The Sufferings of Childhood [pp. 242-246]

APPPLETONS' JO URNVAL.
ing a sick friend and was agreeably astonished that
I did not kill her outright, and who remarked,
"Why, Emily, I didn't know that you could do anything but read!" The scorn with which she uttered
this last word cannot be communicated by print.
Such misapprehension has often been fatal to a
character. No child, no young girl particularly, can
be strong enough to rise above the constant pressure
of ridicule, even if it proceeds, as it generally does,
from those vastly her inferiors. We none of us find
ourselves out until we are past the necessity of doing
so. The character has been formed long before. I
know now one of the most estimable of women who
goes through life under a veil. Her heart was broken early by a cruel elder sister. This sister, a beauty
and a genius, dominated a large family, and, through
either selfishness or ignorance (let us give her the
benefit of the doubt), made all the younger sisters
believe themselves very deficient in attractiveness
and talent. They all felt it deeply, but this one was
ruined by it. I have seen many such instances of
this side of childhood's horrors, and of its incompleteness; and it makes me a little angry when I read
poems in praise of its delights, its incomparable joys,
and its perfect happiness. Lord Houghton writes a
delightful little poem called " Carpe Diem," which
runs as follows.
"Youth that pursueth with such eager pace
Thy even way,
Thou pantest on to win a mournful race Then stay, 0 stay!
"Pause and luxuriate in thy sunny plain,
Loiter-enjoy;
Once past, thou never wilt come back again
A second boy.
The hills of manhood wear a noble face
When seen from far;
The mist of light, from which they take their grace,
Hides what they are.
"The dark and weary path those cliffs between
Thou canst not know,
And how it leads to regions never green Dead fields of snow.
"Pause while thou mayst, nor deem that fate thy gain
Which all too fast
Will drive thee forth from this delicious plain,
A man at last."
But this is the picture of youth painted by manhood.
I doubt if boyhood is happy. Its exuberant spirits
and love of play, the eager appetite, and the forthputting of a strength which knows no fatigue, are
conditions which look very fascinating to the weary
man who cannot digest his breakfast; but they are
no more to the boy than the power of breathing is
to the man. Youth has had this condition of happiness left out: it does not know itself; it does not
know that it has an embarras des richesses which it
is to perpetually lose. Hood expresses it in his inimitable way:
"And sure'twere doubtful joy
To know myself more far from heaven
Than when I were a boy."
The sufferings of a bashful boy! Can any tor ture-chamber be more dreadful than the juvenile
party, the drawing-room filled with critical elders,
the necessary parade of the Christmas-dinner, to a
shy boy?
I have sometimes taken the hand of such a one,
and have found it cold and clammy; desperate was
the struggle of that young soul, afraid of he knew
not what, caught by the machinery of society, which
mangled him at every point, crushed every nerve,
and filled him with faintness and fear. How happy
he might have been with that brood of young puppies in the barn, or the soft rabbits in their nest of
hay! How grand he was, paddling his poor leaky
boat down the rapids, jumping into the river, and
dragging it with his splendid strength over the rocks!
Nature and he were friends; he was not afraid of
her; she recognized her child, and greeted him with
smiles. The young animals loved him, and his dog
looked up into his fair blue eyes, and recognized his
king. But this creature must be tamed: he must be
brought into prim parlors, and dine with propriety;
he must dress himself in garments which scratch,
and pull, and hurt him; boots must be put on his
feet which pinch; he must be clean-terrible injustice to a faun who loves to roll down-hill, to grub
for roots, to follow young squirrels to their lair, and
to polish old guns rather than his manners!
Then the dreadful slavery of school! Boys have
suffered and have died of those wooden benchesthose formal desks! What Heine said of the Latins
and Greeks-that they conquered the world because
they did not have to stop and learn their own language-always occurs to me as I enter a school and
see the sad, captured looks of the young two-legged
animal we call a boy.
And then the sensitive boy, who has a finer grain
than the majority of his fellows, suddenly thrown
into the pandemonium of a public school! Nails
driven into the flesh could not inflict such pain as
such a one suffers; and the scars remain. One gentleman told me, in mature life, that the loss of a toy
stolen from him in childhood still rankled. How
much of the infirmity of human character may be
traced to the anger, the sense of wounded feeling,
engendered by a wrong done in childhood when one
is helpless to avenge!
All this may be called the necessary hardening
process, but I do not believe in it. We have learned
how to temper iron and steel, but we have not
learned how to treat children. Could it be made a
money-making process, like the Bessemer, I believe
one could learn how to temper the human character.
Our instincts of intense love for our children are not
enough; we should study it as a science. The human race is very busy; it has to take care of itself,
and to feed its young; it must conquer the earthperhaps it has not time to study Jim and Jack and
Charley, and Mary and Emily and Jane, as problems.
But, if it had, would it not perhaps pay? There
would be fewer criminals.
Many observers recommend a wise neglect-not
too much inquiry, but a judicious surrounding of the
best influences; and then-let your young plant
grow up. Yes; but it should be a very wise neg lect- it should be a neglect which is always on
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