Girls, Boys, and Story-Telling

OUR own time, like every other, is quick to dogmatize upon the mind of man and of woman. We have assertion and denial — not always free from passion — of an important contrast in their thought and in the tone and temper of their feeling.

Although it should be admitted that we know far too little of so obscure a field, yet we have the beginnings of knowledge acquired by the scrutiny and report of many, here using cold instruments of precision, there gathering in other ways. And it is with the thought of dropping, like an ant, some awkward bit upon this common store, that one is tempted to offer what has come from a fresh burrowing into the hearts of boys and girls. Such a study may have the virtue of questioning human nature neither too early nor yet too late. For in the babe the difference of mind between boy and girl is much obscured; then is the dawn when — as at dusk — all things are gray; while at maturity, expectation and the moulding power of custom have produced or exaggerated a contrast, and we may hardly say how much really is of nature. Let us then hope for some narrow though right view of man’s and woman’s character in the making, before habit and social life have won the victory over all that is inborn.

I

If I may then at once relate some simple experiments, the children were first asked to write a story of their own composing and of anything they pleased, that there might be the freest conspiring of genius and imagination, and boy and girl in fancy might wander as they willed.

The subjects chosen by the children sweep from centre to circumference of the world, — through football, bearfights, haunted houses, automobile accidents, runaway cats, orphans in the snow; these and countless more swim before one’s astonished gaze. But as our wits slowly gather, we find that some of the tales seem to describe without change an actual experience — a vacation journey, a home festival, or other like event. And in this uninventive art, the boys in larger number find a refuge.

Where signs appear of some creative power, there is of course much common ground chosen by the boys and girls; but there is also some partition of the territory. The boys’ stories appear to move more easily toward situations that promise free roving and the neighborhood of wild beasts, as in the hunt, — although to soldiering and war the girls’ taste seems not to be averse; and thoughts of travel strongly draw the boy. Or again, conflict may be softened into teasing or into argument. Hearken to these lads, marshaling in the woodshed the rival ideals of ease and of labor and the undaunted will.

‘“Don’t you hate to chop wood?” said Sam one day when he was in Tom’s woodshed. “No, I rather like it,” said Tom. “ When I get a tough piece I say, you think I can’t split you, but I will. Then I get a firm hold on the axe and c-c-r-ac-ck goes the piece of wood.” “Ha-Ha,” laughed Sam. “Why I would rather be in a bank and have nothing to do but separate some money and things like that.” ’

The girls look rather to activity that is less exposed and more domestic, as in play or quiet work. Almost as from some old canvas out of Flanders is this household scene, pictured by one of the littlest maids: —

‘The baby stood looking at the clock not knowing when she would learn to tell time. I was sitting in a chair sewing. Mother was packing her things in her trunk. You know we are going to Asia in a week. Mother called me and said to put the baby to bed and to come and help her pack the trunk. And so I put the baby to bed and gave her her doll so when I went out she would n’t cry. After we were through we went to bed.’

Or the situations, if not so peaceful, are those where life is affected passively,— persons are carried away by force, or led to fairyland, or are orphaned, aged, or infirm. What honeyed melancholy must have gathered at the heart of the little artist in the youngest class, from whom comes this dirge of ‘ the old old man ’ who had a ‘ sawor leg ’: —

‘Once upon a time there was an old old house in the woods and a old old man lived in it and the old old lady and he had a sawor leg and he could not go out and so he sat at the window and thought how nice it would be if he could go out and play but think of the poor old old lady that had nothing to do and think of the old old lady and the old old man and how they had nothing to do. But sit at the window.’

Besides these different centres around which the imagination plays, there is a clear contrast in its scope and range. The girls have more characters on the stage, and these characters come with more variety, being less confined to children; grown men and women are oftener than with the boys the central figures. The girls show an interest less bound by their present estate, show a hunger and a foretaste of what has not yet been experienced. And they, too, as we might expect, have a warmer place for sympathy, — for sympathy at least with human beings; the difference between boys and girls is far less clear when we look to pets. The boy makes larger use of hate and retaliation; and, as we have seen, there is felt by him the fascination, with its mingled dread and drawing, of fierce beasts. By this door fears enter his tale, as well as by the way of darkness and of wandering until lost. Yet in the girls’ stories fear comes even oftener and in more varied forms: from storms, witchcraft, monsters, ghosts, besides all the things that cause the boys to shudder. And in the emotional issue of the tale, there is a difference in those stories whose subjects were freely chosen. The end in the boys’ tales more often than with the girls is unhappy for some or all of the characters. This is perhaps but an aspect of the freer play of sympathy in the girl; the boy is readier to take pleasure in some disappointment even to his hero.

