Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1882-02-03
Rurdette on ChlId.CuI,ure.

Well, time flies, the summer is almost over,
the mackerel have come up the bay and are
biting like poison, the ferns are growing old,
and the boy is learning to talk so that other
people can understand him.
''If you would let me have him about one
month";" said the pleasant-voiced and pleas
ant-faced school mistress who came down
here from up the river last week, 81 could
break him of that careless habit of speaking"
just because the boy had asked his stern,
dark -browed father:
"Poppuls, whurs is mines fin pole you
peakin mama um day."
Which by Interpretation is, as the pleasant
voiced school l-mistress would have taught him
to say it:
Father where is my fishing rod of which
you were speaking to my mother, with refer
ence to purchasing for me at some time in
the indefinite future"
And her little serene highness shook her
head and said no; he was losing his baby
talk and learning to speak English too rapid
ly as it was. The pleasant face of the school
mistress wrinkled up into an interrogation
point.
"Schoolmistress, the Jester said, "on all
matters of education your shapely head is not
billy it is as level as a new-mown lawn. But
you don't want to teach the baby grammar,
and you don't want him to speak good Eng
lish. You want him to be baby, and you
want to encourage him to indulge in baby
talk. In the years to come, when the pudgy
little fists will dig great tears out of the blue
eyes because the boy can't remember in Just
what points there should and must I've exact
harmony between the verb and the subject
when he is confident that he will die before
he can remember how many fellows beside
'ad, ante, con, in or inter, are followed by
the accusative; when he knows the world
will stand still for Just two hours after school
if he can't recall that all examinations in some
thing or other take the what-you. may -call-it
after some kind Of things; when he is so
trusting and has so much confidence in Mr..
Davies that he is not only willing but anx-
ious, to accept his statement that the sum of
the three angles Of a triangle is equal to two
right angles without going to the board to
prove his truthfulness by demonstration
along in those days the memory of his baby
| talk will come back to us like sweet music.
He will have trouble enough with the Eng
lish language and all the appurtenances there
unto appertaining, by-and-by. No, he re.
| sponded, in an answer to a silent inquiry of
! the pleasant-faced schoolmistress, che does
not know his alphabet, thank heaven, and he
shall not be bothered with it. Yes, he has
alphabet blocks, and knows all the pictures
on them, and many preposterous stories about
the pictures. Oh yes, he can count hear
him now counting the pebbles he has brought
home from the beach: 'one, free, seven ten,
| free, five, seven, free;' certainly he can
count, by system of his own, too, which is
more than most people have. Don't make
| prig Of the baby, schoolmistress. From the
day on which they are six years old they
must, under the school system of the states,
begin to study, and sit up straight, and be-
have properly and speak correctly, and from
that time until the grave hides them they live
and speak and act, verbally speaking, they
be, and do, and suffer- under social and edu-
cational surveillance. And 1 claim that at
least six years of the life of man and woman
should be free-free as the air free to talk
as the brook runs, with untrammeled musical
prattle and babble. Why, here, few weeks
ago, came a melancholy looking child, about
four years old, and in my presence and hear
| ing, pointed to me, and said to his mother,
| Mamma of whom is that gentleman speak
ingF
Poor little prig! My heart bled for him.
| That afternoon took that boy down to the
target, and taught him to say Mama, what
is dat man speakin' you about ?" and recon-
structed his general grammar on the same
easy basis and-look me in the eye-if that
boy didn't tan up like young Indian in two
days, and he gained seven pounds in two
weeks.
"You see," the Jester concluded, in an
apologetic Tone for he had done an unusual
amount of preaching that day, ''you see, we
haven't very broad experience in training
children; we have only one chick to cluck
over and scratch for, but we are bound he
shan't go to school until he's through being a
baby, aud we know, schoomistress, that he's
the happiest baby that ever mangled gram
mar. -BurlingtOR Hapkeye.