The newspaper-pessimists talk comparatively little about
developing that in the young male of the species. In three years'
practical experience among the children of the poorer classes, and
during all the succeeding years, when I have filled the honorary and
honorable offices of general-utility woman, story-teller, song-singer,
and playmaker-in-ordinary to their royal highnesses, some thousands
of babies, I have been struck with the greater hardness of the small
boys; a certain coarseness of fibre and lack of sensitiveness which
makes them less susceptible, at first, to gentle influences.
Once upon a time I set about developing this father spirit in a group
of little gamins whose general attitude toward the weaker sex, toward
birds and flowers and insects, toward beauty in distress and wounded
sensibility, was in the last degree offensive. In the bird games we
had always had a mother bird in the nest with the birdlings; we now
introduced a father bird into the game. Though the children had been
only a little time in the kindergarten, and were not fully baptized
into the spirit of play, still the boys were generally willing to
personate the father bird, since their delight in the active and manly
occupation of flying about the room seeking worms overshadowed their
natural repugnance to feeding the young.
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