My Several Worlds Read Online Free Page A

mother who wanted to be relieved of diaper washing. As for the babies, they were simply held outside the door at regular intervals and encouraged by a soft musical whistling to do their duty if possible. It was a delightful and lenient world in which a child could live his own life, with many people to love him tolerantly and demand nothing. Instead of the hard pressed father and mother of the Western child, the children of my early world had grandparents, innumerable aunts, uncles and cousins and servants to love them and indulge them.
    If the child were a boy, when he reached the age of seven still another person became important in his life. This was his schoolteacher. In that Chinese world the teacher held the place next to parents for the years of childhood and adolescence. His was the responsibility, not only for the mental education of the child, but for his moral welfare, too. Education was not merely for reading and writing and arithmetic, not only for history and literature and music, but also for learning self-discipline and proper conduct, and proper conduct meant the perfecting and the practice of how to behave to all other persons in their various stations and relationships. The fruit of such education was inner security. A child learned in the home how to conduct himself toward the different generations of grandparents and parents, elder and younger uncles and aunts, elder and younger cousins and brothers and sisters and servants, and in school he learned how to conduct himself toward teacher and friends and officials and neighbors and acquaintances. Being so taught, the youth was never ill at ease, never uncertain of how to behave or of how to speak to anyone. The essential rules were simple and clarified by the usage of centuries, and so the growing personality was poised and calm.
    The very houses were ordered in the same fashion. We young persons knew where to sit when we came into a room. We did not take the seats of our elders until we ourselves became the elders. With each year we knew that we would be given certain privileges, and if we claimed these too soon we were the losers, in the respect and estimation of other people. We were patient, therefore, knowing that time would bring us all things. How much easier it was for me to live in that world where I knew exactly what to do without being told or scolded than it is now for my children to live in my present world! How confusing for my American children not to know, for example, whether an adult wants to be called by his first name, or by his last! I know a family where the children call their parents by their first names, and I feel the confusion in those children’s hearts. The relationships are not clear and therefore they do not know where they belong in the generations. They know they are not adults, they know that the adults are not children, yet the lines are not defined as they should be, and children lose security thereby.
    In my early world we were all taught not to sit until our elders sat, not to eat until they had eaten, not to drink tea until their bowls were lifted. If there were not enough chairs we stood, and when an elder spoke to us, however playfully, we answered with the proper title. Did we feel oppressed? I am sure we did not, nor did that word occur to us. We knew where we were, and we knew, too, that someday we would be elders.
    And school! We all loved school and knew it was a privilege, especially for girls, to go to school. Most boys and certainly most girls could never go to school. The Old Empress favored girls’ schools in her latter years, but she said that she feared to increase the taxes to an amount necessary for public schools. Nevertheless, after she heard of Western schools, she sent out an edict commending the idea of education for girls as well as boys, and many private schools were opened as a consequence. I wonder sometimes nowadays, when I see reluctant children forced to school, whether compulsory education