There is no effeminacy in the t.i.tle "nursing fathers," but the contrary.
Fondness for children arises from compa.s.sionate feeling for creatures that are helpless and innocent.
Napoleon loved the man who held with a steel hand, covered with a silk glove; so should the father be gentle but firm. Happy is he who is happy in his children, and happy are the children who are happy in their father. All fathers are not wise. Some are like Eli, and spoil their children. Not to cross our children is the way to make a cross of them.
But, "Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." That is, do not irritate them by unwise or capricious rules and ways. Help your wives to make the home lively and pleasant, so as to keep the children from seeking pleasure and excitement elsewhere. The proverb says that "Clergymen"s sons always turn out badly." Why? Because the children are surfeited with severe religion, _not_ with the true religion of Christ, who was Himself reproved by the prototypes of such severe men.
"Where," asks Mr. James Payn, "is the children"s fun? Boys are now crammed with knowledge like turkeys (but unfortunately not killed at Christmas), and there is absolutely no room in them for a joke." An idol called "success" is put up for worship, and fathers are ready to sacrifice the health and happiness of their children upon its altar.
"The educational abomination of desolation of the present day," says Professor Huxley, "is the stimulation of young people to work at high pressure by incessant examinations." Some wise man (who probably was not an early riser) has said of early risers in general, that they are "conceited all the forenoon, and stupid all the afternoon." Now whether this is true of early risers in the common acceptation of the word or not, I will not pretend to say; but it is too often true of the unhappy children who are forced to rise too early in their cla.s.ses. They are "conceited all the forenoon of life, and stupid all its afternoon." How much unhappiness might children be spared if fathers would goad them less, and sometimes cheer up that dulness which has fallen to most of us, by saying:
"Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever; Do n.o.ble things--nor dream them all day long; And so make life, death, and that vast for ever One grand, sweet song."
What to do with our boys and girls is certainly a serious question, but the last thing we should do with them is to make them miserable. Why not disregard all false notions of gentility, and have each child well taught a manual trade? Then they will have riches in their arms, and you will have escaped the unpleasant alternative of the Jewish proverb, which says that he who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to steal.
We give here a sketch of Canon Kingsley as a father, because we do not remember any home life more beautiful and instructive. Because the Rectory-house was on low ground, the rector of Eversley, who considered violation of the divine laws of health a sort of acted blasphemy, built his children an outdoor nursery on the "Mount," where they kept books, toys, and tea things, spending long, happy days on the highest and loveliest point of moorland in the glebe; and there he would join them when his parish work was done, bringing them some fresh treasure picked up in his walk, a choice wild-flower or fern or rare beetle, sometimes a lizard or a field-mouse; ever waking up their sense of wonder, calling out their powers of observation, and teaching them lessons out of G.o.d"s great green book, _without their knowing_ they were learning.
Out-of-doors and indoors, the Sundays were the happiest days of the week to the children, though to their father the hardest. When his day"s work was done, there was always the Sunday walk, in which each bird and plant and brook was pointed out to the children, as preaching sermons to Eyes, such as were not even dreamt of by people of the No-eyes species.
Indoors the Sunday picture-books were brought out, and each child chose its subject for the father to draw, either some Bible story, or bird or beast or flower. In all ways he fostered in his children a love of animals. They were taught to handle without disgust toads, frogs, beetles, as works from the hand of a living G.o.d. His guests were surprised one morning at breakfast when his little girl ran up to the open window of the dining-room, holding a long, repulsive-looking worm in her hand: "Oh, daddy, look at this _delightful_ worm!"
