Snarls, Smiles, and Stories From Northern Smoke-room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 46, 18 November 1893, Page 421

Snarls, Smiles, and Stories From Northern Smoke-room

Children's * don’t suppose,’ said the editor, ‘that any of you, excepting, perhaps, onr good friend the prolific parent, have ever paid any attention to the children’s letters published by most of the popular weeklies addressed to Uncle Ned, Cousin Kate, or some such mythical relation. The whole thing seems so ineffably silly to the outsider that he wonders at newspapers wasting space over such inanities and impatiently turns over the pages till something more congenial turns up. As a matter of fact the spacedevoted to these infantileepistles isone of the best investments indulged in by the paper from a financial point of view. Moreover,if the outsider will take the pains to get them in the right light, so to say, he will find that they are not so absolutely interestless as he imagined. There is a rather clever article in one of the Home papers, the Spectator, on the subject from which one may quote. It remarks how dangerous it would be to extend the invitation given by editors to children to their parents. The small fry are young children. They are urged to send their photographs, and to write “ all about themselves.” What a prospect for an editor, if such an open invitation were addressed to grown up correspondents ! It is not difficult to picture the delicate indroductions, the preliminary coughs — inadequately, but far more diffusely, expressed in deprecatory phrase—and the expansive detail of autobiography of nobodies in particular. With the children he is perfectly safe. They come straight to the point, and get done with it, with a unanimous contempt for self-advertisement, which shows that the dislike to be “drawn ” on matters nearly affecting themselves, which is common to the oldest and wisest of mankind, is fully shown by their youngers and betters. The child is,in this,the father of the wise man. Not that they refuse information. The bare facts are always at the service of the public. They fall into “ common form,” and in a score of letters written by very young children it is difficult to find one in which the decorous reticence as to self is exceeded. Their age, very accurately stated; the number of their brothers and sisters, among whom the last baby naturally takes a leading place ; and possibly a description of their home, limited, as far as possible, to the information given in their postal address, is evidently considered to be sufficient data from which to form an idea of themselves and their surroundings. Then, in nearly every case, follows a list of the household pete. Judged by the evidence of children, the dog is in every case the most important personage, next to the baby, in the estimation of the nursery. His size, accomplishments, and benevolence, his good or bad temper, and in every case his name, are given with a conscientious and personal interest which is accorded to no other animal.

, ‘ The letters of children to their fathers and Letters to mothers, though usually briefer than “ newsParents. , „ , letters, are often far more affectionate and suggestive. The opening is usually rather more ceremonious than in writing to a brother or sister ; and the conclusion always seems to present certain difficulties, the writer desiring to close affectionately, but being hampered partly by conventional forms, and partly, if a boy, by a nervous dislike of writing anything which may seem affected. “Your affectionate ” is too long, and too difficult to spell. “ Good bye ” is cold, and the usual form of valediction when writing to other boys. One small boy of the writer's acquaintance has solved the difficulty in an ingenious manner. He transfers the beginning of the letters addtessed to himself to the conclusion of his own, with certain variations in the spelling ; and the letters written to his mother or sisters at a distance are subscribed as “ from dearest Tom.” Children often show not only regret for the absence of those of whom they are fond, but a real solicitude for their comfort and welfare. Sometimes in the letters of very young children it requires a sympathetic mind to interpret this feeling aright. “ Dear Papa,” writes a very small girl to her father, “ we are quite well, and are glad you are by the sea. What did you have for tea?” Now, this was not a greedy little girl, but one who was then, as she is now, quite indifferent to her own comforts. The inquiry, “ What did

you have for tea ?” is only a precocious development of the feminine instinct for looking after masculine comforts. A boy's letter, written on the same date, is a model of early epistolatory style, and it would puzzle any controversialist to put a “ vindication ” in a shorter form of words. “ Dear Papa,—You told me not to throw water under the bath I have not. It is still wet. I have looked. It leaks. Goodbye.—John.” ’ „ ‘ It is so very seldom that children desert very Honesty of plain narrative, or simple statement of affecChildren’s ...... , ... tion, in a letter, that we might almost assume letters. that their vocabulary is too limited for the expression of other ideas. That this is not the case, is clear from their rhetorical powers of speech. But even requests are put in the most direct form possible—a piece of honesty which no one will regret, and which goes on well into schoolboy days, when the request for a hamper or pocket-money usually takes the most direct and laconic form, unaccom - panied by reasons, except the convincing one that present supplies are short. The following letter, or rather “ written communication,” from a small boy to an elder sister, who was too busy to talk or to play with him, betrays a certain instinct for probable methods of persuasion which does the author credit. “ Most beautiful Blanche —Please will you come and play hiden-seek? —Tom.” • The story of the children who wrote to the A Child’s Ap- J Giver of all good things to send them prepeal to the gents on s an f a ci aus ’ day is familiar. They Devl1 ' are capable also of appealing by letter to the powers of the lower world. A little boy, who, in the absence of his parents, had been sentenced to go to bed early by a relation, was seen to be busy with a pencil and paper, after which he carefully buried the communication in a hole in the garden, and retired to bed. The missive, when disinterred, ran as follows :—“ Dear Mr Devil, —Please come and take Aunt Jane ; please be quick.—Yours, Robert.” ’ • There are few people nowadays,’ said the Modern , prolific parent, ‘who will not cordially enChildren. j orge t jj e statement made by a friend of mine the other evening that in these exacting days it is a most thankless task to be a parent. Everything that literature can do to aid fathers and mothers in the work of bringing up their offspring in the way they should go has been done. Everyone who can wield a pen at all has thought it his or her right to advise parents concerning their duties to their children and the children’s duties to them. The less practical knowledge possessed by the writer on this subject, the more didactic and impressive are Iris utterances. Every old maid or old bachelor could manage So-and-So’s children very much better than they are at present managed. But really, now a days, it is not the parents who rule the children. The reverse is the case. The modern youth can give his father points on almost all subjects—or he thinks he can, which comes to just the same thing. The modern miss has no hesitation in telling her mother, “ That's not the way we do things now.” Young people at the present time remind me of that famous old jingle. When children usurped their parent's place, “ They made the old folks go to school. All in pinafores—that was the rule.” Recitations were then the order of the day for the unfortunate fathers, as the nonsense verses tell, “ One fat man, too fat. by far. Tried 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' His voice was gruff, his pinafore tight. His wife said, ‘Mind, dear, say it right.' lint he forgot, and said, 'Fa. la, la. The Queen of Lilliput's own papa.’ She frowned, and ordered him ort to bed. He said he was sorry ; she shook her head. His clean shirt-front with his tears was stained. But diseiplinc had to be maintained.” • As far as the modern child is concerned,’ reYouthfui Enntatked the ordinary man, ‘there is undoubtedly too much truth contained in the picture which appeared in Punch some three or four years ago, when attention was first called to youthful encroachments on older persons’ privileges. The scene is laid in a supper-room, and an imposing, though elderly officer, has just brought a young married lady some supper. “ Oh, General,” she says, “which part of the chicken do you prefer, 1 think the breast or wing is the nicest.” “ I have never tasted either of those portions,” he answers, sadly. “ When I was young the choicest pieces were always

given to my parents, and now 1 am old, I find it is the custom for the grandchildren to have them.” As a rule, the present day young people have little respect for age, and certainly no belief at all in the wisdom and experience of anyone not of their own generation. What the end of it al will be, who can tell ?’