The new book was spared a depressing experience of its predecessor, for, instead of being declined by almost every reputable publisher in the United States, it was demanded by several before the second instalment appeared and the number of requests for it increased week by week as the serial issue continued.
But, like almost everything else from the same pen, “Other People’s Children” was written so hastily and put to press so carelessly that it abounded in repetitions and other errors that made cultivated readers grieve, so an opportunity to allow the book to drop out of print was welcomed by the author.
Nevertheless he was compelled to believe his friends and enemies when they insisted that “Other People’s Children” was an abler and more amusing story than “Helen’s Babies,” for their opinion agreed with his own. So he has responded gladly to the request of the present publishers that he should give the copy a careful revision. It is extremely unlikely that any reader of the old edition will detect any alterations in the new, for nothing has been added nor has anything of consequence been taken out; yet the author and publishers know that more than a thousand corrections and emendations have been made and that almost all of them were needed.
BUDGE AND TODDIE
OR
HELEN’S BABIES AT PLAY
The writer of a certain much-abused book sat at breakfast one morning with his wife, and their conversation turned, as it had many times before, upon a brace of boys who had made a little fun for the lovers of trifling stories and a great deal of trouble for their uncle. Mrs. Burton, thanks to that womanly generosity which, like a garment, covers the faults of men who are happily married, was so proud of her husband that she admired even his book; she had made magnificent attempts to defend it at points where it was utterly indefensible; but her critical sense had been frequently offended by her husband’s ignorance regarding the management of children. On the particular morning referred to, this critical sense was extremely active.
“To know, Harry,” said Mrs. Burton, “that you gave so little true personal attention to Budge and Toddie, while you professed to love them with the tenderness peculiar to blood-relationship, is to wonder whether some people do not really expect children to grow as the forest trees grow, utterly without care or training.”
“I spent most of my time,” Mr. Burton replied, attacking his steak with more energy than was called for at the breakfast-table of a man whose business hours were easy, “I spent most of my time in saving their parents’ property and their own lives from destruction. When had I an opportunity to do anything else?”
A smile of conscious superiority, the honesty of which made it none the less tantalizing, passed lightly over Mrs. Burton’s features as she replied:
“All the while. You should have explained to them the necessity for order, cleanliness and self-restraint. Do you imagine that their pure little hearts would not have received it and acted upon it?”
Mr. Burton offered a Yankee reply.
“Do you suppose, my dear,” said he “that the necessity for all these virtues was never brought to their attention? Did you never hear the homely but significant saying, that you may lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink?”
With the promptness born of true intuition, Mrs. Burton went around this verbal obstacle instead of attempting to reduce it.
“You might at least have attempted to teach them something of the inner significance of things,” said Mrs. Burton. “Then they would have brought a truer sense to the contemplation of everything about them.”
Mr. Burton gazed almost worshipfully at this noble creature whose impulses led her irresistibly to the discernment of the motives of action, and with becoming humility he asked:
“Will you tell me how you would have explained the inner significance of dirt, so that those boys could have been trusted to cross a dry road without creating for themselves a halo which should be more visible than luminous?”
“Don’t trifle about serious matters, Harry,” said Mrs. Burton, after a hasty but evident search for a reply. “You know that conscience and æsthetic sense lead to correct lives all persons who subject themselves to their influence, and you know that the purest natures are the most susceptible. If men and women, warped and mistrained though their earlier lives may have been, grow into sweetness and light under right incentives, what may not be done with those of whom it was said, ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven’?”
Mr. Burton instinctively bowed his head at his wife’s last words, but raised it speedily as the lady uttered an opinion which was probably suggested by the holy sentiment she had just expressed.
“Then you allowed them to be dreadfully irreverent in their conversations about sacred things,” said she.
“Really, my dear,” expostulated the victim, “you must charge up some of these faults to the children’s parents. I had nothing to do with the formation of the children’s habits, and their peculiar habit of talking about what you call sacred things is inherited directly from their parents. Their father says he doesn’t believe it was ever intended that mere mention of a man in the Bible should be a patent of sacredness, and Helen agrees with him.”
MRS. BURTON BRUSHED A TINY CRUMB FROM HER ROBE
Mrs. Burton coughed. It is surprising what a multitude of suggestions can be conveyed by a gentle cough.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, as if musing aloud, “that inheritance is the method by which children obtain many objectionable qualities for which they themselves are blamed, poor little things. I don’t know how to sympathize in the least degree with this idea of Tom’s and Helen’s, for the Maytons, and my mother’s family, too, have always been extremely reverent toward sacred things. You are right in laying the fault to them instead of the boys, but I cannot see how they can bear to inflict such a habit upon innocent children and I must say that I can’t see how they can tolerate it in each other.”
Mrs. Burton raised her napkin, and with fastidious solicitude brushed a tiny crumb or two from her robe as she finished this remark. Dear creature! She needed to display a human weakness to convince her husband that she was not altogether too good for earth, and this implication of a superiority of origin, the darling idea of every woman but Eve, answered the purpose. Her spouse endured the infliction as good husbands always do in similar cases, though he somewhat hastily passed his coffee-cup for more sugar, and asked, in a tone in which self-restraint was distinctly perceptible:
“What else, my dear?”
Mrs. Burton suddenly comprehended the situation; she left her chair, made the one atonement which is always sufficient between husband and wife, and said:
“Only one thing, you dear old boy, and even that is a repetition, I suppose. It’ only this: parents are quite as remiss as loving uncles in training their children, instead of merely watching them. The impress of the older and wiser mind should be placed upon the child from the earliest dawn of its intelligence, so that the little one’s shall be determined, instead of being left to chance.”
“And the impress is readily made, of course, even by a love-struck uncle on a short vacation?”
“Certainly. Even wild animals are often tamed at sight by master-minds.”
“But suppose these impressible little beings should have opinions and wishes and intentions of their own?”
“They should be overcome by the adult mind.”