Kingsley had a horror of corporal punishment, not merely because it tends to produce antagonism between parent and child, but because he considered more than half the lying of children to be the result of fear of punishment. "Do not train a child," he said, "as men train a horse, by letting anger and punishment be the _first_ announcement of his having sinned. If you do, you induce two bad habits: first, the boy regards his parent with a kind of blind dread, as a being who may be offended by actions which to _him_ are innocent, and whose wrath he expects to fall upon him at any moment in his most pure and unselfish happiness. Next, and worst still, the boy learns not to fear sin, but the punishment of it, and thus he learns to lie." He was careful too not to confuse his children by a multiplicity of small rules. "It is difficult enough to keep the Ten Commandments," he would say, "without making an eleventh in every direction." He had no "moods" with his family, for he cultivated, by strict self-discipline in the midst of worries and pressing business, a disengaged temper, that always enabled him to enter into other people"s interests, and especially into children"s playfulness. "I wonder," he would say, "if there is so much laughing in any other home in England as in ours." He became a light-hearted boy in the presence of his children. When nursery griefs and broken toys were taken to his study, he was never too busy to mend the toy and dry the tears. He held with Jean Paul Richter, that children have their "days and hours of rain," which parents should not take much notice of, either for anxiety or sermons, but should lightly pa.s.s over, except when they are symptoms of coming illness. And his knowledge of physiology enabled him to detect such symptoms. He recognized the fact, that weariness at lessons and sudden fits of obstinacy are not hastily to be treated as moral delinquencies, springing as they so often do from physical causes, which are best counteracted by cessation from work and change of scene.
How blessed is the son who can speak of his father as Charles Kingsley"s eldest son does. ""Perfect love casteth out fear", was the motto," he says, "on which my father based his theory of bringing up children. From this and from the interests he took in their pursuits, their pleasures, trials, and even the petty details of their everyday life, there sprang up a friendship between father and children, that increased in intensity and depth with years. To speak for myself, he was the best friend--the only true friend I ever had. At once he was the most fatherly and the most unfatherly of fathers--fatherly in that he was our intimate friend and our self-const.i.tuted adviser; unfatherly in that our feeling for him lacked that fear and restraint that make boys call their father "the governor." Ours was the only household I ever saw in which there was no favouritism. It seemed as if in each of our different characters he took an equal pride, while he fully recognized their different traits of good or evil; for instead of having one code of social, moral, and physical laws laid down for one and all of us, each child became a separate study for him; and its little "diseases au moral," as he called them, were treated differently, according to each different temperament....
Perhaps the brightest picture of the past that I look back to now is the drawing-room at Eversley, in the evenings, when we were all at home and by ourselves. There he sat, with one hand in mother"s, forgetting his own hard work in leading our fun and frolic, with a kindly smile on his lips, and a loving light in that bright gray eye, that made us feel that, in the broadest sense of the word, he was our father."
Of this son, when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, his father (then Professor of History) writes: "Ah! what a blessing to be able to help him at last by teaching him something one"s self!" And to a learned "F.G.S." he says very seriously: "My eldest son is just going off to try his manhood in Colorado, United States. You will understand, therefore, that it is somewhat important to me just now whether the world be ruled by a just and wise G.o.d, or by o. It is also important to me with regard to my own boy"s future, whether what is said to have happened to-morrow (Good Friday) be true or false."
Writing to his wife from the seaside, where he had gone in search of health, he says: "This place is perfect; but it seems a dream and imperfect without you. Kiss the darling ducks of children for me. How I long after them and their prattle! I delight in all the little ones in the street, for their sake, and continually I start and fancy I hear their voices outside. You do not know how I love them; nor did I hardly till I came here. Absence quickens love into consciousness. Tell Rose and Maurice that I have got two pair of bucks" horns--one for each of them, huge old fellows, almost as big as baby."
Writing from France to "my dear little man," as he calls his youngest son (for whom he wrote the "Water Babies"), he says: "There is a little Egyptian vulture here in the inn; ask mother to show you his picture in the beginning of the bird-book." There was little danger that the sons of such a clergyman as this would turn out badly.
