p. 502 | A QUIET HOUSE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 11, 1880

A QUIET HOUSE.

“DEAR me,” sighed Mr. Turmoyle, as a burst of shrill, childish laughter sounded from the nursery down the hall stairs and into the sitting-room where he was making out some accounts. “I wish those children would be quiet! Ain't it most bed-time, Tillie?”

“They are probably undressing,” Mrs. Turmoyle replied, quietly. “I'll go and see if they are ready for bed.”

“Do keep them quiet until they are.”

There was an interval of profound silence, and in about half an hour the mother returned.

“They're asleep now,” she said. “Tom had dressed the kitten in Bessie's doll's clothes.”

The accounts finished, Mr. Turmoyle leaned back in his chair.

“I wish you had some management with those children, Tillie,” he said. “I went over to Stone's on business last evening, and you would not have known there was a child in the house. And Stone has five, while we have only three.”

“Perhaps they were all abed.”

“They were all in the next room,” was the triumphant reply. “Stone is proud of them, and well he may be. There is Willie, just the age of our Tom, studying Latin instead of dressing kittens in doll's clothes, and Amy, who will not be four years old for three months, reads well and knows the multiplication table through. Look at our savages!”

“They are getting along well at school, dear. I think Mark is too young yet to study. The others did not go to school until they were five.”

“And Tom just manages to write a decent letter at twelve, while Willie is at Latin grammar. And as for manners, why Tom will make more noise alone than Stone's five children put together.”

Mrs. Turmoyle, being a woman of sense, did not continue the argument, but mentally resolved to see Mrs. Stone the next day, and talk with her about the wonderful secret of having five children and a quiet home.

“I am sure I can't do it!” the gentle, loving mother thought, with a sigh.

Seated, the next morning, in close conversation, the ladies presented a contrast as marked as the atmosphere of their own houses. The tiny, blue-eyed woman, who had no heart to suppress Tom's merry whistle or Bessie's silvery laugh, had left a home where constant care only secured cleanliness, and where childish disorder was manifest everywhere but in the best parlor. She looked at the tall, dark-haired woman before her, noted the exquisite morning dress, faced with light silk, spotless and unrumpled, and thought regretfully, of the marks of ten chubby fingers upon her own, printed there when her own boy baby, her darling Mark, had succeeded in forcing a piece of his sweetest candy into mamma's mouth. She noted the dainty odor of the sitting room, where every chair stood primly in its appointed place, and not even a thread rested upon the carpet, and remembered Mark's stable for his “spress cart” and horses under the lounge, and Bessie keeping house on the lower shelf of the book-case.

Visions haunted her also of snippings of paper, bits of string, and odds and ends of doll's finery upon the table.

Drifting from one scrap of matronly talk to another, the ladies came naturally to the care and management of children, and Mrs. Turmoyle complimented her neighbor upon the appearance of her house and the proficiency of her little ones.

“I cannot understand how you accomplish it,” she said, frankly.

“By system,” was the reply. “The education of my children begins, I may say, in their cradles. As soon as they can walk, they have their own proper place in the room, and are trained to perfect silence when older persons are present.”

Mrs. Turmoyle thought of the noisy chorus of shouts, the eager recital of the day's pleasures or accidents, that greeted papa, aunties or uncles in her own nursery, and wondered if Tom, Bessie, and Mark could be trained to sit in one place for hours at a time.

“At two years of age I teach my children their letters, and after that they are sent to school. All of them were entered at three years of age at a private school, and at five at a public one. In the interval of school hours my boys have geographical puzzles, spelling games and problems, and my girls are taught sewing.”

“But when do they play?”

“Their games and puzzles are sufficient for the boys, and I allow the girls to cut and fit clothing for a large wax doll.”

“But do they not have any hours for running, balls, kites, and other out-door play?”

“I disapprove entirely of out-door play. It ruins clothes and makes children rude. They have out-door exercise in their long walk to and from school.”

As she spoke, the hall-door opened quietly, and a full of footsteps crossed the hall to the sitting-room. Five children, three girls and two boys, came in with languid footsteps and pale faces, from which all childishness seemed stricken. Spotlessly clean, with shiny hair and polished boots, they followed in orderly fashion the lead of the eldest, who stood before his mother, waiting for permission to speak.

“Well, my son?” she said quietly.

“There is no school this afternoon. The senior class is to be examined,” he said, wearily.

“No school! Very well. I will set you some sums after dinner, and find you some words to study in the dictionary.”

Silently the five sat down until the visitor departed, uncomfortably conscious of ten weary eyes and five pallid, pinched faces.

Crossing her own doorway, Mrs. Turmoyle was greeted by a merry duet:—

“No school! No school!”

Then the tenor solo,

“Won't you make some bobs for my kite, mamma? There's a splendid wind!”

