New Britain herald., 1915-04-06


 York Tribune.
 Alice. almost three years old, Was very busy scribbling forest and cloud
 effects on the back of circular let ter; and she was quite oblivious to the presence and conversation of her
 mother and visitor. Can she write yet? ?" asked the visitor. ''Oh.. mo-, beamed the mother, i've do not wish to hurry her. But she does love to play with pencils and paper, and l think she is going to be an author The visitor smiled indulgently, and
 said: Isn't that interesting!" But l this is what she thought: "She is just as likely to become a cheap clerk or a fourth-rate stenog- l rapher." Which is quite true; only there is no use discouraging parents too early in the game.
 Parents naturally harbor secret am bitions as to the future of the children; ; we know that, because they sometim es let the secret out. And it is quite nat
 ural that they should, because they transfer to their children the hopes of their own childhood, the hopes that
 never crystallized into reality. We can therefore understand why the scrib- blings of Alice should suggest fine
 writing to the mother, or why Tom
 mys tinllering with the decrepit alarm clock should remind the father of
 that other Tn omas, the great inventor.
 Hopes Aid in Developing Child's Per-
 sonality.
 Not only is it early to understand
 why parents do such things-which
 must appear rather stupid or conceit-
 cd to the parents of other children
 but 1t is very desirable that they
 should continue to do more and more
 of the same. For entertaining hopes
 about children is about the surest
 way of guiding our plans and bringing $
 unity into our treatment of developing
 personality. The hopes can certainly
 do no harm-unless they blind us.
 But there is the real danger.
 For if we have nothing to go by ax- cept our hopes, we are just as likely
 to be moved or paralyzed but our fears 1t is natural, for parents to translate the random activities of their children into possibilities for
 achieSement But 1t is just as natur-
 al to translate the annoying or un.
 conventional activities into gnawing fear.
 Charles Darwin tells us in his auto biography of being rebuked by the schoolmaster for wasting his time on such subjects as chemistry. We should explain this by saying that the school
 master had no appreciation of a sub- ject of which he was totally ignorant.
 But he tells us further that he was greatly mortified when his father. once
 said to him: You care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat catching,
 and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family" Now, Darwin's s father was not an ignorant man and
 he was not unsympathetic; but his
 imagination was not equal to interpret
 ing the child's interests and activities
 in terms other than those of loafing,
 shooting and rat catching.
 Patrick Henry Was Lazy Youth. But if the experience of Darwin should lead any one to predict a great scientific career for the son of simi-
 lar proclivities, he must be warned
 The youth of Patrick Henry was char acteriZed by alternating spasms of
 running wild and hunting in the woods and spells of extreme laziness. No persuasion could bring him either to
 read or to york; his biographer writes. and every omen foretold a life at best of mediocrity. if not of in- significance" Which only supports the old suspicion that you must not put too much trust in omens.
 Again and again we find cases of children who filled their parents with despair and their teachers with dis gust, only to emerge later into men and women of distinction and high so- cial value. The timid youth, backward in school and slow to give any sign of internal fires. develops into a leader in thought or in action. This should
 not make us translate timidity and backWardness into signs of lea dership Henry Ward Beecher was so bashfil and reticent as boy that he gave the
 impression, according to his sister, of
 "stoid stupidity" Tn addition to this
 he was poor writer and speller, and
 had thick utterance" No one would
 have guessed that this ten-year-old boy was to become brilliant orator,
 especially since the other children Of
 the family memorized their lessons readily and recited them with grace and elegance, in marked contrast to the confused and stammering Henry
 John Adams gave no sign of abili-
 ties beyond the ordinary until we'll along in years, and but for the cir cumstances of the Civil War Ulysses $. Grant would have remained an ob- scure, uninteresting and "unsuccess- 1ul drliter. on the other hand. many q precocious child seems to stop short