MR. BARKER'S SCHOOLCHILDREN.*
MR. BARKER'S little book is much more interesting for the glimpse it gives us of the children's minds, than for the light it sheds on children's feats in grammar and spelling. It brings out children's real interests, and the direction which their imagina- tions take when they have any little interest in life put vividly before them. For instance, Mr. Barker, who shows by all his criticisms that he thoroughly well knows the difference between teaching a child to associate closely related impressions and to reason and infer for itself, and teaching it to repeat something by rote, set the turkey as a subject for his class to write upon, and the exercise which he gives us is a very good specimen of a rather sharp child's notions on such a subject. First he describes the turkey's appearance fairly well ; then he explains how best to kill it so as not to give it un- necessary pain ; then he dilates on the delight of eating turkey; and finally proceeds to explain the mutual dislike which exists between live turkeys and little boys, and the pleasure boys take in deceiving turkeys with orange-peel when they are hoping for food. "All boys hate live turkeys and turkeys hate boys. Boys hit the skin of the turkey with a stick when the turkey is turned the other way and then the boys ran away and the turkey runs after them. Boys like the turkeys to run after them, because they get home quicker • The Original English written hg our little Ones at School. By Henry J. Barker. London: Jarrold and Bons.
without feeling tired and the turkey has to go all the way back." Now, one would have felt quite sure that any boy who. had tasted turkey would dilate on the excellence of the food, and that any boy who had teased a turkey would take some interest in that teasing process, though he might think it right, as this boy did, to condemn it. But one would not have given many boys credit for explaining why they liked the stimulus of the rather unreal fright which a gobbling turkey had caused them, namely, that the petty excitement diminished the dullness and fatigue of the monotonous walk home, especially when that satisfaction was heightened by the rather spiteful reflection that they had beguiled their foe a long way from his own home. Professor Bain would seize with avidity on that last suggestion, and call the child who made it a true psychologist who under- stood intuitively the genuinely malignant character of some human desires, and the keenness of the pleasure which their satisfaction brings. It might, however, be fairly replied that the interest with which children's imaginations appear to invest the little malignities of life, is due rather to the unnaturalness than the naturalness of these malignities in their eyes. It is evident that this child's mind was struck with the problem why boys were so fond of persecuting turkeys, and. that, not content with referring it to the grotesque noise which the infuriated turkey makes, and the very moderate amount of danger which its foes incur, be was driven to find a further explanation in the stimulus which the slight excite- ment gave to their otherwise dull run home,—certainly not such an ultimate explanation as would favour Professor Bain's theory,—while the gratification with which they are supposed to gloat over the useless and fatiguing journey which they have given to the turkey, is nothing but the ordinary tit-for-tat, the instinctive resentment by which even a spontaneously invited attack is always succeeded, in such a nature as man's. We may notice in others of these children's exercises, the same disposition to dwell upon any trace of malignity as one of the features which is most striking to a child's imagination, —evidently because it is not in keeping with the child's con- ception of what is natural, not because it is in harmony with it. Thus, in one of the children's exercises, on "Postmen," whom he oddly regards with contempt and resentment, we soon find the key to this resentment. "Postmen allis nooks so as to waken babies and then they tries to look as if they didn't no as baby was behind the door,"—a resentful reflection obviously elicited by the haste and impatience of the post- man's knock at poor houses, in the mind of a child 'who had not realised how difficult it is for a postman to get through his work at all if he meets with needless delays. Yet it is plain that the child's predominant feeling was not originally due to his wish to make the postman odious, but rather to his. indignant sympathy with the baby brother or sister who had been wakened by the official's smart double rap. Again, observe the emphasis with which the child who describes Daniel's adven- ture in the lions' den, dwells on the remarkable malice of the enemies who had contrived to get him cast to the lions
