The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1906-10-13

" Another point to be noted IS thai
everyone lights shy OF the infant prod
Icy. Parents trot him. out and com
pei him to show his PAGES, to the bore
dom and disgust of friends and &C
quaintances. Fond mothers little
dream of the dismay and. the secret
amuseme they awake in. the. minds
Of their social circle. t'Here comes
Mrs. w. She is sure to lead the sub
ject~ around to Albert's performances
unless that hopeful child and his won
derful speeches can be side-tracked.' =
have known a silent combination OF
forces ready to check the mother
without her suspecting it,>When, as
usual, she uegan to launch forth on
her pet topic. ,->~
What becomes finally of all the in
FAINT phenomena? Some of them, no
doubt, fill early graves, others break
away from leading strings and melt
into the ranks and are never heard of
more. The vast majority ceasing to
be precocious, eventually take their
places with the average people around
us, do their work, and get through it
with credit, their childish successes
entirely forgotten.
Well for them if their beginnings
have not been too widely exploited.
Child-preachers who declaim eloquent
ly before gaping crowds, are to be
pitied, not praised. Child actors and
musicians are forced to play, and act
at an age when they should still be in
the nursery. Those who manage
them and those who pay to watch
them, seeming insensible to their
cruelty. Child-poets whose little
verses are printed with admiring COM
ments, their full name, age and place
OF residence given to the public, are
thrust out Of the sweet retirement to
which childhood is entitled and are
apt in later years to suffer from criti-
clsm and from sort of puzzled sur
prlsed that their maturity has not
equalled their childish genius. Fruit
out OF season in the realm of mentality
is not worth much to anyone.
IT God sends a bright and clever
child into household, give God
thanks, but for the sake of all the fu-
ture, do not push that child too rapid
ly onward Who that ever read Dom
hey and Son can forget the heart
breaking picture of little Paul Dom
hey, the fond hope of his pompous
parent, dying by inches in the forcing
atmosphere of DR.. Blmber's school.
Bring him on, Cornelia," said the
pedagogue, over and over And little
Paul was brought on, until the kindly
Angel of Death snatched him away
from the hands of the fools who knew
so little how to educate child of his
aelieacy and sensitiYeness.
1t may be that the father and moth
er of precocious child do not under
stand the risks they run until some
danger signal startles them. A maya
zine story not long ago, gave an Illus
tration of a child, motherless and in
the care Of a scholarly father, who
took delight in preparing his boy for
college, while he was still not much
beyond his tenth or eleventh year.
Brain fever merctful1y developed ana
the child's life and future were saved
through the process of suffering and a
forgetting all he had ever acquired. 1t
was a toss-up between life and death.
not only, but death and idiocy, and
when the child came out of his stupor
sane, and recognized his father, the
rough doctor bluntly said to the lat
ter, "Luck's your way, Jim," and it
was.