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Page 17
I would, therefore, beseech young mothers who are conscious of their own
ignorance to see a lady doctor, if they do not like to consult their own
family physician, and ask her to tell them plainly what they have to
guard against and the best methods to pursue. All I can say here is to
beseech every mother to be absolutely careful about the antecedents of
her nursemaids, and only to admit those of unblemished character into
the precincts of the nursery. Never, if possible, let your baby boy
sleep with any one but yourself, if through illness or any other cause
he cannot sleep in his own little cot. Pyjamas, I think, are generally
recognized now to be the best form of night gear, as keeping the little
limbs warm and covered, when in the restlessness of sleep the child
throws off the bedclothes, as well as for other and more vital reasons.
If through straitened means you cannot afford an experienced nurse--not
that I should altogether allow that even the experienced nurse is to be
implicitly and blindly trusted until she has been well tested--then I
would entreat you not to let sleepiness or ill health or any other
excuse prevent you from being always present at your boy's morning bath.
Often and often evil habits arise from imperfect washing and consequent
irritation; and many a wise mother thinks it best on this account to
revert to the old Jewish rite of initiation by which cleanliness was
secured. Teach them from the first self-reverence in touch, as in word
and deed, and watch even their attitudes in sleep, that the little arms
are folded lightly upwards. Even experienced nurses are not always nice
in their ways. Be vigilantly watchful that the utmost niceness is
observed between the boys and girls in the nursery, and that childish
modesty is never broken down, but, on the contrary, nurtured and
trained. Knowledge and watchfulness are the two cherubim with the
flaming sword turning all ways to guard the young tree of life and bar
the way of every low and creeping thing. If I may venture in some sort
to reverse our Lord's words, I should say His word to all mothers is,
"What I say unto all I say especially unto you, _Watch_."
But there is another and a deeper sense in which the root of the evil is
first planted and nourished in the nursery. If we are to contend with
this deadly peril to soul and body, I cannot but feel that we must bring
about a radical change in the training of our boys. There must be some
radical defect in that training for men to take the attitude they do. I
do not mean bad, dissipated men, but men who in all other relations of
life would be designated fairly good men. Once let such a man be
persuaded--however wrongly--that his health, or his prospect of having
some day a family of his own, will suffer from delayed marriage and he
considers the question settled. He will sacrifice his health to
over-smoking, to excess in athletics, to over-eating or champagne
drinking, to late hours and overwork; but to sacrifice health or future
happiness to save a woman from degradation, bah! it never so much as
enters his mind. Even so high-minded a writer as Mr. Lecky, in his
_History of European Morals_,[9] deliberately proposes that the
difficulty of deferred marriage which advanced civilization
necessitates, at least for the upper classes, should be met by temporary
unions being permitted with a woman of a lower class. The daughters of
workingmen, according to this writer, are good enough as fleshly
stop-gaps, to be flung aside when a sufficient income makes the true
wife possible--an honorable proceeding indeed! to say nothing of the
children of such a temporary union, to whom the father can perform no
duty, and leave no inheritance, save the inestimable one of a mother
with a tainted name. Verily there must be some fault in our training of
men! Certainly an intelligent American mother put her finger on the
blot, so far as we are concerned, when, speaking to me many years ago,
she said what struck her so in our English homes was the way in which
the girls were subordinated to the boys; the boys seemed first
considered, the girls in comparison were nowhere. Doubtless our English
homes are more at fault here than in America; but, as a mother's pride
in her boys is the same all over the world, may not even American homes
admit of a little improvement in this respect as well? And, if we choose
to bring up our boys to look upon their mothers and sisters as more or
less the devoted slaves of their selfishness, can we wonder that they
should grow up to look upon all women as more or less the slaves of
their needs, fleshly or otherwise?
Now, what I want all boys taught from their earliest years is, roughly
speaking, that boys came into the world to take care of girls. Whatever
modification may take place in our view of the relation of the sexes,
Nature's great fact will remain, that the man is the stronger--a
difference which civilization and culture seem to strengthen rather than
diminish; and from his earliest years he ought to be taught that he,
therefore, is the one that has to serve. It is the strong that have to
bear the burden of the weaker, and not to prostitute that strength by
using it to master the weaker into bearing their loads. It is the man
who has to give himself for the woman, not the other way on, as we have
made it. Nay, this is no theory of mine; it is a truth implanted in the
very heart of every true man. "Every true man," as Milton says, "is born
a knight," diligently as we endeavor to stub up this royal root,
constantly, as from the very nursery, we endeavor to train it out of
him. You may deny the truth and go on some theory of your own in the
training of your boys, but the truth cannot deny itself. It is _there_,
whether you will have it or not, a root of the tree of life itself.
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