rendering this little service the helper should not only be willing but glad.
Just as there are these sporadic growths of affectionate concern and wish to please in relation to the mother and others, so there is ample evidence of kindness to animals. The charge of cruelty in the case of little children is indeed seen to be a gross libel as soon as we consider their whole behavior toward the animal world.
I have touched above on the vague alarms which this animal world has for tiny children. It is only fair to them to say that these alarms are for the most part transitory, giving place to interest, attachment, and fellow-feeling. In a sense a child may be said to belong to the animal community, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling's account of the Jungle prettily suggests. Has he not indeed at first more in common with the dog and cat, the pet rabbit or dormouse, than with that grown-up human community which is apt to be so preoccupied with things beyond his understanding, and in many cases at least to wear so unfriendly a mien? We must remember, too, that children as a rule know nothing of the prejudices, of the disgusts, which make grown people put animals so far from them. The boy C was nonplussed by his mother's horror of the caterpillar. A child has been known quite spontaneously to call a worm "beautiful."
As soon as the first fear of the strangeness is mastered a child will take to the animal. A little boy of fifteen months quickly overcame his fright at the barking of his grandfather's dog, and began to share his biscuits with him, to give him flowers to smell, and to throw stones for his amusement. This mastery of fear by attachment takes a higher form when later on the child will stick to his dumb companion after suffering from his occasional fits of temper. Ruskin gives in his reminiscences a striking example of this triumph of attachment over fear. When five years old, he tells us, he was taken by the serving man to see a favorite Newfoundland dog in the stable. The man rather foolishly humored the child's wish to kiss Leo (the dog), and lowered him so that his face came near the animal's. Hereupon the dog, who was dining, resenting the interruption of his meal, bit out a piece of the boy's lip. His only fear after this was lest Lion (the dog) should be sent away.[1]
Children will too at a quite early age betray the germ of a truly humane feeling toward animals. The same little boy that bravely got over his fear of the dog's barking would, when nineteen months old, begin to cry on seeing a horse fall in the street. More passionate outbursts of pity are seen at a later age. A boy
- ↑ Præterita, pp. 105, 106.
