Part 31

While I have been engaged in pursuing germs of disorder to their beginnings, during the past three or four years, I have uncovered many a beautiful possession that formerly I did not appreciate. Appreciation of the full value of Appreciation is one of these discoveries of priceless value and usefulness. I have spoken of this in "Happiness," but not as much as it deserves, for it truly is "The Appreciation of God and of Good that gives birth to Love, and which is the only true and adequate measure of wealth."

Nothing else, however, in the whole quest, has approached the beauty of the love for children that has come to me; the appreciation of them as Messages from the Creator, consigned to the cultivation of the environment society provides for them; as likely as not, any one of them bringing into the world a great intelligence by means of the humblest of parents.

During observation of social questions in Europe, my interest has been drawn constantly to children, as by a powerful magnet, so that when I was called back to this country to attend to a detail of business and met the adventure which is the cause of my present focalised interest in neglected ones, as expressed in a book to be called, when published, "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine," it was but natural that I should put all the force of my sympathy into the cause of rescue, and that I should find in that service more happiness than in any of the luxurious amusements which had claimed me as a devotee in times gone by.

True happiness is the result of conscious usefulness. This I can assert with the confidence of knowledge, not alone from my own experience, but from observation of the great army of kindergartners and child-savers whom I have met in my travels, and especially within the past year; and it is evident that the service attaching to protecting little neglected angels from the evil suggestions and the cruel conditions that may make of them, not men, but beasts, is one of the avenues of usefulness in which these "Angels of the State" meet with the smile of the Master, who was the first Great Kindergartner; whose teachings centred about and dwelt upon the care of children as of first consideration, and who said, "Suffer Little Children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Childhood has suffered, manhood has suffered, progress has suffered, for lo! these ages, the cruel assumption that mankind is naturally depraved. In recent years public conscience has been dulled by the anæsthetic that there must be a Have-To-Be-Bad Class in all communities. This has been formulated into the assumption that there is in every group of the Heaven-Sent Angels of Purity, a full ten per cent that must be depraved and unredeemable except by the interposition of special dispensation, which is a direct contradiction of all of the observed Laws of Creation to which intelligence now subscribes. The motto of this assumption is couched in this vicious legend: "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent stratum of society."

Half an hour's walk from this hospitable mansion, on the shore of the beautiful Geneva Lake, is a place called "Holiday Home." There are now housed and thoughtfully cared for at the "Home" about one hundred of the "Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent Stratum of (Chicago's) Society." During the summer half a thousand of these unfortunates will come for two weeks each. When we touched at the wharf last evening after coming from the concert given in their interest at Mr. Chalner's lakeside home, the waifs met us with a merry class-yell, and greeted us with an intelligence, a buoyancy, and a freedom, born of their holiday, such as was not excelled at any of the other landings where only the children of rich summer residenters were met. We all saw these "waifs" and we marvelled at them, for, with the grime of the slum washed from their sweet faces, and with clean, though sometimes ragged clothing, they might have figured in the mix-up of "Pinafore," or have starred in a dramatic representation of the "Prince and the Pauper," with all the grace required of princelings.

They haven't been long from God, and they are god-like or not, as we have welcomed and protected them, or rebuffed or neglected them.

Let me assure you in the most practical way that there are two sides to this child question. There is a sentimental side, than which there is no other so worthy; and there is a practical side, than which there is none so profitable.

The best and most profitable service in the whole gamut of useful occupations that I know about is in learning to know children, and in connection with a Quarantine movement which is now started, and which aims to not let one of these wards of the Christ escape the best care known to Love and the Science of Child-Life.

The crèche and the kindergarten and the manual training schools, and domestic training classes, as well as institutions similar to the "Holiday Home" across the Bay, have demonstrated within the past thirty years that fully ninety-eight per cent of the "Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent" can be rescued after they have been warped by evil surroundings. What will not the same effort effect if directed toward prevention and protection, instead of being squandered in careless and soulless correction?

Christ said: "And a little child shall lead them." Let us awake to the call. It is the way to Heaven; for, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

FIVE YEARS' CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE

The spirit of the preceding address to the good members of the Unity League organisation on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva has been the inspiring motive of the quest for scientific endorsement of Economic Nutrition for the benefit of the present generation of children, and, incidentally, of their elders. In Economic Nutrition lies protection from sexual morbidity, alcoholic intemperance, bodily disease, savage passions and all the brood of evil contamination and temptation. In Economic Nutrition lie possibilities of physical and mental energy and optimistic happiness such as the world has not been accustomed to in the memory of history. Economic Nutrition is what children want to be taught with their first indelible impressions, and the present great movement of which this little book treats, for which it was first responsible, and for which it is republished in a new and extended edition, is expected to furnish authoritative knowledge relative to the most Economic Nutrition, so that mothers and kindergartners may meet the little waifs from the Creator on the threshold of this present life with words of wisdom and examples of sanitary perfection, instead of confronting them at once with the poison of ignorance relative to their most important concern,--their own Economic Nutrition.