II

In the first experiment the child was given perfect freedom; in the second, shades of the prison-house began to close: he was asked to tell a story of a dog that broke his leg, and how this accident befell.

And now, since all our infant authors are dealing with a like subject, but with quite unlike results, let us view side by side two fair examples from among the best, by a boy and a girl of like age and grade of schooling, nor shall any pedant’s hand smooth out the wrinkled places. And first by the boy.

‘It has just been two weeks since I came to Camp Cone and to tell the truthe Bliss, a little bull terrier, has been my best friend and companion.

‘Just the day after I arrived Bliss and I went out hunting for squirls. We only got one, and that with a sad story. We were just above the falls when I shot one on a branch above the creek.

‘The squirl fell into the creek and was floating toward the falls when Bliss leaped in to bring it ashore. But he was too late the squirl had gon over the falls.

‘ Bliss was too near to turn back the current threw him out in mid air and he lit in the pool where the water was shallow and broke his right fore leg on a rock.

‘Of course we got the squirl but I must say that Bliss dusent want to go with in a mile of the falls.

‘When we got home gratest care was given to Bliss especaly from Jimy Blisse’s master. Bliss is just recovering but can’t do much yet.’

Though the lover of our established spelling well may wince, this is a good story for a boy, with a sound setting for his vacation; it presents in all seriousness the facts.

But now for the girl’s free handling of fact and more, imaginatively heightening the experience of a college town’s most choice society, gained in a home where (as I happen to know) there is entertainment of lions if not of mice.

‘One day Spuds my little dog got his foot caught in a mousetrap. He was roaming about in the cellar when his eyes came upon a piece of chese lying upon, which looked to him like a harmless piece of wood with a lot of unnecessary screws and hinges. He walked tryumthuntly over to it and put out his foot to hold it while he took out the chese, when snap his foot was caught and Spuds was a prisoner. He ran around for some time and then flew up the stairs. It happened that evening that my mother was having a dinner party. One of the guests was a highly magnified Duke. When the yelping was heard the Duke’s eyes were as big as sawcers, and he was shaking all over. Just as he was thinking what to do next the door flew open and in rushed Spuds. The Duke percieving the dog one of thing he disliked the most. His hair stood on end and he almost flew to the piano and climbed to the most loafty part and there he sat looking down upon poor Spuds thro his moocle.

‘ My sister who idolized the dog soon came in to see what the trouble was. Her eyes fell upon poor Spuds with the trap on his foot and she set up a howl as lowd as the dog’s. She grabed the yelping pup and ran out of the door to the room where the guests wraps were and laid him down on the Duke’s new coat. The next Process was to take off the trap which was not so easy. But when it was done she tore off a piece of a lace handkerchief that she found on the bed. Then she wrapped the aching paw up and laid down beside him and fell asleep. In the mean time the Duke had not stirred from the spot but he now saw that his victim was gone and he got down very cauciouly his patent leather shoes squeaking all the time. When the guests went up to put their things on you can imagine their surprise when they saw the sleeping buties. But the dog and the child were soon removed to their own beds. The guests went home laughing all but the Duke and he thought he had had enough for one night. Spud’s foot was broken, but it soon got well and he was as gay as ever.’

Now if one can bring himself to look with knitted brow upon a number of joyous things like these, he will notice that the boys are in earnest about the dog. With the girls, we catch glimpses of the dog through a cloud of witnesses and all the miserable impedimenta of human life. We are distracted from him by the highly magnified duke with a ‘moocle’ and patent-leather shoes. And how hard it is to remember what is our errand, when lace handkerchiefs can be picked up at the instant there is need of bandage or absorbent cotton! But with the boys, not so: there stands the dog four-square, with all eyes fixed upon him. We know his breed at once, — bull terrier, or just ‘bull’; fox terrier, Scotch collie, or Newfoundland. At least as often as the girls do the boys thus look upon the dog with knowing eye. Yet the girls are readier to give to him a ‘personal’ name; to make him, as ‘Bob’ or ‘Spuds,’ or ‘Judge,’ or ‘Wiggles,’ an individual almost ready for the franchise, rather than a mere animal and generic breed. The boys see the very pain of the dog direct, noting his whine, his limp, his evident suffering. The girls, too, may see this, but they are more inclined than are the boys to make us aware of the dog’s suffering indirectly also, by its reflection in others’ conduct,— in the suffering of persons in sympathy with the dog; thus it becomes an occasion for depicting human feeling. But the absorption in the dog himself leads more than one boy-narrator into something like a full biography of the dog, in a train of events perhaps so loosely bound together and to the accident, that the story may trickle off into reminiscence of some other dog the boy has possessed, or that has possessed the boy. Yet it is absorption and knowledge not always softened to sympathy, for here again we find an unhappy ending. Only in the boys’ tales, among those I have read, is the accident fatal to the dog: after the injury, in one, the dog is chloroformed; in another, he is ‘barried in the backyard.’ The writer feels it not as tragedy, but as fact, to be told with a gray and tearless pen.

