The American Child Part 4

When the last of the boxes had been opened and my other less juvenile "things" surveyed, the child turned to her own treasures. "There are the two puzzles," she said, "and there is the big doll that can say 'Papa'

and 'Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, with lovely patterns and pieces to make more clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa just _loved_. Perhaps you'd like to play _that_ best, too, 'cause you are sick, too?" she said tentatively.

I a.s.sented, and the little girl arranged the game on the table beside my bed, and explained its "rules" to me. We played at it most happily until my nurse, coming in, told my new-made friend that she must "say 'Good- bye' now."

My visitor at once collected her toys and prepared to go. At the door she turned. "Good-bye," she said, again dropping her prim courtesy. "I have had a very pleasant time."

"So have I!" I exclaimed.

And I had had. "She was so entertaining," I said to my nurse, "and her game was so interesting!"

"It is not an uncommon game," my nurse remarked, with a smile; "and she is just an ordinary, nice child!"

America is full of ordinary, nice children who beguile their elders into playing with them games that are not uncommon. How much "pleasant time"

is thereby spent!

"Where do American children learn to expect grown people to play with them?" an Englishwoman once asked me. "In the kindergarten?"

Undoubtedly they do. In no country except Germany is the kindergarten so integral a part of the national life as it is in America. In our cities, rich and poor alike send their children to kindergartens. Not only in the public and the private schools, but also in the social settlements, and even in the Sunday-schools, we have kindergarten departments. In the rural schools the teachers train the little "beginners" in accordance with kindergarten principles. Even to places far away from any schools at all the kindergarten penetrates. Only yesterday I saw a book, written by a kindergartner, dedicated to "mothers on the rolling prairie, the far-off rancho, the rocky island, in the lonely light-house, the frontier settlement, the high-perched mining-camp," who, distant indeed from school kindergartens and their equipment, might wish help in making out of what materials they have well-equipped home kindergartens.

"Come, let us play with the children," the apostles of Froebel teach us.

And, "Come, let us ask the grown-ups to play with us," they would seem unconsciously to instruct the children.

One autumn a friend of mine, the mother of a three-year-old boy and of a daughter aged sixteen, said to me: "This is my daughter's first term in the high school; she will need my help. My boy is just at the age when it takes all the spare time I have to keep him out of mischief; how shall I manage?"

"Send the boy to kindergarten," I advised. "He is ready to go; and it will be good for him. He will bring some of the 'occupations' home with him; and they will keep him out of mischief for you."

She sent the boy to a little kindergarten in the neighborhood.

About two months later, I said to her, "I suppose the kindergarten has solved the problem of more spare time for your daughter's new demands upon you?"

"Well--in a way," she replied, dubiously. "It gives me the morning free; but--"

"Doesn't the boy bring home any 'occupations'?" I interposed.

My friend laughed. "Yes," she said; "he certainly does! But he doesn't want to 'occupy' himself alone with them; he wants _all_ of us to do it with him! We have become quite expert at 'weaving,' and 'folding,' and 'sewing'! But, on the other hand," she went on, "he isn't so much trouble as he was. He wants us to play with him more, but he plays more intelligently. We take real pleasure in joining in his games, and-- actually--in letting him share ours."

This little boy, now five years old, came to see me the other day.

"What would you like to do?" I asked, when we had partaken of tea.

"Shall we put the jig-saw puzzle together; or should you prefer to have me tell you a story?"

"Tell me a story," he said at once; "and then I'll tell you one. And then _you_ tell another--and then _I'll_ tell another--" He broke off, to draw a long breath. "It's a game," he continued, after a moment. "We play it in kindergarten."

"Do you enjoy telling stories more than hearing them told?" I inquired, when we had played this game to the extent of three stories on either side.

"No," my little boy friend replied. "I like hearing stories told more than anything. But _that_ isn't a game; that's just being-told-stories.

The _game_ is taking-turns-telling-stories." He enunciated each phrase as though it were a single word.

His mother had spoken truly when she said that her little boy had learned to play intelligently. He had learned, also, to include his elders in his games on equal terms. Small wonder that they took real pleasure in playing with him.

The children cordially welcome us to their games. They ask us to be children with them. As heartily, they would have us bespeak their company in our games; they are willing to try to be grown-up with us.

I was visiting a family recently, in which there is but one small child, a boy of eight. One evening we were acting charades. Divided into camps, we chose words in turn, and in turn were chosen to superintend the "acting-out" of the particular word. It happened that the word "Psychical-research," and the turn of the eight-year-old boy to be stage-manager coincided. Every one in his camp laughed, but no one so much as remotely suggested that the word or the stage-manager be changed.