Followed by a sweet soprano,

“And, O mamma, you promised the first holiday you would trim my doll's bonnet.”

“I 'ant a kite, too!” struck in Mark.

“Oh, let me get my breath!” cried the little woman. “Where's your hat, Tom?”

“Oh, I forgot,” Tom said, sweeping it off with a profound bow. “Here, take this chair. And let me take your bonnet and sacque upstairs. You are tired. Never mind bobs, if you are very tired.”

“I'll help make them,” said Bessie; “and I'll go and watch Tom, mamma, if you don't feel like making the bonnet.”

“We'll see after dinner,” said Mrs. Turmoyle, looking from one round, rosy face to the other, marking the sturdy limbs and dancing eyes. To be sure, the hair of all three must be reduced from a state of rebellion before they were presentable at table, and soap and water were pleasant suggestions in the maternal eyes. There was perfect health and happiness, if the voices were shrill and the boots noisy.

“I've been to see Mrs. Stone,” she said, when, washed and combed, her children gathered around her to wait for papa and dinner, “and I wondered if I could ever make my children as quiet and orderly as hers are.”

“Willie Stone,” said Tom, contemptuously, is “always crying because his head aches. He can't play anything, and doesn't move for fear of spoiling his clothes. Wouldn't play foot-ball for fear he would get dust on his boots. There's a nice boy for you! He might as well be a girl at once.”

“And, mother, the teacher had to write a note to Mrs. Stone the day that John Gray spilled the ink on Maud's apron. She was so afraid to go home, it was awful. She said her mother would whip her, and keep her upon bread and water for a whole day. Mrs. Lee told her to say it wasn't her fault, but she said her mother would not believe her.”

“Dinner, and here comes papa!” cried Tom.

Mr. Turmoyle came in with a grave face. He made no comment on the holiday, but stooped to kiss the rosy faces with unwonted tenderness. After dinner he sent the children to the nursery, and said to his wife, who had anxiously watched his clouded face:—

“Tillie, I met Dr. Holmes on my way home, and he tells me there have been three cases of scarlet fever from the school. It is raging fearfully, he says.”

Mrs. Turmoyle turned very pale.

“In the school?” she murmured.

“Well, among the scholars.”

There was little more to say, but the heart of each parent sent up a petition to a kind heavenly Father to keep the plague from their door.

Yet it came. A week later Mark sickened, and in three days all were down. Tenderest nursing, loving care and unexpected docility of patients brought the little Turmoyles safely out upon the road to health again.

The day the children assembled in the sitting-room for the first time was a gala day, but papa was observed to have a sad face.

“While we are thankful, dear children,” he said, “for our blessings, let us not forget to sympathize with the sorrows of others. Willie and Maud Stone were buried to-day, and Amy will be deaf for life. The others are still very ill.”

At bed-time when the children slept the sleep of convalescence, Mr. Turmoyle came to the nursery, where his little wife was laying out the morning clothing.

“Tillie” he said, drawing the little woman close in his strong arms, “I had a long talk with Dr. Holmes to-day, and I cannot rest till I thank you for our unbroken nursery to-night. Next to God, you saved the children.”

“I am sure you never spared yourself in nursing,” said Mrs. Turmoyle.

“The nursing was the smallest part of it. Dr. Holmes says it was not the scarlet fever that killed Stone's children, but their mother's 'system.' The fever found over-taxed brains, bodies weakened by want of exercise, tempers made sullen by a deprivation of all childish pleasure. They were nursed by 'system,' no allowance made for suffering or weakness; and two that are gone but precede the two now dangerously ill. If they recover from the fever, they will never reach maturity unless the mother sees the error. You may thank your wife's management for your own children,' the doctor said to me; 'there was something to build on in the sturdy frames of those young savages.'”

Mrs. Stone could see no fault in her system, though two little graves attested its weakness. Her children recovering from the fever, found no relaxation of home rule, and pale and dull-eyed, went back to the old routine.

Four years passed away, and Tom left home for boarding-school, a gentlemanly boy of sixteen, well up in his studies and in perfect health. Driving home from the station, after starting him upon his journey, Mr. and Mrs. Turmoyle passed Mr. Stone's handsome house, prim and spotless, the garden a miracle of order, and no signs of busy little feet on walk or border.

“Poor Stone!” said Mr. Turmoyle, “he frets sadly for Amy.”

“It was hard to lose her, the last of five,” said Mrs. Turmoyle; “and she was such a patient child, after she had lost her hearing.”

“Too patient! There will be no need of any system of training. Five children all under the sod! O Tillie! Thank God we have not such a home as the one we have just passed. Thank God for merry voices, clear laughter, noisy feet, and even the crying of our baby May. May He guard and bless our little ones, and give them good health, good principles and happiness, rather than give us the doubtful blessings of a quiet home.”