LXV
THE RICHES OF POOR CHILDREN
The bitterest cry of poor people is that they have nothing to give their children. The fathers and mothers who cannot buy imported finery for their girls or sports-model cars for their boys and send them off to expensive colleges and fill their pockets with money feel that they have come empty-handed to their children and have nothing to give them. Yet the poorest man and woman who bend above a cradle have it in their power to bestow upon their babe treasures so great that their worth cannot be computed in dollars and cents, and that will bring the child more pleasure and happiness in life than they could purchase with all the wealth of the Rothschilds. For there is no price tag on the most precious things in the world. They are equally free to prince and pauper, and more often the beggar gets them than the millionaire does.
For example, there is love—a close, intimate, personal association—and tenderness and understanding. Poor parents can more easily give to their children than the wealthy can. And the child that has them is rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and the child that has them not is poverty-stricken, although it has all else besides. The mother who rocks her baby to sleep on her breast, whose tender arms are always outstretched to gather her youngsters to her heart, who is never too tired or too busy to listen to childish confidences, who surrounds her little ones with a brooding atmosphere of affection,—gives to her children far more than does the rich mother who gives her children nurses and governesses and pony carts and fine clothes and costly playthings but who does not give them herself; who bestows on them everything but the things that a child wants most and needs most—mother love and tenderness, the real mother touch.
Not long ago a very rich young man figured in a disgraceful scandal, and the one excuse offered in his defense was that his mother was dead and his father had never given him anything except money. He had never had any affection bestowed upon him. He had had no parental guidance. When a little lad he had been put in a school and kept there without even being visited by any one who loved him, without even going home for vacations. He had been just a pitiful little millionaire waif for whom nobody cared. The lot of such a child is infinitely worse than that of the one whose parents are in such humble circumstances that they can give it perhaps only the plainest of food and clothes, but who do give it a real home that is full of close, warm family life. The fathers and mothers to whom children are grateful and whose memories they revere are not those who bequeath them great fortunes, but those who leave them the memory of a love and understanding that never failed and of a childhood that was made sweet by their parents’ cherishing.
No matter how poor you are, you can give your children love and companionship and the privilege of growing up in a peaceful and cheerful home, and that is something that few rich parents can give their children.
Another gift that you can make your children is that of teaching them how to read. When you do that you really don’t need to do much more for them, because you have put a magic coin in their hands that will buy them entrance into all the doors of delight and open to them all of the portals of romance. No one who loves to read can ever be bored or lonely. He or she has only to open a book, and, presto, he or she has for company all of the wit and wisdom of the ages. Gay adventures, beautiful ladies and gallant gentlemen beckon, and one has only to follow them into realms of enchantment. All of interest, all that informs, that thrills, that amuses, is the property of the reader. But, reading does not always come by nature, as Dogberry thought it did. Often it has to be acquired by art, but any child can be taught to like to read; it can be given the reading habit, and no other gift can possibly be bestowed upon it that is half so valuable or that will bring it in such happiness or that will be such an ark of refuge to it in times of trouble.
Another gift that the poorest parents can make to their children is to teach them how to see. Most persons go through the world as blind as bats. They never see anything that isn’t directly under their noses, and thereby they miss half of the fun and pleasure in living. There are men and women to whom a sunset is just a phenomenon of nature that happens every day; to whom a crowd is just a jam of people; who get nothing out of travel but inconvenience and missing the particular kind of breakfast food they prefer, and who loathe rain because they get their feet wet and hate snow because it is messy. And there are other men and women who see the glory of God in every flaming sunset; who thrill to the finger tips at the drama they see enacted in every crowd; to whom travel opens up a new world; to whom every rain is a symphony and every snowstorm a poem.
Which of these get the most out of life—those who see or those who are blind; those who can get pleasure out of little things or those who are too dull and dumb to amuse themselves; those who are sensitive to every beauty in nature, who appreciate music and art and literature, who get the last flavor out of good cooking, or those who find everything flat and stale and uninteresting because they have never been taught to see the under side of things?
Finally, the poorest parents can teach their children that brave attitude toward life without which all the balance is cinders, ashes, and dust. For disappointments and trouble come to us all, and it is only those who have been taught how to make the best of their bad bargains, how to laugh at misfortune and mock at fate, who achieve any real happiness in life. So cheer up, you parents who complain that you have nothing to give your children. You can give them love. You can teach them to read and to see things. You can give them a brave heart. These gifts are worth more than money. And nobody can take them away from those who have them.