I do not mean, here, to intimate that a more frequent use of the left hand than the right would make new blood-vessels grow where there were none before. But it would certainly do one thing; it would make the same vessels carry more blood than they did before, which is, in effect, nearly the same thing:--for the more blood in the limb, as a general rule, the more strength--provided the limb is in due health and exercise.
The inference which I wish the reader to make from all this is, that since the left hand and arm, by due cultivation, and without essential difference or change of structure to begin with, can occasionally be made stronger than the right, it is fair to conclude that it may, if found desirable, be always rendered more nearly equal to it than, in adult years, we usually find it.
The question is now fairly before us--Is such a result desirable? I maintain that it is; and shall endeavor to show my reasons.
How often is one hand injured by an accident, or rendered nearly useless by disease? But if it should be the right, how helpless it makes us! The man who is accustomed to shave himself, must now resort to a barber. If he is a barber himself, or almost any other mechanic, his business must be discontinued. Or if he is a clerk, he cannot use his left hand, and must consequently lose his time. Or if amputation chances to be performed on a favorite arm, how entirely useless to society we are, till we have learned to use the other! It not only takes up a great deal of valuable time to acquire a facility of using it, but if we are already arrived at maturity, we can never use it so well as the other, during our whole lives; because it is too late in life to increase its size and strength much by constant exercise. Whereas in youth, it might have been done easily.
Is it not then important--for these and many more reasons--to teach a child to use with nearly equal readiness, both of his hands? But if so, who can do it better than the mother? And when can it be better done than in the earliest infancy? When is the time which would be devoted to it worth less than at this period?
CHAPTER XX.
ABUSES.
Bad seats for children at table and elsewhere. Why children hate Sunday.
Seats at Sabbath school--at church--at district schools. Suspending children between the heavens and the earth. Cushions to sit on. Seats with backs. Children in factories. Evils produced. Bodily punishment.
Striking the heads of children very injurious. Beating across the middle of the body. Anecdote of a teacher. Concluding advice to mothers.
It is difficult to determine, in regard to many things which concern the management of the young, whether they belong most properly to moral or physical education; so close is the connection between the two, and so decidedly does everything, or nearly everything which relates to the management of the body, have a bearing upon the formation of moral character. This work might be extended very much farther, did it comport with my original plan. But I hasten to close the volume, with a few thoughts on certain abuses of the body, which prevail to a greater or less extent in families and schools; and to which I have not adverted elsewhere.
The seats of children are usually bad, both at table and elsewhere. It seems not enough that we condemn them to the use of knives, forks, spoons, &c., of the same size with those of adults. We go farther; and give them chairs of the same height and proportion with our own. There are a few exceptions to the truth of this remark. Here and there we see a child"s chair, it is true--but not often.
But how unreasonable is it to seat a child in a chair so high that his feet cannot reach the floor; and so constructed that there is no outer place on which the feet can rest. What adult would be willing to sit in so painful a posture, with his legs dangling? No wonder children dislike to sit much, in such circ.u.mstances. And it is a great blessing to both parent and child that they do. No wonder children hate the Sabbath, especially in those families where they are compelled to keep the day holy by sitting motionless! Sabbath schools, though they bring with them some evil along with a great deal of good, are a relief to the young in this particular--especially if their seats are more comfortable elsewhere than at home. They consider it much more tolerable to spend the morning and intermission of the day in going and returning from Sabbath school, than in constant and close confinement. They prefer variety, and the occasional light and air of heaven, to monotony and seclusion and silence.
It happens, however, that the seats at the Sabbath school and at church, are not always what they should be; nor, so far as church is concerned, do I see that this evil can be wholly avoided. Children usually sit with their parents, in the sanctuary--and they ought to do so: and the height of the seats cannot, of course, accommodate both. If there is a building erected solely for the use of the Sabbath school, the seats may be constructed accordingly, without seriously incommoding anybody; but in the church, I do not see, as I have once before observed, how the evil can be remedied.
The greatest trouble in regard to seats, however, is at the day school; especially in our district or common schools. There, it is usual for children to be confined six hours a day--and sometimes two in succession--to hard, narrow, plank seats, a large proportion of which are without backs, and raised so high that the feet of most of the pupils cannot possibly touch the floor. There, "suspended," as I have said in another work, [Footnote: See a "Prize Essay," on School Houses, page 7.] "between the heavens and the earth, they are compelled to remain motionless for an hour or an hour and a half together."
