Chenophobes

It is a comparatively simple affair to bring a child into the world. It is another matter to bring up a child once you have him. Civilized society is more or less agreed that here Nature needs much assistance, much understanding. Child-education is as prolific a subject as any other dear to the heart of man for public theorizing, wise and otherwise.

Last week, one Mrs. Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr.* permitted herself to be interviewed by newspaper reporters about a book she was just completing to set forth the "unquestionably" evil influence exerted by popular nursery jingles upon infant minds. Mother Goose/- herself was the object of Mrs. Stoner's determined attack and the reporters were told, in no uncertain tones, that:

Simple Simon, meeting a pieman and making a request the economic premise of which was visibly fallacious, "glorifies stupidity."

Little Jack Horner, sitting in his corner and eating with his fingers, inculcates bad table-manners.

The spider in Little Miss Muffitt and the lupine ancestress in Little Red Riding Hood breed fear-complexes.

The exciting verse--Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick--"puts ideas into children's heads . . . they might kill themselves, or at least do themselves bodily injury."

The tragic verse--Tom, Tom, the Piper's son Stole a pig and away he run.

The pig was eat and Tom was beat And Tom went howling down the street--is obviously "bad grammar, bad morals." I chiefly object," said earnest Mrs. Stoner "to teaching children such nonsense because it misrepresents life. . . . It is not only criminal to do so but it helps to make criminals of children." Then, to show that she was not merely a destructive critic, Mrs. Stoner recited one of the numerous "jingle facts" that she has written in the hope of ousting Mother Goose:

Every perfect person owns Just two hundred and six bones.

Also:

In 1732

George Washington first said boohoo!

A day or two after the Stoner interview appeared, one Kitty Cheatham* purchased four full columns of advertising space in another newspaper. Kitty Cheatham was bound that Mrs. Stoner should not enjoy exclusive credit for the great Mother Goose expose. Kitty Cheatham wrote in her large advertisement :

''Perhaps Mrs. Stoner does not know that this idea ... is not new, but has been radically advanced, logically analyzed and fearlessly uprooted in an illuminating children's book entitled Greetings and a Message to the Dear Children, by Augusta E. Stetson, C.S.D. (Doctor of Christian Science). ... In this lovely book, the author . . . enables a child to think intelligently, in response to the law of God, or Spirit.

"During her 22 years of close association with children in the Sunday School of her church, First Church of

Christ Scientist, New Y,ork City, Mrs. Stetson devoted her tireless efforts. . . . But to return to Mother Goose , . .. let me quote the following from Mrs. Stetson's book:

. . . "When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall"--no wonder that it [a baby] awoke in the night and cried. . . . Nursy or mother might have thought baby had a stomach ache and given it peppermint tea, but we know that it was fear that awakened1 baby, and only love destroys fear. . . . What a stretch of the imagination--asking a child to believe that a heavy mooley cow could jump over the moon! Think of a kitty playing a fiddle and then try to convince the child that a dish could run away with a spoon. . . . Thus the children's sweet faith was lessened and they were made to doubt and distrust. . . . Mother Goose was indeed a goose. ...

. . . Did you ever awake early some morning, while it was yet dark, and hear the milkman rattle the bottles as he left the nice milk for your breakfast,--and as you snuggled in your warm little bed did you send out to the milkman a loving thought, a grateful thought, and ask God to keep him happy ar warm?

, Kitty Cheatham went on quoting from Mrs. Stetson's "tender and logical" book, showed how Mrs. Stoner had illustrated her points with parables from the Old Testament, and urged in place of

Now I lay me down to sleep;

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take

Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy's fearless Christian Science prayer:

Father-Mother God, loivig me--

Guard me when I sleep;

Guide my little feet up to Thee.

Then Kitty Cheatham confided that ... she, herself, had a revised Mother Goose, "whose happy secrets I will tell later."

Before her as she wrote her adver--tisement came "the earnest faces of the 14,000 students of the University of Berlin, representing 17 nationalities, before whom I was invited ta sing and speak by the official heads of the University (I being the only American artist who had been thus invited)." And she wound up: "Never have I been so imbued with the desire to bring joy, to elevate the children through my art, my, pen and my deep religious convictions; and I am more earnest, interested and active than ever since I know that thought is force and governs all and I shall inculcate this in my recitals (which I am about to resume). . .

*Mrs. Stoner Jr. (Mrs. Charles P. de Bruche), aged 22, was raised by her mother to be a prodigy. She "has made impromptu speeches in public since the age of four." She has written for publication since the age of five. Her books include Patrino Anserino (Mother Goose in Esperanto, written at the age of six), animal stories, children's histories, volumes of fact-jingles. The mother of Mrs. de Bruche is Mrs. James B. Stoner of Norfolk, Va., "founder of the Natural Education System." Mrs. Stoner attributes the .brilliance of her daughter in no small part to the fact that she taught the child to typewrite at the age of three. Mrs. Stoner recommends typewriters as substitutes for rattles.

/- Mother Goose is not an imaginary personage. She actually lived in Boston in the 17th Century. Born Elizabeth Foster, she married one Isaac Vergoose (or Goose), a Boston widower "with eight or ten children," becoming Mother Goose to these and "six or more" children of her own. This menage readily lent itself to the tale of The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Mother Goose's son-in-law, one T. Fleet, a printer, wrote down the songs he heard her sing, and in 1719 published a book from his own press entitled Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children. *Catharine Smiley Cheatham, of Manhattan, is an interpretative singer a Christian Scientist.