The girls, as I have said, are your true humanists; for them the dog is often a mere ‘property,’ and the real actors are the men and women, the boys and girls. They understand less the animal’s acts and more the acts of men. Wherefore it is characteristic of the boy’s art that ‘greatest care was given to Bliss especaly from Jimy Blisse’s master,’ and that we never know in what that care consisted. With the boy-author the dog is carried home and possibly a ‘veteran’ is called in, and there’s an end on’t. But in the girls’ stories the stricken animal is laid on the Duke’s new coat; we know what costly gossamer binds his paw; and we see him as one of two ‘sleeping buties’ in the guest-room. Or, with less command of the comedy of high life, the dog is carried home in his mistress’s arms, he is put to bed in the doll’s cradle, and the sick-room is there before us. And when health and strength are returning, he is wheeled in the doll’s carriage, and is given a brand-new collar. All of which lies beyond the boy’s horizon.

It is but part of this elevation of what is human, that the girls more often than the boys have the dog suffer in a cause essentially human and heroic: the dog is hurt while fighting for his master; he saves the life of his mistress struggling in the water; he rushes into the street to rescue a babe endangered by a speeding ‘ Winton Six.’ The girl’s eye may be less single for the dog’s true breed and nurture, but surely the muses and graces attend her storytelling.

III

In the third experiment limits again were set, but of another quality: the beginning — and of a different kind of story — was told, and the child was to bring it to any close that seemed inviting. If the suggested story of the dog may perhaps have favored the boys, the subject now offered might be thought to give the girls some like advantage. Thus it began: —

‘Once upon a time there was a little princess who was very beautiful. And her father, the king, wished that she might never know of her beauty and become vain. So he commanded that no one should tell her how fair she was, and he even would have no mirror in all that part of the palace where she lived.

‘ But there came a day when the king must go upon a long journey. And while he was gone a young prince came riding by the castle and —’

Here a few minds—wholly boys’ — stuck, and could or would do nothing. Rising up through the lower circles one comes at last to this, perhaps the best of the boys’ stories.

‘And while he was away a young prince came riding by the castle and, saw her. He at once fell in love with her, and, he came to visit her several times while her father was away.

‘One day the king came home, while the prince was there, then the prince asked her father for her hand. At first he did not know what to say, but after awhile he told the prince to come the next day and he would tell him. The prince went away and, thought whether he would get his love or not. The next day when he came everything was bright and gay at the castle. When he went in the father was there and gave him his consent.

‘They celebrated the wedding the next day in a great banqueting hall. The wedding lasted for a week. All the kingdoms for miles around were invited to the feast.

‘After the wedding was over they went to the princes kingdom and lived happily for a long time.’

Looking next at the girls’ tales, one finds among the youngest and least schooled this dialogue which sets forth a wise yet ardent maiden’s creed. What spirit in the princess, and how she cross-examines her headlong wooer!

‘And while the king was gone a young prince came riding by the castle and he saw the princes out in the garden and thought her the most beautiful princes in the world. So he went up to her and siad After you are a little biger will you be my wife.

‘The princes said I cannot tell you that you must ask my father.

‘ But I want to know why you want me to be your wife when this is the first time that you have seen me.

‘I think you are so beautiful

‘Yes, But how do you know I am a good house keeper

‘I don’t you are But you look like a good one.

‘But anyhow you won’t have to work in my castle

‘I won’t have a castle I want a little house and a boy & girl and my husband. You shall have what you want

‘But I want to know why you call me beautiful no one else has call me beautiful befor But you

‘They think you are if they don’t say so

‘The princes said I have never seen myself so I don’t know if I am pretty or not.

‘But won’t you be my wife

‘I can’t my father has to tell you that

‘He has gone away and won’t be back till June 23. I will be your wife if he will let me. So you come back 23 of June if you want to

‘The prince said he would.

‘After that he went home.

‘At the 23 her father came home

‘And she told him what he said.

‘Her father said she could if she love Him

‘At the 23 the prince came back and got the princes and they were marry and then taken to there house. [To no castle, mark you!]

