The American Child Part 16

And we are a nation of child-lovers.

It is because we love the children that they do for us so great a good thing. It is for the reason that we know them and that they know us that we love them. We know them so intimately; and they know us so intimately; and we and they are such familiar friends! The grown people of other nations have sometimes, to quote the old phrase, "entered into the lives" of the children of the land; we in America have gone further;--we have permitted the children of our nation to enter into our lives. Indeed, we have invited them; and, once in, we have not deterred them from straying about as they would. The presence of the children in our lives,--so closely near, so intimately dear!--unites us in grave and serious concerns,--unites us to great and significant endeavors; and unites us even in smaller and lighter matters,--to a pleasant neighborliness one with another. However we may differ in other particulars, we are all alike in that we are tacitly pledged to the "cause" of children; it is the desire of all of us that the world be made a more fit place for them. And, as we labor toward the fulfillment of this desire, they are our most effectual helpers.

In our wider efforts after social betterment, they help us. Because of them, we organize ourselves into national, and state, and munic.i.p.al a.s.sociations for the furtherance of better living,--physical, mental, and moral. Through them, we test each other's sincerity, and measure each other's strength, as social servants. In our wider efforts this is true. Is it not the case also when the field of our endeavors is narrower?

Several years ago, I chanced to spend a week-end in a suburban town, the population of which is composed about equally of "old families," and of foreigners employed in the factory situated on the edge of the town. I was a guest in the home of a minister of the place. Both he and his wife believed that the most important work a church could do in that community was "settlement" work. "Home-making cla.s.ses for the girls,"

the minister's wife reiterated again and again; and, "Cla.s.ses in citizens.h.i.+p for the boys," her husband made frequent repet.i.tion, as we discussed the matter on the Sat.u.r.day evening of my visit.

"Why don't you have them?" I inquired.

"We have no place to have them in," the minister replied. "Our parish has no parish-house, and cannot afford to build one."

"Then, why not use the church?" I ventured.

"If you knew the leading spirits in my congregation, you would not ask that!" the minister exclaimed.

"Have you suggested it to them?" I asked.

"Suggested!" the minister and his wife cried in chorus. "_Suggested_!"

"I have besought them, I have begged them, I have implored them!" the minister continued. "It was no use. They are conservatives of the strictest type; and they cannot bring themselves even to consider seriously a plan that would necessitate using the church for the meeting of a boys' political debating club, or a girls' cla.s.s in marketing."

"Churches are so used, in these days!" I remarked.

"Yes," the minister agreed; "but not without the sympathy and cooperation of the leading members of the congregation!"

That suburban town is not one to which I am a frequent visitor. More than a year pa.s.sed before I found myself again in the pleasant home of the minister. "I must go to my Three-Meals-a-Day Club," my hostess said shortly after my arrival on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. "Wouldn't you like to go with me?"

"What is it, and where does it meet?" I asked.

"It is a girls' housekeeping cla.s.s," answered the minister's wife; "and it meets in the church."

"The church?" I exclaimed. "So the 'leading spirits' have agreed to having it used for 'settlement' work! How did you win them over?"

"We didn't," she replied; "they won themselves over,--or rather the little children of one of them did it."

When I urged her to tell me how, she said, "We are invited to that 'leading spirit's' house to dinner to-morrow; and you can find out for yourself, then."

It proved to bean easy thing to discover. "I am glad to see that, since you have no parish-house, you are using your church for parish-house activities," I made an early occasion to say to our hostess, after dinner, on the Sunday. "You were not using it in that way when I was here last; it is something very new, isn't it?"

"It is, my dear," said our hostess,--one of those of his flock whom the minister had described as "conservatives of the strictest type"; "'very new' are the exact words with which to speak of it!"

"How did it happen?" I asked.

She smiled. "Our minister and his wife declare that my small son and daughter are mainly responsible for it!" she said. "They began to attend the public school this autumn,--they had, up to that time, been taught at home. You know what the population of this town is,--half foreign.

Even in the school in this district, there are a considerable number of foreigners. I don't know why it is, when they have so many playmates in their own set, that my children should have made friends, and such close friends, with some of those foreign children! But they did. And not content with bringing them here, they wanted to go to their homes! Of course, I couldn't allow that. I explained to my boy and girl as well as I was able; I told them those people did not know how to live properly; that they might keep their children clean, because they wouldn't be permitted to send them to school unless they did; but their houses were dirty, and their food bad. And what do you think my children said to me?

They said, 'Mother, have they _got_ to have their houses dirty? Have they _got_ to have bad food? Couldn't _they_ have things nice, as _we_ have?' It quite startled me to hear my own children ask me such things; it made me think. I told my husband about it; it made him think, too.

You know, we are always hearing that, if we _are_ going to try to improve the living conditions of the poor, we must 'begin with the children,'--begin by teaching them better ways of living. Our minister and his wife have all along been eager to teach these foreign children.

We have no place to teach them in, except our church. It was rather a wrench for my husband and me,--giving our approval to using a church for a club-house. But we did it. And we secured the consent of the rest of the congregation,--we told them what our children had said. We were not the only ones who thought the children had, to use an old-fas.h.i.+oned theological term, 'been directed' in what they had said!" she concluded.

The children had said nothing that the minister had not said. Was it not less what they had said than the fact of their saying it that changed the whole course of feeling and action in that parish?

On the days when it is our lot to share in doing large tasks, the children help us. What of the days which bring with them only a "petty round of irritating concerns and duties?" Do they not help us then, too?

In a house on my square, there lives a little girl, three years old, who, every morning at about eight o'clock, when the front doors of the square open, and the workers come hurrying down their steps, appears at her nursery window,--open except in very stormy weather. "Good-bye!" she calls to each one, smiling, and waving her small hand, "good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" we all call back, "good-bye!" We smile, too, and wave a hand to the little girl. Then, almost invariably, we glance at each other, and smile again, together. Thus our day begins.

We are familiar with the thought of our devotion to children. As individuals, and as a nation, our services to the children of our land are conspicuously great. "You do so much for children, in America!" It is no new thing to us to hear this exclamation. We have heard, we hear it so often! All of us know that it is true. We are coming to see that the converse is equally true; that the children do much for us, do more than we do for them; do the best thing in the world,--make us who are so many, one; keep us, who are so diverse, united; help us, whether our tasks be great or small, to "go to our labor, smiling."