Test Bank For Children and Their Development 6th Edition Kail ISBN 0205034942 9780205034949
Test Bank For Children and Their Development 6th Edition Kail ISBN 0205034942 9780205034949
Test Bank For Children and Their Development 6th Edition Kail ISBN 0205034942 9780205034949
0205034942 9780205034949
The naughty little scamp! I mean, for not leaving out the l in the
word “Calm,” so as to perfect the rhyme. It seems a pity to damage
with a lame rhyme a couplet that is otherwise without a blemish.
Marjorie wrote four journals. She began the first one in January,
1809, when she was just six years old, and finished it five months
later, in June.
She began the second in the following month, and finished it six
months afterward (January, 1810), when she was just seven.
She began the third one in April, 1810, and finished it in the
autumn.
She wrote the fourth in the winter of 1810-11, and the last entry in
it bears date July 19, 1811, and she died exactly five months later,
December 19th, aged eight years and eleven months. It contains her
rhymed Scottish histories.
Let me quote from Dr. John Brown:
“The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and
thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with
a tremulous, old voice repeated a long poem by Burns--heavy with
the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment seat--
the publican’s prayer in paraphrase, beginning:
“It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother’s and
Isabella Keith’s letters written immediately after her death. Old and
withered, tattered and pale, they are now; but when you read them,
how quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that
language of affection which only women, and Shakespeare, and
Luther can use--that power of detaining the soul over the beloved
object and its loss.”
Fifty years after Marjorie’s death her sister, writing to Dr. Brown,
said:
“My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by
Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but
love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone
rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily
followed that she might get out ere New Year’s Day came. When
asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately
rejoined: ‘Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence
for my dear Isa Keith.’ Again, when lying very still, her mother
asked her if there was anything she wished: ‘Oh yes, if you would
just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play the Land o’ the
Leal, and I will lie and think and enjoy myself’ (this is just as stated
to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to
parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from
the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My
father, who idolized this child, and never afterward in my hearing
mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and while walking her up
and down the room she said: ‘Father, I will repeat something to you;
what would you like?’ He said, ‘Just choose for yourself, Maidie.’
She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, ‘Few are thy
days and full of woe,’ and the lines of Burns already quoted, but
decided on the latter; a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating
of these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She
asked to be allowed to write a poem. There was a doubt whether it
would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded
earnestly, ‘Just this once’; the point was yielded, her slate was given
her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines
‘To my loved cousin on the author’s recovery.’”
The cousin was Isa Keith.
“She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the
night with the old cry of woe to a mother’s heart, ‘My head, my
head!’ Three days of the dire malady, ‘water in the head,’ followed,
and the end came.”
(1905)
I
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it
for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The
burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant
Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid,
comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them,
shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in
His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the
bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their
flag and country imperishable honor and glory--
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step
up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body
clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair
descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face
unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following
him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he
ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting. With shut
lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving
prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent
appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father
and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside--which
the startled minister did--and took his place. During some moments
he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which
burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne--bearing a message from Almighty
God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger
perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His
servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire
after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import--that is
to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men,
in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of--except he
pause and think.
“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused
and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two--one uttered, the
other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all
supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this--keep it in
mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest
without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time.
If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by
that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s
crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer--the uttered part of it. I am
commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it--that part
which the pastor--and also you in your hearts--fervently prayed
silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so!
You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That
is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those
pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have
prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results
which follow victory--must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon
the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of
the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go
forth to battle--be Thou near them! With them--in spirit--we also go
forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with
our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of
their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the
shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their
humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of
their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them
out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes
of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun
flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn
with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-
-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their
lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water
their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of
their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is
the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of
all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite
hearts. Amen.”
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The
messenger of the Most High waits.”
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there
was no sense in what he said.
CORN-PONE OPINIONS
(Written in 1900)
F ifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit
a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a
friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden
by my mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent and
satirical and delightful young black man--a slave--who daily
preached sermons from the top of his master’s woodpile, with me for
sole audience. He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergymen
of the village, and did it well, and with fine passion and energy. To
me he was a wonder. I believed he was the greatest orator in the
United States and would some day be heard from. But it did not
happen; in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked. It is the
way, in this world.
He interrupted his preaching, now and then, to saw a stick of
wood; but the sawing was a pretense--he did it with his mouth;
exactly imitating the sound the bucksaw makes in shrieking its way
through the wood. But it served its purpose; it kept his master from
coming out to see how the work was getting along. I listened to the
sermons from the open window of a lumber room at the back of the
house. One of his texts was this:
“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what
his ’pinions is.“
I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my
mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in
upon me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black
philosopher’s idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot
afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he
would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large
moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the
bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in
his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone
opinions--at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other
people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-
hand views.
I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I think he did not go far
enough.
1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the majority view of his
locality by calculation and intention.
This happens, but I think it is not the rule.
2. It was his idea that there is such a thing as a first-hand opinion;
an original opinion; an opinion which is coldly reasoned out in a
man’s head, by a searching analysis of the facts involved, with the
heart unconsulted, and the jury room closed against outside
influences. It may be that such an opinion has been born somewhere,
at some time or other, but I suppose it got away before they could
catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum.
I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict
upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or
religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our
notice and interest, is a most rare thing--if it has indeed ever existed.
A new thing in costume appears--the flaring hoopskirt, for
example--and the passers-by are shocked, and the irreverent laugh.
Six months later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has established
itself; it is admired, now, and no one laughs. Public opinion resented
it before, public opinion accepts it now, and is happy in it. Why?
