In the Best of Humour

Otago Witness, Issue 4014, 17 February 1931, Page 71

In the Best of Humour

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.)

SOFTENING THE STORIES FOR THE CHILDREN.

By

STEPHEN LEACOCK.

“ What is the story that you are reading, Peggy ? ” I asked of a wide-eyed child of eight, who sat buried in a story book. “ Little Red Riding Hood,” she answered. “ Have you come to the part,” I asked, “where the grandmother gets eaten?” “She didn’t get eaten!” the child protested in surprise. “ Yes, the wolf comes to her cottage and knocks at the door, and she thinks that it is Little Red Riding Hood and opens the door, and the wolf eats her.” She shook her head. “ That’s not it at all in this book,” she said. So I took a look at the page before her and I read: — “ Then the wolf pushed open the door of the cottage and rushed in, but the grandmother was not there, as she happened not to be at home.” WHAT'S TOO HORRIBLE? Exactly! The grandmother being a truly up-to-date grandmother, was prob-

ably out on the golf links, or playing bridge with a few other grandmothers like herself. At any rate, she was not there, and so she escaped getting eaten by the wolf. In other words, Little Red Riding Hood, like all the good old stories that have come down from the bad old times, is having to give way to the tendencies of a humane age. It is supposed to be too horrible for the children to read. The awful fate of the grandmother, chewed up by the wolf —or, no, swallowed whole like a Malpeeque oyster —is too terrible for them to hear. So the story, like a hundred other stories and pictures, has got to be censored, re-edited, and incidentally —spoiled. All of which rests on a fundamental error as to literature and as to children. There is no need to soften down a story for them. They like it rough. THESE GROWN-UPS. “In the real story,” I said to the little girl, “the grandmother was at home, and the wolf rushed in and ate her in one mouthful ” “Oh! that’s much better!” she exclaimed. “ And then, afterwards, when the hunters came in, they killed the wolf and cut his stomach open, and the grandmother jumped out and was saved! ” “ Oh, isn't that splendid! ” cried the child.

In other words all the terror that grown-up people see in this sort of story is there for grown-up people only. The children look clean over it, or past it, or under it. In reality, the vision of the grandmother feebly defending herself against the savage beast — or, perhaps, leaping round the room to get away from him and jumping up on top of the grandfather’s clock —is either horrible, or weird, or pathetic, or even comic, as we may happen to see it. But to the children it is just a story—and a good one • —that’s all.

GIANTS AND FAIRIES. And all the old stories are the same! Consider Jack the Giant Killer. What a conglomeration of weeping and wailing, of people shut into low dungeons, of murder, of sudden death, of blood, and of horror! Jack, having inveigled an enormous giant into eating an enormous quantity of porridge, then rips him up the stomach with a huge sword! What a mess! But it doesn't disturb Jack or his young readers one iota. In fact, Jack is off again at once with his young readers trailing eagerly after him, in order to cut off at one blow the three huge heads of a three-headed giant and make a worse mess still. From the fairy stories and the giant stories the children presently pass on—quite unscathed, as I see it—to the higher range of the blood and thunder stories of the pirates and the battles. Here, again, the reality, for the grown-up mind that can see it, is terrible and gruesome; but never so for the boys and

girls who see in it only pleasant adventure aud bright adversity. THE BOY HEROES. Take, for instance, this familiar scene as it appears and reappears in the history of Jack Daredevil, or Ned Fearnothing, or any of those noble boys who go to sea, in books, at the age of fourteen, and retire as admirals, at twenty-two:— “ The fire from both ships was now becoming warm. A round shot tearing across the deck swept off four of our fellows. ‘Ha! ha!’ said Jack, as he turned towards Ned on the quarterdeck, ‘ this bids fair to become lively.’ ” It certainly did. In fact, it would be lively already if one stopped to think of the literal and anatomical meaning of a round shot—twenty-five pounds of red hot iron—tearing through the vitals of four men. But the boy reader never gets it this way. What is said is that four of our fellows were “ swept off ” — just that; merely “swept off” —and that’s the way a child reader takes it. And when the pirates ■“ leap on deck,” Jack himself “ cuts down ” four of them, and Ned “ cuts down ” three. That’s all they do—“ they cut them down,” they just “ shorten them,” so to speak. Very similar in scope and method was the good old “ half-dime novel ” written of the days ofjthe “ Prairie,” and the mountain trail, the Feathered Indian, and the Leathered scout. In these, unsuspecting strangers got scalped in what is now the main street of a city —where they get skinned. These stories used to open with a rush and keep in rapid oscillation all the time. In fact, they began with the concussion of firearms. “* Bang! Bang! Bang! ’ Three shots rang out over the prairie, and three feathered Indians bit the dust.” It seemed always to be a favourite pastime of the indians, “ biting dust.” THE YOUTHFUL MIND. In grim reality, to the grown-up mind —these were stories of terror, of mid-

night attacks, of stealthy murder with a knife from without the folds of the tent, of sudden death in dark caverns, of pitiless enemies, and of cruel torture. But not so to the youthful mind. He followed it all through quite gaily, sharing the high courage of his hero —Dick Danger the Dauntless. “ I must say,” whispered Dick to Ned (this was when the Indians had them tied to a tree and were piling grass and sticks around it so as to burn them alive), “ I must say, old man, things begin to look critical. Unless we can think of some way-out of this fix, we are lost.” Notice, please, this word “ lost ”; in reality, they would be worse than lost. They’d be cooked. But in this class of literature the word “ lost ” is used to cover up a multitude of things. And, of course, Dick does think of a way out. It occurs to him that by moving his hands he can slip off the thongs that bind him, set Ned free, leap from the tree to the back of a horse, of two horses, and then, by jumping over the edge of a chasm into the forest a thousand feet below, they can find themselves in what is called “ comparative "safety.” After which, the story goes calmly on, oblivious of the horrible scene that nearly brought it to an end. REAL TERROR.

But as' the modern parent and the modern teacher have grown alarmed, the art of storytelling for children has got to be softened down. There must be no more horror; and blood, and violent death. Away with the giants and the ogres! Let us have instead the stories of the animal kingdom, in which Weewee the Mouse has tea on a broad leaf with Goo-goo the Caterpillar, and in which Fuzzy the Skunk gives talks on animal life that would do for zoology class 1 at Harvard.

But do we—do they —can we escape, after all, from the cruel environment that makes up the life in which we live? Are the animals, after all, so much softer than the ogres, so much kinder than the pirates? When Slick the cat crackles up the bones of Wee-wee the Mouse, how does that stand? And when old Mr Hawk hovers in the air watching for Cheep-cheep the chicken, who tries in vain to hide under the grass and.calls for its lost mother —how is that for terror? To my thinking the timorous and imaginative child can get more real terror fr<sm the pictured anguish of a hunted animal than from the deaths of all the Welsh giants that ever lived on Plynlimmon. The tears of childhood fall fast and easilv, and evil be to him who makes them How. THE MORAL. How easily a child will cry over the story of a little boy lost, how easily at the tale of poverty and want, how inconsolably at death. Touch but ever so lightly these real springs of anguish and the ready tears will come. But at Red Riding Hood’s grandmother! Never! She didn’t die! She was merely eaten. And the sailors and the pirates, and the Apache Indians! They don’t die, not in any real sense to the child. They are merely “ swept off,” and “ mowed down ” — in fact, scattered like the pieces on an upset chess board. The moral of all of which is, don't worry about the apparent terror and bloodshed in the children’s books, the real children’s books. There is none there. It only represents the way in which little children, from generation to generation, learn in ways as painless as can be followed, the stern environment of life and death.