"What does it mean, 'Psychical-research'?" the boy made question.

We laughed still more, but we genuinely tried to make the term comprehensible to the child's mind.

This led to such prolonged and lively argument that the little stage- manager finally observed: "I don't see how it _can_ mean _all_ that all of you say. Can't we let the whole-word act of it go, and act out the rest? We can, you know--'Sigh,' 'kick,' 'all'; and 're' (like in music, you know), and 'search!'"

"Oh, no," we demurred; "we must do it properly, or not at all!"

"Well, then," said the boy, in a quaintly resigned tone of voice, "talk to me about it, until I know what it is!"

In spite of hints from the other camp not to overlap the time allotted us, in the face of messages from them to hurry, regardless of their protests against our dilatoriness, we did talk to that little eight- year-old boy about "Psychical-research" until he understood its meaning sufficiently to plan his final act. "If he is playing with us, then he _is_ playing with us," his father somewhat cryptically remarked; "and he must know the details of the game."

This playing with grown-ups does not curtail the play in which children engage with their contemporaries. There are games that are distinctly "children's games." We all know of what stuff they are made, for most of us have played them in our time--running-games, jumping-games, shouting- games. By stepping to our windows nearly any afternoon, we may see some of them in process. But we shall not be invited to partic.i.p.ate. At best, the children will pause for a moment to ask, "Did you play it this way?"

Very likely we did not. Each generation plays the old games; every generation plays them in a slightly new way. The present generation would seem to play them with a certain self-consciousness; without that _abandon_ of an earlier time.

A short while ago I happened to call upon a friend of mine on an afternoon when, her nursemaid being "out," she was alone with her children--a boy of seven and a girl of five. I found them together in the nursery; my friend was sewing, and the children were playing checkers. Apparently, they were entirely engrossed in their game.

Immediately after greeting me they returned to it, and continued it with seeming obliviousness of the presence of any one excepting themselves.

But when their mother, in the course of a few moments, rose, and said to me: "Let's go down to the library and have tea," both the children instantly stopped playing--though one of them was in the very thick of "taking a king"--and cried, "Oh, don't go; stay with us!"

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: "DID YOU PLAY IT THIS WAY?"]

"My dears," my friend said, "you don't need us; you have your game.

Aren't you happy with it?"

"Why, yes," the little girl admitted; "but we want you to see us being happy!"

Only to-day, as I came up my street, a crowd of small children burst upon me from behind a hedge; and, shouting and gesticulating, surrounded me. Their faces were streaked with red, and blue, and yellow lines, applied with crayons; feathers of various domestic kinds ornamented their hats and caps, and they waved in the air broken laths, presumably gifts from a builder at work in the vicinity.

"We are Indians!" they shrieked; "wild Indians! See our war-paint, and feathers, and tomahawks! We hunt the pale face!"

While I sought about for an appropriate answer to make, my little neighbors suddenly became calm.

"Don't we children have fun?" one of them questioned me. "You like to see us having fun, don't you?"

I agreed, and again their war-whoops began. They followed me to my door in a body. Inside I still heard them playing, but with lessened din.

Several times during the afternoon, hearing their noise increase, I looked out; each time I saw that the arrival of another grown-up pale face was the occasion of the climactic moment in the game. In order to be wild Indians with perfect happiness the small players demanded an appreciative audience to see them being happy.

Some of us in America are p.r.o.ne to deprecate in the children of our Nation this pleased consciousness of their own enjoyment, this desire for our presence as sympathetic onlookers at those of their games in which we cannot join. We must not allow ourselves to forget that it is a state of mind fostered largely by our National habit of treating children as familiars and equals. Our satisfaction in their pleasures we mention in their hearing. If they are aware that we like to see them "being happy," it is because we have told them, and told them repeatedly. We do not, as in a former time, "spell some of our words" in their company, in order that they may not know all we say. On the contrary, we p.r.o.nounce all our words with especial clearness, and even define such as are obscure, that the children not only may, but must, fully understand us when we speak "before them." Unquestionably this takes from the play of the children self-forgetfulness of one kind, but sometimes it gives to them self-forgetfulness of another, a rarer kind.

I know a family of children, lovers of games which involve running races. Several years ago one of the boys of this family died. Since his death the other children run no more races.

"We like running races just as much," one of the girls explained to me one evening, as we sat by the fire and talked about her dead brother; "but, you know, _he_ always liked them best, because he generally won.

He loved to have mother see him winning. He was always getting her to come and watch him do it. And mother liked it, and used to tell other people about it. We don't run races now, because it might remind mother too much."