[All Rights Reserved.] SIORIES OF THE POOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 77

[All Rights Reserved.] SIORIES OF THE POOR.

(By M. Loane, Author of "Love Stories of the Poor," etc.)

OUR MASTERS' RULERS.

Our masters are not really our masters, for the simple reason that they find it too much trouble, but their rulers love* dominion, and exercise it rigorously all through' childhood and though generally with decreasing severity sas they rise in / years. There is a general prejudice among the rich that the poor are bad-tempered, especially the men, and -that the children suffer accordingly, but no close observer will admit that there is any wide foundation for the opinion. I remember hearing the captain of a training ship say of a man whose duty it was to give very elementary instruction in seamanship : " I shall land that fellow Black as scon as I can. I feel sure he drinks ; he is so irritable with the boys in the morning." How many upper-class schoolmasters would be convicted" of drink- ] ing if this were the test ! Taken as a whole, the. poor are better tempered by nature than the educated classes, and they often acquire great self-command under provocation. A young" girl was complaining at home of what she had to " put up with " in her place, and her grey-haired father, who for the sake of wife and children had managed never to be a day out of work for nearly 30 years, said with such, kindness and melancholy that she never forgot it .- "My dear, if you knew- the insults I have to put up with ! " \ The poor are perhaps chiefly misjudged in this respect owing to their voice, which is ordinarily of a harsh or thin quality, and over which they quickly lose such small command as they ever acquire. "SPIRITY BEHAVIOUR." The popular idea "of a working-class mother is of a- person always threatening her children with bodily chastisement, while the working-class father is always inflicting it, whether with or without the loudly-snouted warnings. In literature of an evangelical-sentimental tyne the mother, more especially 'if a widow or the wife of a drunkard, is often allowed an almost impossible range of .virtues, but it is rare for any father below a tolerably well-defined rank in society, to be allowed any merits at aJI. After many yeans close dequamtanoe -vrxtli -tlxezn tbo dxief complaint that I have to make against tht ordinary father and mother is of their -excessive indulgence towards their children »nd th« rarity with "which they make any steady or serious attempts to inculcate obedience. An elementary schoolmistress of long experience said to me a few months ago : "Children of four or five are not content- with mere disobedience — they slap their mother for daring to give them an unwelcome order." This is literally true, and the renowned Bella Wilfer is by no means the only person who has used her bonnet to discipline a father of a rougher type than ths Cherub. If the indulgence merely lasted foT these few years, and if the ways of spoilt babies were dropped at the age of six or seven, as we are assured they are in Japan, and as we can see for ourselves they generally are in France, the matter jtnight not . be of much consequence ; but although the particular forms in which the uncontrolled- self-will is exhibited Generally change when "the children reach school age and come under school discipline for a few hours every 'day <he root of the evil remains. Obedience and the freedom found in submission to lawful authority have never been learnt, and all their live-, the' children must suffer from this lack of early training. As an example of the almost incredible extent to which they are often spoilt, a. lad just of working a^re, and the son of most frugal and industrious parents, we'7t to " live in " at a small livery stable six miles from his home. A few weeks later the master's wife heard that his father was dangerously ill. ard at once offered him N a day's leave to go and s«e his parents, and gave him 2s to take to his mothei, and several little things for the younger children. She gathered from indistinct mutterings and grumblings that he did not choose to take so long a walk, and told him he micht ricte what was called " the old horse," not on account of decrepitude, as it was sti'l -in full •work, but to distinguish it from two which had been more, recently purchased. The boy asked to have ".the younsj hor«e" instead, and^ when his mistre. s demurred, as it was an animal worth quite £50, said - that he would not go at all unless he could have it. The mistress finally yielded, because she thought the parents would be cruelly wounded by his -beartles&ness if he stayed away, and nothing would have induced her to mention his - conduct to them. The tale was related by the boy directly he reached home, andhe was hiprhly applauded by both his parents for his " spirity behaviour." PARENTS, BEWARE! The parents, especially the mother, axe not always entirely disinterested ; they are to some extent affected by the common fallacy that the more you do for anyone the more grateful you may expect him to be. I- t have never been able to. discover any proportion between benefits bestowed and gratitude experienced. When people enduring a■> neglected-, and poverty-stricken old age have told me "" that they have "sacrificed for ' their children," I sometimes wonder what "everything" was. and whether they had any right to sacrifice it. I" have often been asked whether I thought it possible for ordinary waereearnere to provide for their old age. To answer such a question with any fulness would require special study* I can only reply that nearly everyone could make some provision, and that those who do already make some provision might easily

