The American Child Part 8

In the matter of clothes, too, the country mother, like any other mother in America, wishes her children to be becomingly attired, in full accord with such of the prevailing fas.h.i.+ons as seem to her most suitable. In company with the greater portion of American mothers, she devotes considerable time and strength and money to the wardrobes of her boys and girls. The result is that country children are dressed strikingly like city children. Their "everyday" garments are scarcely distinguishable from the "play clothes" of city children; their "Sunday"

clothes are very similar to the "best" habiliments of the boys and girls who do not live in the country.

We have all read, in the books of our grandmothers' childhood, of the children who, on the eve of going to visit their city cousins, were much exercised concerning their wearing apparel. "_Would_ the pink frock, with the green sash, be _just_ what was being worn to parties in the city?" the little girl of such story-books fearfully wondered. "Will boys of my age be wearing short trousers _still_?" the small boy dubiously queried. Invariably it transpired that pink frocks and green sashes, if in fas.h.i.+on at all, were _never_ seen at parties; and that _long_ trousers were absolutely essential, from the point of view of custom, for boys of our hero's age. Many woes were attendant upon the discovery that these half-suspected sumptuary laws were certain facts.

No present-day country boy and girl, coming from the average home to the house of city cousins, would need to feel any such qualms. Should they, five minutes' inspection of the garments of those city cousins would relieve their latent questionings. They would see that, to the casual eye, they and their cousins were dressed in the same type of raiment.

How could they fail to be? A large crop of "fas.h.i.+on magazines"

flourishes in America. The rural free delivery brings them to the very doors of the farmhouse. By the use of mail orders the mother on the farm can obtain whatever materials the particular "fas.h.i.+on magazine" to which she is a subscriber advises, together with paper patterns from which she can cut anything, from "jumpers" to a "coat for gala occasions."

The approved clothes of all American children in our time are so exceedingly simple in design that any woman who can sew at all can construct them; and, in the main, the materials of which they are made are so inexpensive that even the farmer whose income is moderate in size can afford to supply them. A clergyman who had worked both in city and in country parishes once told me that he attributed the marked increase in ease and grace of manner--and, consequently, in "sociability"--among country people to-day, as compared with country people of his boyhood, very largely to the invention of paper patterns.

"Rural folk dressed in a way peculiar to themselves then," he said; "now they dress like the rest of the world. It is curious," he went on, reflectively, "but human beings, as a whole, seem unable not to be awkward in their behavior if their costumes can possibly be differentiated otherwise than by size!"

It is another queer fact that normal persons would seem to require "best" clothes. They share the spirit of Jess, in "A Window in Thrums."

"But you could never wear yours, though ye had ane," said Hendry to her about the "cloak with beads"; "ye would juist hae to lock it awa in the drawers." "Aye," Jess retorted, "but I would aye ken it was there."

I have an acquaintance who is not normal in this matter. She scorns "finery," whether for use or for "locking awa." One summer she and I spent a fortnight together on a Connecticut farm. During the week the farmer and his wife, as well as their two little children, a girl and a boy, wore garments of dark-colored denim very plainly made. The children were barefooted.

"These people have sense," my acquaintance observed to me on the first day of our sojourn; "they dress in harmony with their environment."

I was silent, realizing that, if Sunday were a fine day, she might feel compelled to modify her approbation. On Sat.u.r.day night the farmer asked if we should care to accompany the family to church the next morning.

Both of us accepted the invitation.

Sunday morning, as I had foreseen, when the family a.s.sembled to take its places in the "three-seater," the father was in "blacks," with a "boiled" s.h.i.+rt; the mother, a pretty dark-eyed, dark-haired young woman, a pleasant picture in the most every-day of garments, was a charming sight, in a rose-tinted wash silk and a Panama hat trimmed with black velvet. As for the boy and the girl, they were arrayed in spotless white, from their straw hats even to their canvas shoes. The hands of the farmer and his son were uncovered; but the mother and her little daughter wore white lisle gloves. They also carried parasols--the mother's of the shade of her dress, the girl's pale blue. No family in America could possibly have looked more "blithe and bonny" than did that one in "Sunday" clothes, ready for church.

The face of my acquaintance was a study.

In it were mingled surprise and disapproval. Both these elements became more p.r.o.nounced when we were fairly in the meeting-house. All the men, women, and children there a.s.sembled were also in "Sunday" clothes.

My acquaintance has the instinct of the reformer. Hardly were we settled in the "three-seater," preparatory to returning home after the service, when she began. "Do you make your own clothes?" she inquired of the farmer's wife.

"Yes," was the reply; "and the children's, too."

"Isn't there a great deal of work involved in the care of such garments as you are all wearing to-day?" she further pursued.

