of the missionaries. Thus once again was verified the prediction, "A little child shall lead them."
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CHILD, THE
The value and possibilities of a newborn child are thus set forth by James Oppenheim:
You may be Christ or Shakespeare, little child,
A savior or a sun to the lost world.
There is no babe born but may carry furled
Strength to make bloom the world's disastrous wild.
Oh, what then must our labors be to mold you,
To open the heart, to build with dream the brain,
To strengthen the young soul in toil and pain,
Till our age-aching hands no longer hold you!
Vision far-dreamed! But soft! If your last goal
Be low, if you are only common clay,
What then? Toil lost? Were our toil trebled, nay!
You are a soul, you are a human soul,
A greater than the skies ten-trillion starred—
Shakespeare no greater, O you slip of God!
(Text.)—Cosmopolitan.
(362)
See Faith, a Child's.
Child, The, as an Educator—See Home,
Foundation of the Republic.
Child Training—See Prodigy, A; Training
Children.
Child's View of God—See Anthropomorphism.
Childhood and Nature—See God in the
Child Mind.
CHILDLIKE TRUST AND MATURITY
A few days since, just after the recent
snow-storm, I passed in the street a little
fellow drawing a sled; a little, rosy-cheeked
boy, who was so full of perfect happiness
that his entire face was crinkled into a smile.
He made a beautiful picture. That sled was
his only responsibility, and that, along with
the snow, made out for him a perfect heaven.
I watched the lad and wished I were a boy
again. It was a foolish wish, and yet not
altogether foolish. There was something
exquisite in the situation which one would
have been not only foolish but stupid not
to appreciate. He had no burden. His sled
was unloaded, and slipt along over the frosty
pavement almost of its own momentum. He
had no anxieties. The little fellow's heart is
sometimes bruised, I suppose, but child
bruises do not last as long as older bruises.
But I had not gone many steps past him before I revised my wish, and thought only how beautiful it would be to have the innocence of the boy and his simple trust, and along with that the mature equipment opening out into the vast opportunities that form the heritage of years that are ripe.—Charles H. Parkhurst.
(363)
Children—See Cruelty to Children.
CHILDREN AND CIVIC SERVICE
Two hundred clubs of children on the
New York East Side cooperate with the
street-cleaning department in keeping clean
streets in their respective neighborhoods.
They hand prepared cards furnished by the
city to every one seen throwing rubbish in
the street, which read as follows:
Give your banana-peels to a horse. Horses like them. Orange-peels, peanut-shells, news-*papers and other rubbish must not be thrown in the street. Keep yours and throw them in the receptacle placed at street corners for that purpose. You should sprinkle your side-*walk before sweeping. Don't raise the dust, as it breeds disease. It is against the law to throw rubbish from the windows to the street. Don't put paper, rags and other rubbish either in the ash-can or garbage-can.
A badge is given to each child to wear on which is inscribed the motto: "We are for clean streets." Thus thousands of children are learning to take pride in their city.
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CHILDREN AND GARDENS
Professor Hanna, head of the Department
of Natural History of the Board of Education,
New York, divided an open lot into
some three hundred little garden plots,
took boys from the Bowery district, and
girls as well. Each child spaded up its own
ground, planted its seeds, pulled out the
weeds, and watched the ruddy vegetables
grow. A thousand questions arose to these
city-born children. Given a black clod and a
drop of rain-water, and a few seeds, how
does the same clod make a beet red, and a
