Part 10 (1/2)

”It was lots of fun, having it,” he said, when, quite well, he came to see me. ”It grew so fast--faster than the others.”

”What others?” I queried.

”At school,” he explained. ”We have them at school; and they grow fast, but the one you gave me grew faster. Was that because it was in a little gla.s.s instead of a big bowl?”

I could not tell him. We had not had them at school in my school-days in a big bowl. They had been out-of-school incidents, cultivated only in little gla.s.ses.

They have so many things at school, the children of to-day! If many of these things have been taken from the home, they have only been taken that they may, as it were, be carried back and forth between the home and the school.

I have a friend, the mother of an only child, a boy of eight. Her husband's work requires that the family live in a section of the city largely populated by immigrants. The one school in the vicinity is a large public school. When my friend's little boy reached the ”school age,” he, perforce, was entered at this school.

”You are an American,” his father said to him the day before school opened; ”not a foreigner, like almost every child you will find at school. Remember that.”

”He doesn't understand what you mean when you talk to him about being an American,” the boy's mother said the next morning as we all watched the child run across the street to the school. ”How could he, living among foreigners?”

One day, about two months later, the small boy's birthday being near at hand, his father said to him, ”If some one were planning to give you something, what should you choose to have it?”

”A flag,” the boy said instantly; ”an American flag! _Our_ flag!”

”Why?” the father asked, almost involuntarily.

”To salute,” the child replied. ”I've learned how in school--what to say and what to do. Americans do it when they love their country--like you told me to,” he added, eagerly. ”Our teacher says so. She's taught us all how to salute the flag. I told her I was an American, not a foreigner like the other children. And she said they could be Americans, too, if they wanted to learn how. So they are going to.”

The small boy got his flag. The patriotism taught at home and the patriotism taught at school, diverse at other points, met and mingled at that one most fundamental point.

In former days children did not quote their teachers much at home, nor their parents much at school. They do both in these days; occasionally with comic results. A little girl of my acquaintance whose first year at school began less than a month ago has, I observed only yesterday, seemed to learn as her introductory lesson to p.r.o.nounce the words ”either” and ”neither” quite unmistakably ”[=a]ther” and ”n[=a]ther.”

”This is an amazing innovation,” I said to her mother. ”How did she ever happen to think of it?”

”Ask her,” said her mother plaintively.

I did inquire of the little girl. ”Whom have you heard say '[=a]ther'

and 'n[=a]ther'?”

”n.o.body,” she unexpectedly answered.

”Then how did you learn to say it?”

”Uncle Billy told me to--”

This uncle is an instructor of English in one of our most famous colleges. ”My _dear_ child,” I protested, ”you must have misunderstood him!”

”Oh, no,” she affirmed earnestly. ”You see, papa and mamma say 'eether'

and 'neether,' and my school-teacher says 'eyether' and 'nyether.' I told papa and mamma, and they said to say them the way my teacher did; and I told my teacher, and she said to say them the way papa and mamma did! I couldn't say them two ways at once; and I didn't know which one way to say them. So Uncle Billy told me, if _he_ were doing it, _he_ wouldn't worry about it; _he_ would say them '[=a]ther' and 'n[=a]ther'!”

She is a very little girl, only seven; and she has not yet rounded out her first month of school. I suppose before she has been in school a full term she will have discovered the impracticability of her uncle's method of settling the vexed question as to the p.r.o.nunciation of ”either” and ”neither.” Very likely she will decide to say them ”eyether” and ”nyether,” as her teacher does.