‘They had two dear dear children that were very beautiful

‘They live very very happy all there lives and every boby love them.’

And who would not love a princess in a setting such as this — a whole chapter is needed for these gardens of the girls — and with this simple outcome of the tale, true to the child’s present life!

‘And while the king was gone a young prince came riding by the castle and saw the little princess smelling the fragrant violets and roses and all the pretty flowers, and picking some beautiful sweet-peas. The prince became in love with the princess, and thought he would like to meet her.

‘One day the prince was taking a ride and he met the pretty princess in the end of the woods crying, near a pond and the prince went up to her and said, “what are you crying for little princess.” and she said with a sob. “I have lost my ball in this pond and I can’t get it. The said, “if you dont mind I will get it for you.” and at the he dived in to the pond, in a few seconds he came up with the princess’es ball and he gave it to her. and she said, “oh thank you.” And she ran home to the castle and she lived happily ever after.’

With the older girls fancy clambers and blossoms and comes to such fruitage that there is no time even for its owner to gather it all.

‘And while he was gone the young prince came riding by the castle and saw the lovely princess in her window. Imediately he fell desperately in love with her and wished to speak to her. This was difficult because the king had all suitors put to death.

‘Being an active person, the prince managed to scramble over the stone wall of the castle garden. He hid in a rose bush [thorny choice!] and waited. He waited for the head gardener who was working near, to go away. Then he quickly took a piece of scented note paper, which he had taken from a satin bag, that hung around his horse’s kneck. He then took a jeweled pencil from his pocket and wrote a message to the little princess. He drew a small gold arrow from his quiver and tied the note to it, and shot it through the open window of the princess’s room. Just at that time the princess left her room and did not read the note.

‘ Soon a maid came to clean the room and she saw the arrow. She read the message and wickedly thought that she would answer it. She took some of the princess’s note paper and . . .’

For one of the girls, the meeting of the prince and princess does not occur until the prince — the princess at a distance sees him repulsed from the castle, and by letter suggests to him the ruse — disguises himself as a doctor and is called in when the princess feigns illness. Two girls, in these stories, hold in reserve the surprise that the prince is really the king’s own son, the longlost brother of the princess. Another girl has the marriage come before the king’s return; and when he hears the news it is to him such a shock that he dies of ‘heart failure.’ But this seems not to have delayed the bridal journey — first, to the prince’s home, then to China for two years, and finally ‘they both took a year and a half of painting.’ Yet in spite of this somewhat Bohemian existence, ‘they were very happy together and for the rest of their lives they lived happilly together.’

Yet the boys, too, are not without invention. For one of them also, the meeting of prince and princess is brought about by guile: the prince is disguised as a peddler. Another boyauthor has the king, in his anger at the princess’s pride, give her to a beggar; with whom a three years’ sojourn is so chastening that she now obediently weds the prince. But for cumulative surprise and hairbreadth ’scapes and final tragedy, I find nothing to exceed this web from a boy of nine, just able to scrawl big letters: —

‘A young prince past the castle and told the princess of her beauty. He showed her a mirror in witch she saw herself. When the king came home he put the prince in prison. The princess got the keys from the guard and set the prince free. The they ran and got on horseback and road away to the princes castle. The princess father too many men for the prince father. So then the prince and the princess take a ship and sail away but the ship hits the rocks and sinks and the fish eat the prince and princess up.

‘THE END’

Here is an infant Dumas, preparing to hold his own even in an art where women show such skill.

A lumbering awkwardness in many of the boys’ tales gives them their own attraction. One cannot but take delight in a story where there is breathless proposal and acceptance at sight, and where the sole occasion of delay is that the princess must first pack her ‘things,’ whereupon she will ‘be rite out.’ And there is humor perhaps not wholly unconscious — the writer is a lad with a rich Irish name — in this story where the ‘wash jap’ gives a glint of Californian color:

—' dismounting his horse he stepped into the castle.

‘ He at once saw the princess and said, “O maid you are so beautiful, that I am compelled by my father to carry you off.”

‘The princess would not believe this until she had looked at her image in his bright buckle.

‘But she then put her chin high in the air and with a “Get out,” ordered him out of the castle. And then she walked up the stairs but did not notice a great tub of water which the wash jap had placed there, because her chin was so high in the air and she fell head-first in the tub of water.’