That the contentions uttered in "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine," referred to in the Lake Geneva Address, are reasonable is evidenced by the experience of Dr. and Mrs. Kellogg and their adopted family of twenty-four waifs, the acquaintance of which has since been made.

All of the altruists who have engaged in kindergardenry among the neglected, Dr. Barnardo, Dr. Kellogg and the rest, are full of confidence in the possibility and efficacy of a perfect quarantine as outlined in "That Last Waif." It is an Epicurean method of promoting Menticulture, killing Fearthought, denouncing Gluttony, saving that Last Waif, and attaining Happiness through learning the A.B.-Z. of Our Own (Economic) Nutrition.

GIVE THE BABIES A CHANCE

THE INSPIRING MOTIVE

The enthusiasm excited by a persistent study of the problem of human nutrition is inspired by the need of an intelligent scheme of information and instruction which may be understood by mothers and teachers for the benefit of children. Unlike the young of the lower animals, the babes of mankind have some years of dependent existence during which much unconscious murder is committed, and during which the innocents are more or less poisoned with bad suggestions that weaken them all through life. Colts, calves, pigs, chickens, and the like survive the period of dependence in much greater proportion than do the young of their human masters survive the infantile stage of existence, and this is largely due to the lack of basic or parent knowledge on the part of mothers relative to their own nutrition, and also a pitiable ignorance concerning the nutrition of their children, the double ignorance constituting a double crime.

Even if careless about ourselves, is it not shameful that we do not concentrate effort in learning the truth about our instinctive means of protection in our own alimentation and in classifying the knowledge in a way that will make it available to children, through their proper guardians, when they arrive in the world "as helpless as a babe"?

If knowledge which seems to be protective had not been evolved out of recent experiment, or if the hope of gaining such knowledge had not been collected from good authority, the appeal might seem futile; but this is not the case. The most intelligent and studious investigators are united in the belief that the problem can be scientifically solved and the confusion of ideas settled by concentrated personal and collective study of economic nutrition, through observation of the natural requirements, and by trial of the care in taking food which is necessary to secure the most profitable economies.

ILLUSTRATION

Here is an illustration, both of the present need of better knowledge and the hope of its attainment. It is an account of one accidental experience which showed that excess of food may be as detrimental to a tiny baby dependant, as it is generally conceded to be harmful to grown persons. The case was described by Dr. Chadwick of Boston to Professor Bowditch, and by the latter repeated to the author. An infant was not progressing as it should and failed to gain normally in weight. It was under the charge of a nurse and was being carefully watched. A certain quantity of milk was prescribed for daily nourishment, at prescribed times, in a prescribed manner; but the child did not increase in weight and was "doing poorly." For some reason the nurse was changed and instructions were repeated by the old to the new nurse. In the course of a week the little patient showed signs of marked improvement, both in gain of weight and in general condition. In order to record the particulars of the change the physician questioned the nurse and learned that only one half the nourishment originally prescribed had been given, the new nurse having forgotten or misunderstood the orders.

The reason the little fellow had been "doing so poorly" under the original prescription was because he had been using up his puny strength getting rid of the excess of food that had been forced upon his little stomach and intestines. When the excess was stopped, so that his digestive apparatus could occupy itself with his real needs, the babe had a surplus of energy for growth and thrived as a rightly nourished child should do.

NOTE: In connection with the foregoing, reference is invited to the author's conception of how attention to one's personal economies, beginning with the economy of personal nutrition, is interrelated to general menticulture and the child-saving phase of our personal responsibility in child culture. Even if we are carelessly suicidal ourselves, we owe better care to innocent and dependent children. This will be found in the "Explanation of the A. B. C. Life Series" at the end of the book.

MUNCHING PARTIES AND THE CHEWING FAD

To the scientific person of ultra conservative bent of mind this free and easy screed, offered as the exponent of a great economic idea, will seem offensive, and justly so; but it has been written with a purpose, and happily the purpose is being effected as speedily as the author hoped for when his own discovery relative to the profitableness of an epicurean, economic nutrition became a reality of experience and suggested publication.

To this free presentation, couched in a variety of class expression, is due, in a large measure, the new revival of feeding reform which has spread far over the civilised world, where it was most needed, within the past five years.

Up to five years ago, and to some extent now, the prescription method of recommending diets was and is common. In fact it was universal up to a few years ago; for no one, as far as is known, had yet suggested that normal appetite was the only competent prescriber, and that it was the office of the physician to teach his clients and patients how to normalise the appetite.