“If I live, I shall see to it
that my grandchildren know nothing of the fortune
awaiting them until they become of age—which
will be after I am ended. Meanwhile, plain
food and clothing, wholesome home seclusion from
the promiscuity of modern child life, and an exhaustive
education in every grace, fashion, and accomplishment
of body and intellect is the training I propose
for the development in them of the only thing
in the world worth cultivating—unterrified
individualism.
“The ignorance which characterises
the conduct of modern institutes of education
reduces us all to one mindless level, reproducing ad
nauseam what is known as ‘average citizens.’
This nation is already crawling with them; art,
religion, letters, government, business, human
ideals remain embryonic because the ’average
citizen’ can conceive nothing higher, can
comprehend nothing loftier even when the few who
have escaped the deadly levelling grind of modern
methods of education attempt to teach the masses to
think for themselves.
“That is bad enough in itself—but
add to cut-and-dried pedagogy the outrageous liberty
which modern pupils are permitted in school and college,
and add to that the unheard-of luxury in which they
live—and the result is stupidity and
utter ruin.
“My babies must have discipline,
system, frugality, and leisure for individual
development drilled into them. I do not wish them
to be ignorant of one single modern grace and
accomplishment; mind and body must be trained
together like a pair of Morgan colts.
“But I will not have them victims
of pedagogy; I will not have them masters of their
time and money until they are of age; I will not permit
them to choose companions or pursuits for their leisure
until they are fitted to do so.
“If there is in them, latent,
any propensity toward viciousness—any unawakened
desire for that which has been my failing—hard
work from dawn till dark is the antidote.
An exhausted child is beyond temptation.
“If I pass forward, Tappan, before
you—and it is likely because I am twenty
years older and I have lived unwisely—I
shall arrange matters in such shape that you can
carry out something of what I have tried to begin,
far better than I, old friend; for I am strong in
theory and very weak in practice; they are such dear
little things! And when they cry to be taken
up—and a modern trained nurse says
‘No! let them cry!’ good God! Remsen,
I sometimes sneak into their thoroughly modern
and scientifically arranged nursery, which resembles
an operating room in a brand-new hospital, and I take
up my babies and rock them in my arms, terrified lest
that modern and highly trained nurse discover
my infraction of sanitary rule and precept.
“I don’t know;
babies were born, and survived cradles and mothers’
arms and kisses long before
sterilised milk and bacilli were
invented.
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