"I suppose there is the usual amount," the other woman said, dryly.

"Then, why do you do it--living in the country, as you do?"

"There is no reason why people shouldn't dress nicely, no matter where they happen to live," was the answer. "During the week we can't; but on Sunday we can, and do, and ought--out of respect to the day," she quaintly added.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARRAYED IN SPOTLESS WHITE]

The city is not a mere name to American country children. Increased train facilities, the improvement in the character of country roads brought about by the advent of the automobile, and the extension of the trolley system have done much to mitigate the isolation of rural communities. The farmer and his wife can avail themselves of the advantages to be found in periodical trips to the nearest city. Like other American parents, they invite their children to share their interests. The boys and girls are included in the jauntings to the city.

I once said to a little girl whom I met on a farm in Ma.s.sachusetts: "You must come soon and stay with me in the city from Sat.u.r.day until Monday.

We will go to the Art Museum and look at the pictures."

"Oh," she cried, joyously, "I'd _love_ to! Every time we go to town, and there is a chance, mother and I go to the Museum; we both like the pictures so much."

This little girl, when she was older, desired to become a kindergartner.

There was a training-school in the near-by city. She could not afford to go to and fro on the train, but there was a trolley. The journey on the trolley occupied three hours, but the girl took it twice daily for two years.

"Doesn't it tire you?" I asked her.

"Oh, somewhat," she admitted; "but I was already used to it. We usually traveled to town on it when I was small."

"Countrified" is not the word to apply to American farmers and their families. One might as aptly employ it when describing the people of England who live on their "landed estates." Ignorance and dullness and awkwardness we shall not often find among country children. The boys and girls on the farms are as well informed, as mentally alert, and as attractive as children in any other good homes in America.

We all know Mr. James Whitcomb Riley's poem, "Little Cousin Jasper." The country boy in it, we recall, concluded his reflections upon the happier fortune of the boy from the "city" of Rensselaer with these words:

"Wishst our town ain't like it is!-- Wishst it's ist as big as his!

Wishst 'at _his_ folks they'd move _here_, An' _we'd_ move to Rensselaer!"

Only last summer I repeated this poem to a little girl whose home was a farm not far from a house at which I was stopping.

"But," she said, in a puzzled tone of voice, "no place is as big as the country! Look!" she exclaimed, pointing to the distant horizon; "it's so big it touches the edge of the sky! No city is _that_ big, is it?"

IV

THE CHILD IN SCHOOL

An elderly woman was talking to me not long ago about her childhood.

"No, my dear, I did not have a governess," she said, in answer to my questionings. "Neither did I attend the public schools, though I lived in the city. I went to a private school. The pupils in it were the girls of the little social circle to which my parents belonged. There were perhaps twenty of us in all. And there were three teachers; one for the 'first cla.s.s,' one for the 'second cla.s.s,' and a French-German-music- and-drawing-teacher-in-one for both cla.s.ses."

"And what did you study?" I asked.

"Besides French, German, music, and drawing?" my elderly friend mused.

"Well, we had the three R's; and history, English and American, and geography, and deportment. I think that was all."

"And you liked it?" I ventured.

"Yes, my dear, I did," replied my friend, "though I used to pretend that I didn't. I sometimes even 'played sick' in order to be allowed to stay home from school. Children then, as now, thought they ought to 'hate to go to school.' I believe most of them did, too. I happened to be a 'smart' child; so I liked school. I suppose 'smart' children still do."

A "smart" child! In my mind's eye I can see my elderly friend as one, sitting at the "head" of her cla.s.s, on a long, narrow bench, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with a pleased consciousness of "knowing" the lesson, her cheeks rosy with expectation of the triumph sure to follow her "saying" of it, her lips parted in an eagerness to begin. Can we not all see her, that "smart" child of two generations ago?

As for her lesson, can we not hear it with our mind's ear? In arithmetic, it was the multiplication table; in English history, the names of the sovereigns and the dates of their reigns; in geography, the capitals of the world; in deportment--ah, in deportment, a finer lesson than any of our schools teach now! These were the lessons. Indeed, my elderly friend has told me as much. "And not easy lessons, either, my dear, nor easily learned, as the lessons of schoolchildren seem to be to-day. We had no kindergartens; the idea that lessons were play had not come in; to us lessons were work, and hard work."

My friend gave a little sigh and shook her head ever so slightly as she concluded. It was plain that she deprecated modern educational methods.

"Schools have changed," she added.

And has not the att.i.tude of children toward going to school changed even more? Do many of them "hate to go"? Do any of them at all think they "ought to hate to go"? Is a single one "smart" in the old-time sense of the word?