The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1893-07-09
ogical knowledge. Mother Truth is dis
coursing at length upon the habits OF lhe

matters not now much LASER OOu Is poured
in along with them. She would, for
instance. teach innocent children to
perpetrate such crimes as this against the
ianguage:
Listen, children when you're hungry,
DO not stuff you like pig.
But cat slowly and chew thorough.
Lest your teeth your grave shall dig.
And this apropos of the mammoth cave:
Now mammoth means mOnstrous big
And the manmOth cave we claim
AS the largest known In the world
Ana that's what gives the name.
1t were better that child should never
hear of the mammoth cave or OF Mother
Truth" than that he should be taught that
"mammoth means monStrous big!' There
Is scarcely \ line in the three hundred and
fifty odd pages of the book that does not
reek with error In grammar. expression or
statement, but here are one or two of the
poems that merit especial castigation One
deals with what the author is pleased to
term the traces" of animals. She tells the
children that:
A species is Kind
or animals or plants.
Each species has different name
And differing traits aud wants,
And species may unite
To form race. we know,
For race from root Is always drawn,
And roots must spread and grow.
Having delivered herself OF this amaZing
evolutionary item. she proceeds to classify
the races as, first. 1.-THE human race divine"
then causing the horse to declare himself
''the race equine" while the OK proudly
claims for himself that he is ''the race
bovine" and THE ass and mule bray out !:
our wn race is assinine'' (the spslling is
asses might be pardoned for not knowing
they belong to the race equine" but
after placing 'tigers, cats and catamounts"
in ''the race feline" she makes "the lion,
king Of beasts" roar out that his race is
"leonine." The birds, she declares, are Of
"the race apine" (whateyer that word
may mean). and winds up with tho asse l.
tiOn that:
And reptiles all rejoicing crawl
In race rcptiliau.
And this monstrous fabric of misstate-
ments physician recommended to me as
necessary in every homer The other
processes to teach the table of two" II
does not; IL merely means the false state
ment that two 2's are 4, /" "three 2s are g."
and so on, with string of equally false
Impressions about pony interw0ye
Once 9 is2,
Here's pony for you.
Two 2's are 4,
But be careful the more.
Three 2's are 6,
For perhaps pony kicks.
The logical inference Is false here, for
the possibility Of the pony kicking mas
nothing to do with the statement on whic h
it seems to hinge. namely, that "three 2's
are g."
Four 2's ares 8,
And Ii SO we must waie.
Five 2's arc TO-
Till he's trained by tbs men.
Six rs are ~.
Before Trusting ourselves
Seven rs are Ia.
To take him out Sp ortinR.
Is is needless to quote more. but the
previous poem goes on with the idea
hat while tho pony is being trained we
may put some food in the maDger, as the
more We feed him the gentler he will be.
The child's mind is first thrown into I'M
utterable confusion by the mixing of two
wholly Irrelevant ideas. He then gets an
impression of false or strained rhymes aud
pronunciation. a false impression that thu
kicking pony may be taken in hand and
trained in the very short time while his
manger is being filled, and general i'm
preston, pernirious in effect that indis-
criminate stuffng will make the pony
gentle.
Bere are couple Of lines from an
enumeration OF the bones in the body:
How macy bones in the human chest?
Twenty-fonr ribs and two OF the rest.
Can any one explain what that means
And who can understand this?
How many bones the shoulders bind?
Two in each, one before. one behind.
And this book. IL we may judge from it's
sales, 10 being taught to great numbers Of
children in our land. Fancy the genera
ton of deiestable little prigs 1t is capabIe of
producing; their minds crammsd with
Qpasi-scientiflc untruths, uncouth phrases,
faulty grammar, ugly ideas: who regard
their stomachs and teeth and lungs and
skins as sewers, pumps. drains. Shovels
and mills; whose ideal may be summed up
in nf hor 'Trtf Mal
dies":
The homeliest things are highest worth,
The dinn pots y treasure
Compared with diamonds. chains and rings
That serve alone for pleasure!
Better, far better. for mind and heart
and soul, bettor for babies. too, that all
such teaching in the world will never make
little children care for, that true ideas.
true art, true literature should he given
them freely. In frank. honest fiction.
than that even truth should be thus I'M
couthly taught. When fnlsehood Is taught
them Ia such guise and thrust upon them
as truth. the pity Is d0ubly pitiful-the
evil wrought the moro irremediabIe.
The whole tendency Of our modern
childish literature is to destroy taste and
kill the imagination. Tho children's
magazines and chilGren's books, dealing
only with life and things on the childish
level. arc making for US generation of
twelve and tifteen-year-old babies. unim.
asinative as beetles and wholly lncapa bic
Of entering into and possessing the King
dom of real literature that 10 their heri-
tage. Let US have Mother Goose" back
again, "The Arabian Nights" and poor old
Robinson CrusOe." | came across a ten
year-old boy recently who did not know
him, though he was "satiated since yester-
day" with Oliver Optic and the whole
brnod of infantils thunder bolter s-Gulli.
yer. Grimm and Anderson.
IL the children want science, and all
children like it. give 1t to them straight
from the highest sources. Children, as a
rule. are not half as great fools as their
elders, and 1t is simply amazing what an
untainted chid's brain will grasp, as we'll
as what it will pass over Of that which Is
really beyond il. The child will reach
what is true through what is beautiful
much more quickly than he will come to
forgive the unbeautiful because OF Its truth.
PENELOPE POWELLSON.
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Prizes are offered In Rochester to the
school children who destroy the greatest
Dum Der OF caterpillar oocoons.