Yet if we can straighten our faces and summon judgment, we shall find the girls’ tales — in spite of flashes from the boys — showing an imagination richer and more vivid, with a more delicate feeling of congruity. In the many stories read, but three of the girls’ seemed wholly bare; while of the boys’ full thrice this number bore these negative signs. More of the girls’ tales seemed highly imaginative; and their stories, here as in the earlier experiments, have more of dialogue, with its sense of the speaking presence of the person. And if we note the characters beyond those given, we find that here again the girls give us the fuller stage: beside princess, prince, and king, there come trooping in from rear and wings the mother of the princess, the prince’s mother and father, maids of honor, huntsmen, guards.

There is with them also an unthinking penetration into the secrets of emotion; a nicety, a sensitiveness, which is rarer in the boys. Your male child too often has his prince blare out his passion headlong from the road. But hearken to this cooing, this seemly hesitation, from a maid of nine.

‘A young prince came by the castle and stop. He rong the door bell and said let me come in. Why? said the princess. I am very tired. I wish to stay here this night. All right said the prince[ss] in a sweet voice, you my. Night came, in the middle of the night the King came home, the prince was waiting for hem to come. The princess said, in a sweet voice a prince is here. A prince, said the King? The next day the king died, and she said in a low voice. Will you stay with me every day. I am feeling Blue. Yes said the prince do you love me said the princess in a sweet voice. Yes I love you. Oh? do you love me. The next day they were marry they rode on White horses to the castle.’

Nor do the girls show ignorance of the fiercer and less sympathetic emotions, like anger and revenge. Yet the thought of war as the fruit of the prince’s boldness here came solely from the boys. And quite in keeping, they more often imagine the prince to obtain the princess by some violence to law and order — they alone have him elope with her or forcibly abduct her. With the boys, furthermore, and as we might expect, marriage plays a somewhat diminished part; the boys can more readily than the girls accept some other ending for their tale, — perhaps some comic retribution to the princess for her vanity, possibly the death of the prince and his betrothed before their wedding day. Yet with the girls, too, the tale may close not with marriage, but with the cure of the princess’s vanity; not in farce, however, but by a means in keeping with a tale of chivalry — by her imprisonment. And in one of the girls’ stories already given, we had an idyllic outcome: the princess plays in the wood, and the prince recovers her lost ball, there by the quiet pool. But beyond romantic love and marriage, the love of little children is deeper in the woman-child; for to many a little girl, but not to a boy, the tale is unfinished until the babes have come.

If there is still a moment before we weary, the contrast in the ways of the imagination can perhaps be further shown almost as by touchstones; and first by the incident of the mirror. Until the princess stands before a glass, after the prince’s coming, it will be remembered that she had never seen herself or any face or object thus reflected. Now with any approach to life and understanding, the situation here is conceived by but few of the children, and these are always girls. In several of their stories, but in none of the boys’, the princess fails at first to recognize the face seen in the glass, — fails to recognize it even as a reflection. She sees it as a picture, a strange and beautiful picture, and nothing more.

And beyond, though close upon this incident, comes a triple test. There is at the very opening of the story a suggestion of three events to come: the princess’s discovery of her beauty; some consequence of this discovery — perhaps vanity in her, or a simple and unchanged mind; and the return of the king. It is uncommon for the story to be carried to such completion that all three of the motives come to their fruition. But among those who do thus round out the tale, the girls are in greater number. They more often seem to feel the still-unsatisfied interests in the narrative, are aware of its interlacing parts; consequently they may be said to be more sensitive to an important element of form.

IV

And now as we turn homeward on our lingering way, which — if we have looked only to the children — has been as through some bee’s meadow where flowers still are dewy, would it not be well to part without contention? ‘Have we not brought with us some shadow of proof that woman’s mind, before it is touched by custom, is readier and richer than man’s?’ some member of our company may say. And another might answer, ‘ Proof, rather, that she is swayed by feeling, and cannot reason.’ But quieting these restless ones, let us defer to the later afternoon — or to another day — all questioning. For the wider judgment calls for a wider survey. And even of the imagination in the realm of story, it must not be thought that we have seen what comes of the flight of the one rare bird in a myriad; for we have been looking, not at genius, but at the general, and what is met on any morning stroll.

Yet we have seen that near life’s opening there is a clear contrast in one aspect of the mind. In imagination directed to form a story the plain and common girl excels the boy. But, it will be asked, is not even this due to externals? In part, perhaps, but hardly altogether. For while there are outer influences to make the boy and girl unlike in taste for color and dress and in their games and in fortitude, yet we commonly find little or no pressure from elders nor any canon framed and honored by the children themselves that aside from their own endowment and impulse would cause them early to differ in so secret a possession as the power to weave a tale. Minor influences from without there doubtless are; but in the main I believe we have here an important and a natural contrast in the minds that later are to belong to women and to men.