Was the resentment reasoned out? Was the acceptance reasoned out?
No. The instinct that moves to conformity did the work. It is our
nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully
resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval. We
all have to bow to that; there are no exceptions. Even the woman
who refuses from first to last to wear the hoopskirt comes under that
law and is its slave; she could not wear the skirt and have her own
approval; and that she must have, she cannot help herself. But as a
rule our self-approval has its source in but one place and not
elsewhere--the approval of other people. A person of vast
consequences can introduce any kind of novelty in dress and the
general world will presently adopt it--moved to do it, in the first
place, by the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague
something recognized as authority, and in the second place by the
human instinct to train with the multitude and have its approval. An
empress introduced the hoopskirt, and we know the result. A nobody
introduced the bloomer, and we know the result. If Eve should come
again, in her ripe renown, and reintroduce her quaint styles--well, we
know what would happen. And we should be cruelly embarrassed,
along at first.
The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears. Nobody reasons
about it. One woman abandons the fashion; her neighbor notices this
and follows her lead; this influences the next woman; and so on and
so on, and presently the skirt has vanished out of the world, no one
knows how nor why; nor cares, for that matter. It will come again, by
and by; and in due course will go again.
Twenty-five years ago, in England, six or eight wine glasses stood
grouped by each person’s plate at a dinner party, and they were used,
not left idle and empty; to-day there are but three or four in the
group, and the average guest sparingly uses about two of them. We
have not adopted this new fashion yet, but we shall do it presently.
We shall not think it out; we shall merely conform, and let it go at
that. We get our notions and habits and opinions from outside
influences; we do not have to study them out.
Our table manners, and company manners, and street manners
change from time to time, but the changes are not reasoned out; we
merely notice and conform. We are creatures of outside influences;
as a rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot invent
standards that will stick; what we mistake for standards are only
fashions, and perishable. We may continue to admire them, but we
drop the use of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare is a
standard, and fifty years ago we used to write tragedies which we
couldn’t tell from--from somebody else’s; but we don’t do it any
more, now. Our prose standard, three quarters of a century ago, was
ornate and diffuse; some authority or other changed it in the
direction of compactness and simplicity, and conformity followed,
without argument. The historical novel starts up suddenly, and
sweeps the land. Everybody writes one, and the nation is glad. We
had historical novels before; but nobody read them, and the rest of us
conformed--without reasoning it out. We are conforming in the other
way, now, because it is another case of everybody.
The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are
always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts. The Smiths
like the new play; the Joneses go to see it, and they copy the Smith
verdict. Morals, religions, politics, get their following from
surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely; not from
study, not from thinking. A man must and will have his own
approval first of all, in each and every moment and circumstance of
his life--even if he must repent of a self-approved act the moment
after its commission, in order to get his self-approval again: but,
speaking in general terms, a man’s self-approval in the large
concerns of life has its source in the approval of the peoples about
him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter.
Mohammedans are Mohammedans because they are born and reared
among that sect, not because they have thought it out and can furnish
sound reasons for being Mohammedans; we know why Catholics are
Catholics; why Presbyterians are Presbyterians; why Baptists are
Baptists; why Mormons are Mormons; why thieves are thieves; why
monarchists are monarchists; why Republicans are Republicans and
Democrats, Democrats. We know it is a matter of association and
sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the
world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got
otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly
speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly
speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is
acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is
conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid business interest--
the bread-and-butter interest--but not in most cases, I think. I think
that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated; that
it is born of the human being’s natural yearning to stand well with
his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise--a yearning
which is commonly so strong and so insistent that it cannot be
effectually resisted, and must have its way.
A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine
force in its two chief varieties--the pocketbook variety, which has its
origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety-
-the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t bear to be in
disfavor; can’t endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants
to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be
welcome, wants to hear the precious words, “He’s on the right
track!” Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an
ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and
confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd.
For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into
the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it
happen. In some millions of instances.
Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do;
but they think with their party, not independently; they read its
literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions,
but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are
of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with
their party, they are happy in their party’s approval; and where the
party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through
blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals.
In our late canvass half of the nation passionately believed that in
silver lay salvation, the other half as passionately believed that that
way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part of the people,
on either side, had any rational excuse for having an opinion about
the matter at all? I studied that mighty question to the bottom--came
out empty. Half of our people passionately believe in high tariff, the
other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination,
or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that
question, too--and didn’t arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we
mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we
consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence.
It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of God.
THE END
Transcriber’s Note
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original.
ix.22 did not waste his chances[.] Added.
ix.24 on the list of Americ[n/a]n authors Replaced.
8.10 and yet wi[ll/th] all that silence Replaced.
10.14 the col[l]ossal myths of history Removed.
47.14 They all sat in a c[ri/ir]cle Transposed.
71.13 he wrote [i/a]t once to the Emperor Replaced.
97.7 men’s conception of the D[ie/ei]ty Transposed.
108.24 in his bay window![”] Added.
122.20 breezes would quiver the fo[il/li]age Transposed.
209.15 most lavishly u[n/p]holstered Replaced.
217.27 [“]Il y a une ascenseur,” Added.
260.12 The Ka[si/is]er’s claim was paid Transposed.
268.13 our war work and our her[io/oi]sms Transposed.
275.21 [“]I deny emphatically Added.
277.28 Christian virtues[:/.] Replaced.
303.3 the[m/n] moved them to fall Replaced.
401.9 i[s/t] is admired Replaced.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUROPE AND
ELSEWHERE ***