CHILDREN'S MANNERS.
THE correspondents to whom the Daily Telegraph at this Season of the year opens its columns so freely are just stow holding a solemn paper conclave on children's manners. According to most of the writers, children's manners have -decreased, are decreasing, and ought to be improved. They jell, they fight, they hurl stones, they frighten and torture animals, they " cheek " their elders and betters, and generally they make life intolerable for quiet and peaceable citizens. Apparently the boys and girls of the past generation never did these things, but with sleek, nnrumpled heads, clean pinafores and fi ocks, and gentle silvery voices, passed through life ever delicately marching with a most pellucid air of sweetness and light. These virtuous little creatures, if we are to trust the opinions expressed by many persons of fifty and sixty, never slammed doors or broke windows, never kicked
-the paint and varnish off cabinets and chairs, broke the springs of sofas by dancing on them, or ripped up the curtains and blinds. These acts of wickedness have been, it seems, reserved for the new child. In a word, the child of the .present is an untamed savage, while the child of the past was a creature all compounded of duty, tidiness, obedience, and thoughtfulness of others,—veritable ministering angels whose -only fault was to be over-zealous in good works.
It is, of course, very difficult to controvert this interesting theory of the decay of child manners. The child of the present is here before our eyes to testify to the truth of the picture that is drawn of him. We see him in the flesh, pride in his port, defiance in his eye, a catapult in his hand, and -his breeches pockets stuffed with pebbles, marbles, and other 'munitions of war such as sizeable pieces of old iron, nails, and percussion-caps. The child of the past we only know -from the recollections of the men and women who were boys -and girls in the forties and fifties. But remembrance is, in such cases, over kindly. Uncle Joseph's memory has, we suspect, though we cannot prove it, a happy knack of for- getting all the diabolic acts performed by him and his
brothers, and recalling only the charities of the hearth practised by him and his colleagues in pinafores. He remembers the excellent nursery rules against using his own knife instead of the butter-knife, against going with unwashed hands " from morn till dewy eve—a summer's day." He recalls how shouting on the stairs was not allowed, how eliding down the banisters was prohibited, and how he was always expected to say " Thank you " and " Good morning," and what a strict injunction was laid on against talking noisily and rudely before strangers, making personal re- -marks, or jumping up suddenly at meals. But while he remembers the rules so vividly, it is to be feared that he has -forgotten how often he broke them. He says to his nephews when be finds them plundering the greengage-tree, "Do you -know that when I was a boy we should no more have dreamt of taking fruit out of the garden without asking leave than we should of robbing the village shop," and he no doubt thinks that he was as virtuous as his words imply. Yet in reality there is lying hidden away in a packet kept in a scented cedar-box by an old maiden cousin a letter which, if it could be put into his hand to refresh his memory, as the 'lawyers say, would give an emphatic negative to the statement that " When I was a boy we should never have dreamed of -taking the fruit without leave." The letter written by uncle -Joseph, aged twelve, to his cousin Nellie, aged fourteen, was something after this fashion. "DEAR NELL,—We had an awful -lark the day after you went. I got up very early, I shouldn't wonder if it wasn't about four, as none of the servants were -down, and went and chucked stones at the girls' windows, when Susan poked her head out. I asked her if she'd like to come out. She dressed and got out as I did by the library -window. At first I had a lot of fun telling her I should make her come and see a pig killed, and she was awfully cross, and -cried and made a baby of herself when I said about the blood and how it squeaked and kicked. There wasn't really any pig, and so we walked about in the long grass and got our 'feet jolly wet, and then she said we ought to have something to eat as it was very dangerous to be about so long without food, so we went to the kitchen garden and had ten green- gages each off that tree which we mightn't touch. There were forty or fifty on the tree, and we meant to leave fifteen, but that old beast, Breecher, came up just then, and said he'd tell our pa,' and that we ought to have a hiding, coming into his kitchen garden like that against orders. And I said it wasn't his garden, and then we ran round the paths and called out to him ' I'll tell your pa' until he got in a beastly wax, and then we turned on all the taps, and he had to go and stop them, so we got off. There was a beastly row at breakfast, I can tell you, and mother said it was Susan's fault and father said it was mine, and we had no pudding at dinner and had to stay in all the afternoon, and I had my allowance stopped for three weeks, and if Mr. James hadn't begged Susan off, she wasn't to have had any birthday next month, I believe. We weren't a bit ill, as they said we should be, and I don't believe wet feet matter if only you've plenty of food. So no more from your loving cousin, JOSEPH. P.S.—The toad we killed the day you went was alive when we came to look at it in the afternoon, and Miss Mant wanted to punish us for torturing a dumb beast till it hopped at her himself, and then she said it had perhaps be better put out of its misery so Jack and I did it behind the greenhouse. He had the ash stick and I bad one of the big bricks the mason's boy left for us."
If the fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts of the present generation could oftener be confronted with such records as these we should, we are convinced, hear much less of the good manners of the past generation, and of the degeneracy of those of the present epoch. In truth, chil- dren's manners are much the same in every generation, and for the very good reason that the nature of children is always the same. Manners are purely artificial things im. posed from above. Nobody is born with manners. The most that can be said is that certain people seem born with a faculty for learning the lessons of good manners quickly and easily. That is, some children are more sensitive to teaching than others. This is probably the reason why little girls have better manners than boys. Little girls are, as a rule, quicker and more precocious than boys. Just as they learn to speak and read more easily and quickly than boys, so they learn more readily to have good manners. But if manners are—as they certainly are—a matter of education, children must have the quality of manners taught them. If they are taught good manners they will have good manners. But taken as a whole, the standard of manners has risen among the grown-up people. The parents, that is, require better manners than they used. Unless, then, the fathers and mothers take less trouble to teach good manners than they used, the children of the present day should be better, not worse, behaved than they were. And this is, we believe, the truth. The modern boy at a public school is most certainly better disciplined and less a creature of savage impulses than he was. As to the children of the poor, there can be no comparison. Compulsory education has given an excellent daily course in good behaviour to millions of children who previously were never taught how to behave themselves. The Board-school training is all on the side of good manners. As far as we can see, there is only one substantial cause of the com- plaints which are undoubtedly rife as to the decay of children's manners. The nerves of the parents are no doubt far more highly strung than they used to be. For one person who fifty years ago went half-crazy over a raoket there are now a hundred. We think that our children's manners have declined because we are so much more irritated than we were by petty worries and strident noises. That is, we expect, the fact underlying so many of the wailings poured forth in the Daily Telegraph. Our children don't make more clatter, but we endure it less easily.
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