I have also shown, in the same essay, that in regard to the desks, and indeed many other things which pertain to, or are connected with the school, very little pains is taken to provide for the physical welfare or even comfort of the pupils; and that a thorough reform on the subject appears to be indispensable.
When I speak of hard plank seats, let me not be understood as hinting at the necessity of cushions. When I wrote the essay above mentioned, I did indeed believe that they were desirable. But I am now opposed to their use, either by children or adults, even where a laborious employment would seem to demand a long confinement to this awkward and unnatural position. If our seats are cushioned, we shall sit too easily. I believe that our health requires a hard seat; because its very hardness inclines us to change, frequently, our position.
But if we must sit, be it ever so short a time, our seats should always have backs; and those which are designed for children, should not be so high as to render them uncomfortable. Nor should the backs of seats be so high as they usually are, either for children or adults. They should never come much higher than the middle of the body. If they reach the shoulders, they either favor a crouching forward, or interfere with the free action of the lungs.
This might be deemed a proper place for saying something on the position of children in manufactories. But here a world of abuse opens upon my view, the full development of which demands a large volume. How many crooked spines, emaciated bodies, decaying lungs, as well as scrofulas, fevers, and consumptions, are either induced or accelerated by these unnatural employments! I mean they are unnatural for the _young_. As to employing adults in them, I have nothing at present to say. But when I think of the cruel custom of placing children in these places, whose bodies--and were this the place, I might add, _minds_--are immature, and especially girls, I am compelled, by the voice of conscience, and, as I trust, by a regard to those laws which G.o.d has established in our physical frames, but which are yet so strangely violated, to protest against it. Better that no factories should exist, than that children should be ruined in them as they now are. Better by far that we should return, were it possible, to the primitive habits of New England--to those by-gone days when mothers and daughters made the wearing apparel of themselves and their families--when, if there was less of intellectual cultivation, and less money expended for luxuries and extravagances, there was much more of health and happiness.
There is one more species of abuse to which, in closing, I wish to direct maternal attention. I allude to injudicious modes of inflicting corporal punishment.
Let me not be understood to appear, in this place, as the advocate of bodily punishments of any kind; for if they are even admissible under some circ.u.mstances, I am fully convinced that in the way in which they are commonly administered, they do much more harm than good.
But leaving the question of their utility, in the abstract, wholly untouched, and taking it for granted, for the present, that they are--as is undoubtedly the fact--sometimes employed, and will continue to be so for a great while to come, I proceed to speak of their more flagrant abuses.
Among these, none are more reprehensible than blows of any kind on the head. Even the rod is objectionable for this purpose, since it exposes the eyes. But the hand--in boxing the ears or striking in any way--is more so. The bones of the head, in young children, are not yet firmly knit together, and these concussions may injure the tender brain. I know of whole families, whose mental faculties are dull, as the consequence--I believe--of a perpetual boxing and striking of the head.
Some individuals are made almost idiots, in this very manner.--But the worst is not yet told. Many teachers are in the habit of striking their pupils" heads with thick heavy books; and with wooden rules. I have seen one of the latter, of considerable size and thickness, broken in two across the head of a very small boy; and this, too--such is the public mind--in the presence of a mother who was paying a visit to the school.
I have seen parents and masters strike the heads of their children with pieces of wood, of much larger size;--in one instance with a common sized tailor"s press-board; in another with the heavy end of a wooden whip-handle, about an inch in diameter.
Children are sometimes severely beaten across the middle of the body--the region where lie the vital organs--the lungs, the heart, the liver, &c. They are sometimes beaten too, across the joints, or in any place that the excited, perhaps pa.s.sionate teacher or parent can reach.
Rules and books are thrown with violence at pupils in school. There is a story in the "Annals of Education," Vol. IV. at page 28, of a teacher who threw a rule at a little boy, six years old, which struck him with great force, within an inch of one of his eyes. Had it struck a little nearer to his nose, it would, in all probability, have destroyed his left eye.
But without extending these remarks any farther, every intelligent mother who reads what I have already written, will see, as I trust, the necessity of properly informing herself on the great subject of physical education; and of being better prepared than she has. .h.i.therto been for acquitting herself, with satisfaction, of those high and sacred responsibilities which, in the wise arrangements of Nature and Providence, devolve upon her.