These wiekerd men with their nasty faces all alarfin caught hold of Daniel when it was gettin dark, and pulled him along the streets to the first .hole they came to where they new there was some fearst lions down. Then they thrusted the stone off and dropped him down just like winkin. And the poor King set on the stone cryin like his hart wood break and the wickerd nasty men kept riumin round the King all alarfin." The laughing on which the child insists so much was evidently a pure addition of its own imagination to complete the mental picture of the malignity of Daniel's enemies; for this evidently struck the child as even far more remarkable than Daniel's goodness and piety. And it is just the same with the very lively picture of the building of Noah's Ark drawn by a little girl, who will have it that "while Noah was making it, people- used to take days' outings from all parts to see it, like as people go now to big London. But these wicked people used to go only to make fun of it, and to eat and drink and get marrid. They actilly had outings to it on the very day as Noah said he was a going in. I wander- whether they felt kner when they saw him climbing up a high high ladder and *et in the door at the top. I wander whether they felt kweer when they heard the door bang, and saw the ladder pulled up P But these poor sinful people who used to laugh at Noah and hassle him about and try to get uther people not to bleeve him, they hadn't time to think now. They hadn't time to laugh agin at him. It started raisin in
torrents as hard as it could, directly the door shut." That is a very lively piece of imagination, perhaps the most lively in the whole list of children's exercises, and it is clear that the child who wrote it, had her imagination even more stirred by the malignant contempt of Noah's enemies, than even by the striking mental picture of a waste of waters and a desolate Ark floating upon it. The child's notion of special excur- sions arranged to ridicule Noah by those whose doom was ap- proaching, betrays a very lively impression of the superfluity of human naughtiness, and a vivid scrutiny of its moods and aspects.
Perhaps the least common feature in these children's exercises is that which one would rather expect to find in children's compositions,--caprice of imagination. The only instance we have found of genuine infantine caprice is in the ease of the child who writes on the family of Jacob, and who is especially possessed with the idea of comparing the appetites of the various members of Jacob's " large family" :—" Nobody can't imagine Benjimun was the littlest son, but the loving patriarch Jacob alias gave him the biggest mess of corn, never mind how little he was. They allus called pudden and porrij, and anything like that, they alias called it messes in those days. Joseph could eat a big mess too ; but Rewbin and Juder who was the oldest couldn't eat as much as yer might think. The patriarch Jacob never eat scarcely nothin, except when there was a famine,"—certainly a most capricious patriarch, though hardly more so than the child who on no authority had formed for itself so minute a picture of the relative appetites of the patriarch and of four of his sons. But for the most part, these children are anything but capricious. Even the little boy who in an essay on music explains that his brother who plays the concertina, gives his mother a good deal more to help her keep house, than the father who earns twice his wages but who "only makes hats," evidently means to imply that it is the power of playing the concertina that makes his brother so good and generous, and that if his father had had any music in his soul instead of only being able to make hats, he would have treated his mother better. Indeed, these children's minds are singularly free from anything like arbitrary fancy. Nothing is more interesting than their occasionally very happy attempts to read the minds of animals. Thus, a child writes of the animals in the Zoological Gardens : —" They look so vexed ez you can see all they do and can have a good stare all round at them ; and they keep lookin in the corners to see if they can't find some bushes and things to hide behint." And what could be happier than this account of a dog's mode of soothing his mortified vanity when he has had an unsuccessful encounter with a cat P—" If there's no trees just round the dog gets the cat in the corner of a door or two brick walls. Then the cat makes her body twice as big as what is flesh and bone, by standing her hairs up strite, and she spits and sneezes all over the dog, so as he can't see what he's a doing of. Then while he's clearin' his eyes a bit, she scratters him in the nose, which you know, of all parts of the dog's flesh, its nose has got the littlest skin over it. You might say as there was no skin, only a bit of meet. The dog feels just as if he was cought with a fishing hook, and he runs right away a thinking to hisself as he thought the cat was a little one, when he see it in The yard."
We suppose that Mr. Barker has generally selected those exercises which show most vivacity in the mind of his pupils ; but even if they only represent the most lively of them, they certainly show that some of the most ignorant of our English children are made of very good stuff, with clear perceptions, some humour, and a vast deal of natural affection, honesty, and courage.
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