A companion picture of Dr. Arnold as a father, has been drawn by Dean Stanley: "It is impossible adequately to describe the union of the whole family round him, who was not only the father and guide, but the elder brother and playfellow of his children; the gentleness and tenderness which marked his whole feeling and manner in the privacy of his domestic intercourse. Enough, however, may perhaps be said to recall something at least of its outward aspect. There was the cheerful voice that used to go sounding through the house in the early morning, as he went round to call his children; the new spirits which he seemed to gather from the mere glimpses of them in the midst of his occupations--the increased merriment of all in any game in which he joined--the happy walks on which he would take them in the fields and hedges, hunting for flowers--the yearly excursion to look in the neighbouring clay-pit for the earliest coltsfoot, with the mock siege that followed. Nor, again, was the sense of his authority as a father ever lost in his playfulness as a companion. His personal superintendence of their ordinary instructions was necessarily limited by his other engagements, but it was never wholly laid aside. In the later years of his life it was his custom to read the Psalms and Lessons of the day with his family every morning; and the common reading of a chapter in the Bible every Sunday evening, with repet.i.tion of hymns or parts of Scripture by every member of the family--the devotion with which he would himself repeat his favourite poems from the Christian Year, or his favourite pa.s.sages from the Gospels--the same att.i.tude of deep attention in listening to the questions of his youngest children, the same reverence in answering their difficulties that he would have shown to the most advanced of his friends or his scholars--form a picture not soon to pa.s.s away from the mind of any one who was ever present. But his teaching in his family was naturally not confined to any particular occasions; they looked to him for information and advice at all times; and a word of authority from him was a law not to be questioned for a moment. And with the tenderness which seemed to be alive to all their wants and wishes, there was united that peculiar sense of solemnity, with which, in his eyes, the very idea of a family life was invested. The anniversaries of domestic events--the pa.s.sing away of successive generations--the entrance of his sons on the several stages of their education, struck on the deepest chords of his nature, and made him blend with every prospect of the future the keen sense of the continuance (so to speak) of his own existence in the good and evil fortunes of his children, and to unite the thought of them with the yet more solemn feeling, with which he was at all times wont to regard "the blessing" of "a whole house transplanted entire from earth to heaven, without one failure.""
What Luther was as a father may be imagined from a letter which he wrote when absent at the Diet of Augsburg, to his little boy, aged five years.
The mother had written the home news, especially telling the loving father about his first-born, so to him, as well as to her, Luther wrote the following letter, full of fatherly fondness and charming naturalness.
"Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little boy. I am pleased to see that thou learnest thy lessons well, and prayest well. Go on thus, my dear boy, and when I come home I will bring you a fine fairing. I know of a pretty garden where are merry children that have gold frocks, and gather nice apples and plums and cherries under the trees, and sing and dance, and ride on pretty horses with gold bridles and silver saddles. I asked the man of the place whose the garden was, and who the children were. He said, "These are the children who pray and learn and are good." Then I answered, "I also have a son, who is called Hans Luther. May he come to this garden, and eat pears and apples, and ride a little horse, and play with the others?" The man said, "If he says his prayers, and learns and is good, he may come; and Lippus and Jost [Melanchthon"s son Philip, and Jonas" son, Jodecus] may come, and they shall have pipes and drums and lutes and fiddles, and they shall dance, and shoot with little crossbows. Then he showed me a smooth lawn in the garden laid out for dancing, and there the pipes and crossbows hung. But it was still early, and the children had not dined, and I could not wait for the dance. So I said, "Dear sir, I will go straight home and write all this to my little boy; but he has an aunt, Lene (great-aunt Magdalen) that he must bring with him." And the man answered, "So it shall be! go and write as you say." Therefore, dear little boy, learn and pray with a good heart, and tell Lippus and Jost to do the same, and then you will all come to the garden together. Almighty G.o.d guard you. Give my love to Aunt Lene, and give her a kiss for me.--Your loving father, MARTIN LUTHER."
What is chiefly wanted in the education of children is a wise mixture of love and firmness. Parental authority should be regarded as vicegerent authority, set up by G.o.d and ruling in His stead. A parent is to a child what G.o.d is to a good man. He is the moral governor of the world of childhood. Parental government is therefore only genuine when it rules for the same ends as G.o.d pursues.
When children accord willing obedience the end of family government is gained. To attain this end a parent should be careful to observe the following rules. First, never to hamper a child with arbitrary restrictions, but, if possible, always to let the reasons of each command or prohibition be apparent; secondly, to let every punishment have some relation to the offence, and so imitate the great laws of nature, which entail definite consequences on every act of wrong; and, thirdly, never to threaten a punishment and afterwards shrink from inflicting it; finally, punishments should be severe enough to serve their purpose, and gentle enough to ensure the continuance of affection.
Nor should the child be left alone until he feels that the punishment has been for his own good, and gives a.s.surance of this feeling by putting on a pleasant face.
