“Yes, I know,” admitted the Professor, “the American child often seems a shade too unawed. Balzac says somewhere that modesty is a relative virtue--there is ‘that of twenty years, that of thirty years, and that of forty years.’ Our ancestors believed in a severe, hypocritical modesty for the young, trusting that they would get over it. They did worse than that when they asked youth to anticipate the hypocrisies of age. The same elegant person whom you have just quoted once wrote to that same son: ‘Having mentioned laughing, I want most particularly to warn you against it; and I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live.’ Although Chesterfield insisted that he was ‘neither of a melancholy or cynical disposition,’ he was proud to be able to say to his boy ‘Since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh.’ The next time you feel inclined to say mean things about the Puritans remember that declaration by the Earl. Now, the American seems to me not only to look at children differently, but to look at life differently, and any new traits in the American child probably represent one fact as much as the other. The American idea--I say idea, but I mean the American habit; we explain our habits and call the explanation a theory--merely obliterates age discriminations. The American child is simply the diminutive American. The American girl is her mother writ small. I don’t think that she is a whit more independent or irreverent than her mother.” [Illustration] “You don’t mean to say, Professor, that a child should not, for instance, be taught to keep a proper silence in company.” “Not an absolute silence. A child either has a right to be in a company or it has not. If it is in the company it has a right to be articulate like the other members of the company. If it is a sensible child it will listen to its elders, not because they are its elders but because they are its betters, because they know more, are more competent to speak. If it is not sensible it will be made to suffer for its foolishness, just as older members of the company are made to suffer. From my observation, children naturally brought up take their reasonable place very naturally in company.”