make more. I believe that the younger children of the family are nearly always less happy than the elder, and yet moneyis constantly lavished upon them which ought to have been caved for their parents' declining yeare. As soon as the eldest child is self -supporting the parents ought to begin to think of themselves, even if they cannot do so from the very beginning of their married life. When I have seen parents providing bicycles, pianos, silk blouses, and many other things that the elder ones of the family never had or missed, paying for music lessons, and allowing serious work to be indefinitely postponed, I have often reminded them of the old German p*overb, " One father can support 12 children, but 12 children cannot support one father." ' In oases where I have known them and all their circumstances really •well, I have sometimes ventured on a still more personal form of argument, and asked, "What reason have you to believe that your children will be more willing to support you , in your old age than you have been to support your parents in theirs? According to their power, your parents did as much for you, and acknowledge that they treated you kindly. Be warned in time : give your children only what is fair and right; provide for yourselves, and your old age will be respected as it should be. Your children will be all the happier, and you will take a proper position with regard to your grandchildren. Can you bear to think that you -will live to be treated as you see other old people treated? It is not by bribery and overindulgence that you will save yourselves from such a fate. If you had but halt a crown a week of your own for life, you would find that it was- ' worlds away' from having nothing." 1 THE SPOILED CHILD. But they are deaf. And not only parent® are lacking in foresight, for the few unmarried women are just as unwise in their attitude towards nephews and nieces. In one house where there was a special abundance of cameras, musical instruments, sewing machines, bicycles, etc., I wais told: "Their aunt gives 'em to 'em. She's no one else to think of, bein' an old maid, as you may say." In her case there wa!s not even, a decent pretence that gratitude would ever arise ! Perhaps one reason why the poor are apt to over-indulge their children is because they are so much with them. Boys and girls of the upper classes are frequently told ' that the less they, are seen and heard by their elders, especially their father, tne better they will be liked, and the people who tell them this seem to believe that because working men have to see and hear so much of their children, day and night, they must inevitably love theni little. It is an entire mistake ; the more men see of young children, outside working hours, the better they understand them and the stronger their attachment. Sailors, although from certain, points of view pood fathers, are on the whole cool and' indifferent to their children, and inclined to be excessively jealous of them ; soldiers are more demonstratively affectionate fathers, but cannot well bear comparison with civilians. Among civilians, again, the man with long and uncertain hours of work never cares as much for his family as the man whorarely leaves home before they are awake, •and returns before they are asleep. "Except on Sundays, and perhaps for a short time in the summer, I never 1 see my children by daylight," complained a civilian father. "What's that?" growled a sailor sourly. " Often for three years I haven't seen mine by any kind of light at all." In all ranks of life the sailor father is to be pitied, as-phe is commonly regarded as an outsider. " I remember a little *girl of five years old going to a favourite aunt the day after her father's return from foreign service and telling her,- "That cwoth old man has come to my howth again." Quite recently a boy of seven, connected avith the same family, asked his nurse anxiously: "When is that cross old man going away again?" In the first case the father was about 40, and in the second considerably under that age. RELIGIOUS TRAINING AND ITS RESULTS. the indulgence of work-ing-class fathers to youn<r children, and the general absence of any severity when they are older, mothers almost invariably rank first in the children's affection. A man who had been a mission worker for 20 years, specially . devoting himself to young people past the age of childhood, told me : "If at a prayer meeting I ask, 'For whom' shall I pray?' the answer comes like a shot, 'For mother.' I have to prompt acd suggest before they add 'and father.'" Mothers sometimes weary of the constant presence of their children, and for this reason shortened church services or brief attendances at Sunday school are not approved of. .J' A hower, or a hower'n a-quarter at the outside— why, it ain't worth dressin' em for. They're back again worritin"before I've tim« to look round." On the other hand, short services are greatly appreciated by young men and" woman. One girl expressed the general regret over a certain clergyman's prolonged illness and the great dissatisfaction with his substitute. As he had been many years in the parish, I took this for affection and loyalty until she explained, Rector, he do do it over faster. We had ought to be out at ten minues to eight by rights." I think there can be no doubt that the co-education now so common in elementary schools, especially in the country, does much to raise the standard of courage among girls — I mean courasye of the kind that resists personal unk'ndness. 1 In mere daring 1 have always found young country girls superior to country boys, and it shows itself more particularly in their 1 bold .handling of animals; they will deal fearlessly with strange dogs, or harness 1 stra-npre ponies, whem a laa of the same age shrinks nervously at every suspicious . '

movement, asking, "Will it bite? Does it kick?" But this is quite distintet from the courage required to resent an injury that also inflicts an inward wound. A girl educated at one of these schools told me that a certain woman's husband beat Tier sometimes^ I expressed great commiseration. "But," she added, "she isn't a bit afraid o' he. If he do give her a' good smack -she do give he another," and I gathered that this was the usual custom! in the neighbourhood if husbands so faT -forgot themselves, which was rather rare. Altogether a prouder type of character was fostered, for the same girl told me, "When mother slapped me she did use to say I was hardened because I didn't' never cry. I always did cry afterwaxdsj but I wouldn't let «er see me." • EXPERIENCE THE TEACHER. In considering the children of the working classes, one warning is especially necessary if we would pronounce just judgment ; the rich are apt to judge the poor too exclusively by the conduct of the young. The general appears to ba: t'Hugesums of money and enormous effort have been expended iiponi the education of these girls and boys, and yet they are rough, noisy, coarse, idle, ungrateful, and with no thought of the future. How much worse their elders must be, how nwich worse they themselves will be in a few years' time." Are their own children at the age of sixteen or eighteen all that they would like them to be? Are they as useful, or even as agreeable, members of society as they generally become ten or fifteen "year* later? -How can they expect the early training of the poor to be so perfect and" complete .that there i* no room left for the work wrought by experience? With the poor, as with the rich, life is the great teacher, and education is only the attempt, more or less well adapted, to place children in such a position and to supply them with such principles that they will rapidly profit by the lejesons which in the course of Nature must come to them.' It should, never be -forgotten that the children of the -poor are not born grown up, nor are they even precocious ; physically, mentally, and morally they are slower in development than those born of long generations of educated men and women : and how faulty and imperfect the latter are we know from conscience, memory, and observation.