Human nature requires amus.e.m.e.nt as well as teaching and correction. One of the first duties of a parent is to sympathize with the play of his children. How much do little children crave for sympathy! They hold out every new object for you to see it with them, and look up after each gambol for you to rejoice with them. Let play-time and playthings be given liberally. Invite suitable companions, and do everything in your power to make home sweet. Authority, so unbent, will be all the stronger and more welcome from our display of real sympathy. If family government were well carried out in every home, children would be happier and better than they are now. Then there would be, even in our own great towns, a partial realization of the words of the prophet Zechariah, in reference to Jerusalem delivered: "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the streets thereof."
The home of our children ought never to be a prison where there is plenty of rule and order, but no love and no pleasure. We should remember that "he who makes a little child happier for an hour is a fellow-worker with G.o.d."
It was bitterly said of a certain Pharisaical household that in it "no one should please himself, neither should he please any one else; for in either case he would be thought to be displeasing G.o.d." This reminds us of the Scotchman who, having gone back to his country after a long absence, declared that the whole kingdom was on the road to perdition.
"People," he said, "used to be reserved and solemn on the sabbath, but now they look as happy on that day as on any other." It is a blessed thing for the rising generation that such grotesque perversions of religion are seldom presented to them now; for every well-instructed Christian ought to be aware that religion does not banish mirth, but only moderates and sets rules to it.
CHAPTER XX.
POLITENESS AT HOME.
"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon these, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law teaches us but here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply laws, or they totally destroy them."--_Burke._
About twelve thousand police in London are able to take care of about four million people. How is it done? Chiefly by moral force, and, above all, by civility. Sir Edmund Henderson, the Chief Commissioner of the force, said on a recent occasion that it was by "strict attention to duty, by sobriety, and, above all, by civility," that the police endeavoured to do their duty. "I lay great stress upon civility," said the Chief Commissioner, "for I think it is the great characteristic of the metropolitan police force."
If civility and politeness have such an influence upon the hard, rough world of London how much greater will be the effect of good manners or beautiful behaviour, not only in rendering comparatively safe the many difficult crossings in the path of newly-married people, but also in adorning even the smallest details of family life! True courtesy exhibits itself in a disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, and in refraining from all that may annoy them. And the cultivation day by day of this sweet reasonableness is almost as necessary to the comfort of those who live together as the daily calls of the milkman and the baker. If no two people have it so much in their power to torment each other as husband and wife, it is their bounden duty to guard against this liability by cultivating the habit of domestic politeness. It is a mistake to suppose that the forms of courtesy can be safely dispensed with in the family circle. With the disappearance of the forms the reality will too often disappear. The very effort of appearing bright under adverse circ.u.mstances is sure to render cheerfulness easier on another occasion.
Good manners like good words cost little and are worth much. They oil the machinery of social life, but more especially of domestic life. If a cheerful "good morning" and "good evening" conciliate strangers they are not lost upon a wife. Hardness and repulsiveness of manner originate in want of respect for the feelings of others.
"Remember," says Sydney Smith, "that your children, your wife, and your servants have rights and feelings; treat them as you would treat persons who could turn again. Do not attempt to frighten children and inferiors by pa.s.sion; it does more harm to your own character than it does good to them. Pa.s.sion gets less and less powerful after every defeat. Husband energy for the real demand which the dangers of life make upon it." Good manners are more than "surface Christianity." Rowland Hill was right when he said, "I do not think much of a man"s religion unless his dog and cat are the happier for it."
"Woman was made out of a rib from the _side_ of Adam--not out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal to him: under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved."
"Use the woman tenderly, tenderly; From a crooked rib G.o.d made her slenderly: Straight and strong He did not make her, So if you try to bend you"ll break her."
Men are cautioned by the Jewish Talmud to be careful lest they cause women to weep, "for G.o.d counts their tears."
There are some people who stretch their manners to such an unnatural degree in society that they are pretty sure to go to the opposite extreme when relaxing at home. Feeling released from something that was hanging over them they run wild and become rude in consequence of their late restraint.
