CHILDREN'S WALKS.
F4VERY one who has the smallest knowledge of con- temporary life, in both the class called " leisured " and the class whose business keeps it in the country, cannot but be struck by the immense growth in recent years of the passion for gardens and gardening. An herbaceous border is now as necessary to the society woman as a motor-brougham, a "garden of friendship" as a visiting-list. As a household book Robinson's "English Flower Garden" runs the Stores List hard, and has long ago beaten Shakespeare. But while the world has acquired knowledge within its walls and fences and yew-hedges, we are inclined to doubt whether it has made the same progress outside them. It is perfectly astonishing to find how many well-informed and not deficient people do not know one tree from another after the leaves have fallen, or can distinguish the track of a beast in the snow. Those who walk for exercise may admire the view from time to time and point out its attractions to a companion ; but for the most part they step out, preoccupied or talking, their minds and eyes anywhere but in the natural world through which they are passing. And the modern rage for gardening has done little to mend this. It has developed the appreciation of flowers and plant life, but it has done so from a possessive sense. It is "we and Nature," not "Nature and ourselves."
One cause which surely contributes to this effect has its root in early childhood. In those highly impressionable years that lie between six and ten, when the earth's aspect begins to have an importance for us, we are allowed so imperfect a view of it in our walks, so limited an enjoyment. How often we are led at the wheels of the family perambulator down the avenue from which we shall debouch, perchance, upon the high road, how often compelled along it by fate in the shape of nurse and nurserymaid, recalled when we stray ten yards, rebuffed or unanswered when we ask the meaning of some familiar sight or the name of some roadside blossom. And should Nurse and Eliza grow confidential, it is ten chances to one if, trotting in their shadow, we do not happen upon some view of life which, however innocent, is yet unsuited to our age. Not that we mean for one moment to disparage Nurse or Eliza. There is scarcely one of us, thank heaven! but can look back to some being of their calling whose memory has left a perfume of remembered care and kindness to sweeten the after-years. Nor is it to be expected that our escort with the starched white skirts should leave our smaller brethren while she pilots us over hill and dale ; far less is it to be desired; in any case, it is impossible. Eliza has her boots and starched skirts to think of, and Nurse the contents of her perambulator. Besides which, though her virtues be as the sands of the sea, she is not usually a keen observer of impersonal things.
Hard as it may be to remove the obstacles that hedge in children from Nature and the enjoyment of it, we should make what effort we can on their behalf. Many of us can recall into what a world of delight we were transported on certain red-letter days of our youth when, by some splendid chance, we found ourselves on unfamiliar ground. The • writer can look back to one of these with a thrill that never loses its poignancy, and see the approach to a small inland lake surrounded by marsh and wood on a waning afternoon of late spring. The alder-bushes stood so close in the wet earth that they made a little gloomy forest through which the distant water glimmered ; and from its borders came the voice of the moorhen, carrying with it that sense of isolation inseparable from the sound. Underfoot the marsh-marigolds were out, and their glory seemed to irradiate the dark place. The light of those lamps in the converging vistas of under- wood has burned for half a lifetime.
When the child is old enough to be trusted alone, and fortunate enough to have a place in which he may roam without fear of trespass, he can find joys enough and to spare for himself. But—and especially should he have companions —by this time the world will have become more of a play- ground and less of a novelty. Nature will probably have turned into a suitable background for robbers, savages, pirates, and all those attractive and desperate persons who people our play-hours, and whose wickednesses cry aloud on our valour. And that is quite right too.
But long before the thicket becomes a mere hiding-place for desperadoes, it ought to be a revelation of wonder. All
unconsciously, we are in these early years on the search for ideality, little encouragement as we may get on our quest. It is now that birds, trees, beasts, and plants should be brought from their chaotic distance within range of our eyes, and ourselves taught, above all, to see things as well as to look at them. We should learn to distinguish bird-notes, from the cry of the heron to the clicking, metallic chirp of the startled wren, and to tell the flight of hawk or blackbird, gull or plover. The snail's track, the hare's form, the fresh-turned sand at the mouth of the rabbit-burrow,—these and a hundred like sights should be the illustrations of our outdoor picture-. book. They tell of the finest stories in the world, and so retentive is an intelligent child's mind of such things and their suggestions that the layer of after-impressions will never obliterate them. There lived a man—he is, unhappily, long dead—in one of the Western English counties, much travelled, a good sportsman, a keen observer, who used to take his young children out all over the countryside on foot. As they went he would talk to them of the trees, their roots and boles, the variations of their leaves ; and if on the next walk they did not remember what they had seen and heard, then the worse for them. After dark he would show them the black silhouettes of the tree-masses, teaching them to distinguish the different sorts, one from the other, by their shapes against the sky. The writer never knew him, but knows the result in the men and women whose eyes he thus trained.
But it is not every father who has time to follow this one'S example, even should he have the desire to do so. The business of life holds London and country alike in thrall; and a man who has spent a long day on his parish or his agency, his practice or his office in the provincial town, may be glad enough to sit still or to get what exercise he can out of games. All the same, if the children have an able-bodied mother, their case is not hopeless. In these athletic days when women hunt, shoot, swim, and play golf, surely mothers can sometimes spare an hour or two to show their little sons and daughters something of the world beyond the beaten track of the high road. What may be gained by it will never be lost. The sons may go far afield, and as soldiers, settlers, pioneers, or Colonial farmers be none the worse for an instinctive eye for country; the daughters will probably be mothers themselves in time, with families to whom they may transmit the fruits of their own youth. If a woman is active enough to play hockey, she can assuredly get over a wall, and if not familiar with the operation, then the sooner she becomes so the better. The essence of climbing walls is to choose your place. And this maxim will apply to a good many other obstacles in life.
Perhaps the well-intentioned mother may yet have no knowledge of Nature, and be as ignorant of the animal and vegetable kingdoms as the child itself. In that case there remains but one thing to do, and that is to learn. Let her buy the simplest natural history handbook and study it, if only for five minutes a day, keep her eyes open as she goes, and teach her children what she finds out. Let her leave no place unexplored that is within the power of little feet to reach ; let her take her way by brook and meadow and moor. That one great reward will be the enormous delight of her following the writer knows, by that soundest of all tests—. experience.
Previous page
