my acquaintance let her little girl go along the way of religious freedom. One day I went with her and the child to an Italian jewelry shop. Among the things there was a rosary of coral and silver. The little girl, attracted by its glitter and color, seized it and slipped it over her head. "Look, mother," she said, "see this lovely necklace!"

Her mother gently took it from her. "It isn't a necklace," she explained; "it is called a rosary. You mustn't play with it; because it is something some people use to say their prayers with."

The child's mother is of Scotch birth and New England upbringing. The little girl has been accustomed to a form of religion and to an att.i.tude toward the things of religion that are beautiful, but austerely beautiful. She is an imaginative child; and she caught eagerly at the poetical element thus, for the first time, a.s.sociated with prayer. "Tell me how!" she begged.

When next I was in the little girl's bedroom, I saw the coral and silver rosary hanging on one of the head-posts of her bed. "Yes, my dear," her mother explained to me, "I got the rosary for her. She wanted it--'to say my prayers with,' she said; so I got it. After all, the important thing is that she says her prayers."

Among my treasures I have a rosary, brought to me from the Holy Land. I have had it for a long time, and it has hung on the frame of a photograph of Bellini's lovely Madonna. This little girl has always liked that picture, and she has often spoken to me about it. But she had never mentioned the rosary, which not only is made of dark wood, but is darker still with its centuries of age. One day after the rosary of pink coral and bright silver had been given her she came to see me. Pa.s.sing through the room where the Madonna is, she stopped to look at it. At once she exclaimed, "_You_ have a rosary!"

"Yes," I said; "it came from the Holy Land." I took it down, and put it into her hands. "It has been in Bethlehem," I went on, "and in Jerusalem. It is very old; it belonged to a saint--like St. Francis, who was such friends with the birds, you remember."

"I suppose the saint used it to say his prayers with?" the little girl observed. Then, the question evidently occurring to her for the first time, she asked, eagerly, "What prayers did he say, do you think?"

When I had in some part replied, I said, this question indeed occurring to me for the first time, "What prayers do you say?"