Is it not, to say the least, probable that such patient humility as the following would be followed by a reaction? Bishop Thirlwall was generally regarded, except by the small circle of those who knew him intimately, with much awe by his clergy, who thought that they had better keep as far as possible out of the way of their terribly logical and rather sarcastic diocesan. The legend was that he had trained a highly sagacious dog into the habit of detecting and biting intrusive curates. An amusing story is told of a humble-minded Levite who was staying at Abergwili Palace on the occasion of an ordination. An egg was placed before him, which, on tapping, proved a very bad one indeed. The Bishop made a kindly apology, and told a servant to bring a fresh one.
"No, thank you, my lord," replied the young clergyman, with a penitential expression of countenance; "it is quite good enough for me."
We think that the clergyman"s wife would have acted rashly if, soon after this occurrence, _she_ should have tried the patience of her Job with an antiquated egg.
The proverb "familiarity breeds contempt" suggests another reason why the manners displayed at home are not, generally speaking, as good as they should be.
There is generally greater harmony when a husband"s duties necessitate his remaining several hours of the day from home. "For this relief, much thanks!" will be the not unnatural sentiment of a grateful wife. And to the husband, on his return, home will appear far sweeter than if he had idled about the house all day with nothing to do but torment his wife.
Richter says that distance injures love less than nearness. People are more polite when they do not see too much of each other.
Madam! no gentleman is ent.i.tled to such distinguished consideration as your husband. Sir! no lady is ent.i.tled to such deferential treatment as your wife.
Awkward consequences that could not have been foreseen have sometimes followed domestic rudeness. It is related of Lord Ellenborough that, when on one occasion he was about to set out on circuit, his wife expressed a wish to accompany him; a proposition to which his lordship a.s.sented, provided there were no bandboxes tucked under the seat of his carriage, as he had too often found there had been when honoured with her ladyship"s company before. Accordingly they both set out together, but had not proceeded very far before the judge, stretching out his legs under the seat in front of him, kicked against one of the flimsy receptacles which he had specially prohibited. Down went the window with a bang and out went the bandbox into the ditch. The startled coachman immediately commenced to pull up, but was ordered to drive on and let the thing lie where it was. They reached the a.s.size town in due course, and his lordship proceeded to robe for the court. "And now, where"s my wig?--where"s my wig?" he demanded, when everything else had been donned. "Your wig, my lord," replied the servant, tremulously, "was in that bandbox your lordship threw out of the window as we came along."
Sir Robert Walpole used to say that he never despaired of making up a quarrel between women unless one of them had called the other old or ugly. In the same way married people need not despair of realizing truly united and therefore happy lives if they will only study each other"s weak points, as skaters look out for the weak parts of the ice, in order to keep off them.
Nothing is more unmanly as well as unmannerly than for a husband to speak disparagingly of either his wife or of the marriage state before strangers. Lord Erskine once declared at a large party that "a wife was a tin canister tied to one"s tail;" upon which Sheridan, who was present when the remark was made, presented to Lady Erskine the following lines:
"Lord Erskine, at woman presuming to rail, Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one"s tail; And fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on, Seems hurt at his lordship"s degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? Considered aright, A canister"s polished and useful and bright; And should dirt its original purity hide, That"s the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied."
The "puppy" only got what he deserved.
When a husband happens to be a mere goose, happy if only a goose, though he may keep up the delusion that he is the "head of the family," it becomes the wife"s duty to exercise real control. But she may be a responsible Prime Minister without usurping, much less parading, the insignia of Royalty. And if she have the feelings of a gentlewoman she will not allow every one to _see_ the reins of government in her hand as did a colonel"s wife known to me, of whom even the privates and drummer boys in her husband"s (?) regiment used to say: "Mrs. ----, she"s the colonel." What Burke said of his wife"s eyes describe woman"s proper place in the domestic Cabinet: "Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they command, like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by virtue." Too often it is the poor wife who has to bear the heaviest part of the burdens of domestic life while the unchivalrous husband struts before as head of the house quite unenc.u.mbered.
Even the youngest child may claim to be treated with politeness. "I feel," said President Garfield, "a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man. I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be b.u.t.toned up under his coat." Fathers should look upon their children with respect, for he who is "only a child" may become a much better and greater man than his father.