Part 17

````And round the world away;

```Young blood must have its course,

`````lad,

````And every dog his day._

````--Charles Kingsley,

`````When All the World Is Young.

XVII. BOY LIFE IN THE OPEN

HERE’S a clam!”

“Where? I don’t see it! Can’t I get it?”

Of course he could get it, for the water in the creek was shallow and the father remembered his own boyhood too well to deny the little chap’s request. So the boat was stopped while the boy, arm bared to the shoulder, reached down to the sandy bottom of the stream and captured his first clam.

You don’t see anything interesting in that? So much the worse for you. It interested the boy, and the boy’s interest was quite enough to enlist and hold the interest of the father. If you do not yet know that whatever appeals to the mind of a child is important, however insignificant that thing may be in itself, you have something to learn.

The two, father and boy, had left the log cabin among the pines soon after breakfast in search of minnows for use in fishing. When they started out the boy went along simply because the two were chums and almost inseparable companions. The father had no thought of what that stream might mean to the lad, and he learned a lesson that morning which he will never forget. He had spent his boyhood in the country and had never stopped to think that the sights and sounds along this stream would all be unfamiliar to his city-bred son.

They had not gone far up the stream before another discovery was made, and two baby snails joined the clam on the seat. Then a crawfish was seen scuttling over the gravel and was added to the collection. By this time the boy was bubbling over with interest and enthusiasm, but when, rounding a bend in the stream, a turtle was discovered sunning himself on a bit of drift-wood, it was evident that the wonders of this wonderful stream had reached their climax. Cautiously the boat was moved toward the turtle’s resting-place, but just before he was reached he quietly slid off into the water. It would not do to leave the lad in such an ocean of disappointment as swallowed him up when that turtle disappeared, so, with landing net in hand, they watched for his reappearance. It seemed hours to the boy before the beady eyes of the turtle were seen looking up at them from the moss where he had found a hiding-place. Then a careful manipulation of the net, a sudden scoop, and the turtle was scrambling about in the bottom of the boat.

“See him snap! Will he bite me? Look at the markings of his shell! How old do you suppose he is? What do turtles eat? I’m going to take him home!”

Questions and exclamations crowded and jostled each other as the eager lad studied his latest prize.

When the captives had been carried to the cabin and duly admired by other members of the family, the question arose as to what should be done with them. Throw them back? Eager protests from their owner. When he was finally convinced that they were not altogether adapted to serve as pocket pieces, he proposed an aquarium, and aquarium it was. An ancient and discarded dish-pan was found, the holes filled with rags, water and rocks supplied, and clams, crawfish, snails and turtles were compelled to live in seeming amity, whatever their personal feelings may have been. Later on other turtles were added to the collection, and a yellow lizard with a blue tail gave the finishing touch to this conglomerate of animal life.

How shall we educate the young? This question, holding first place in the hearts of parents and lovers of children, elicits clamorous and often contradictory answers. The advocate of “cultural” studies finds a sturdy antagonist in the defender of “vocational” training, and school boards make frantic efforts to please everybody, and succeed, as is common in such cases, in pleasing nobody. Meanwhile, our children are the helpless and unfortunate victims of a series of experiments, as the school authorities try out different educational theories.

Far be it from the writer to propose a solution of the difficulty or to proffer any panacea for our educational ills; but in all humility he ventures to suggest the desirability of making it possible for the child to know something about the world in which he lives. Book-learning, essential as it is, is not enough if we would fit the child to live the larger and more joyous life. When we have studied literature and art and philosophy and science, when we have become familiar with the great cities with their bewildering sights and distracting sounds, the finest things remain to be discovered, and these discoveries must be made as we stand open-eyed in the presence of God’s workmanship.

Hills and streams, woods and flowers, bees and birds and butterflies, the flora and fauna of this earth where we have our home for a little time, should, somehow, be brought into the life of the child. The boy who grows up into manhood without being privileged to know the world of nature by personal contact has been robbed. He may be intelligent in many things and a useful member of society, but he has missed out of life some of its deepest satisfactions and purest joys. Indeed, such an one is not symmetrically educated, and is quite likely to be put to shame as the years pass. A story is told of a young woman, able to order her breakfast in six different languages, who, spending some days in the home of a farmer, made most mortifying mistakes concerning the common things of country life. When, coming down to breakfast one morning she discovered a plate of honey on the table, she felt that the time had come for a display of her knowledge and for the discomfiture of those who had laughed at her mistakes, and exclaimed, “Ah! I see that you keep a bee.”

Take the witness box! Yes, I am speaking to you, middle-aged man, city-dweller, slave to business, familiar with paved streets and great buildings, the honk of automobile horns and the love songs of vagrant cats.

“Were you born in the country?”

“Yes.”

“Have you forgotten your boyhood?”

“Forgotten it! Sometimes I can think of nothing else, and always something out of that boyhood is popping up even in the midst of my business undertakings.”

“Do you regret that you were not born in the city?”

“Regret it? Say, you are fooling. I wouldn’t trade the recollections of my boyhood on the farm for the best business block in this city.”

“But it can’t be worth anything to you in a business way. Life in the country doesn’t train one to manufacture gas engines.”

“Well, I’ve never stopped to consider what I owe in the matter of business success to my boyhood in the country, but now that you raise the question, I’m inclined to believe that it gave me pretty good training in some ways for the business in which I am engaged.