Isaac Sprague. Sweet White Violet. Lithograph, ca. 1876-1882, Digital Commonwealth. Public Domain.
THE PROFESSOR.
Tell me, little violet white,
If you will be so polite,
Tell me how it came that you
Lost your pretty purple hue?[1]
Were you blanched with sudden fears?
Were you bleached with fairies’ tears?
Or was Dame Nature out of blue,
Violet, when she came to you?
THE VIOLET.
Tell me, silly mortal, first,
Ere I satisfy your thirst
For the truth concerning me ¬—
Why you are not like a tree?
Tell me why you move around,
Trying different kinds of ground,
With your funny legs and boots
In the place of proper roots?
Tell me, mortal, why your head,
Where green branches ought to spread,
Is as shiny smooth as glass,
With just a fringe of frosty grass?
Tell me—Why, he’s gone away!
Wonder why he wouldn’t stay?
Can he be—well, I declare! —
Sensitive about his hair?
Original illustration by Oliver Herford from Artful Anticks, p. 58.
HERFORD, OLIVER. “THE PROFESSOR AND THE WHITE VIOLET,” IN ARTFUL ANTICKS, 58-9. NEW YORK: THE CENTURY CO., 1894.
[1] The viola blanda, also known as sweet white violet, is a perennial plant native to North America.
Contexts
In a Life Magazine issue from November 1894, editor Robert Bridges noted that, in Artful Anticks, “when [Oliver Herford] makes rhymes about a kitten, a dormouse, a spider, or a crocodile, you are absolutely certain that he has put himself on such friendly terms with each animal that he is not only able to reveal the quirks of its mind, but draw a picture of them. That is why grown folks will get as much fun out of this book as children.”
Herford was a well-known poet, humorist writer, and illustrator.
Illustration from the cover of How to Grow Roses, thirteenth edition, 1920, published by The Conard & Jones Co.
In a lovely garden filled with fair and blooming flowers stood a beautiful rose tree.[1] It was the centre of attraction and won the admiration of every eye; its beauteous flowers were sought to adorn the bridal wreath and deck the funeral bier. It was a thing of joy and beauty, and its earth mission was a blessing. Kind hands plucked its flowers to gladden the chamber of sickness and adorn the prisoner’s lonely cell. Young girls wore them ’mid their clustering curls, and grave brows relaxed when they gazed upon their wondrous beauty.—Now the rose was very kind and generous hearted, and seeing how much joy she dispensed wished that every flower could only be a rose and like herself have the privilege of giving joy to the children of men; and while she thus mused a bright and lovely spirit approached her and said, “I know thy wishes and will grant thy desires.—Thou shall have power to change every flower in the garden to thine own likeness. When the soft winds come wooing thy fairest buds and flowers, thou shalt breathe gently on thy sister plants, and beneath thy influence they shall change to beautiful roses.” The rose tree bowed her head in silent gratitude to the gentle being who had granted her this wondrous power. All night the stars bent over her from their holy homes above, but she scarcely heeded their vigils. The gentle dews nestled in her arms and kissed the cheeks of her daughters; but she hardly noticed them;—she was waiting for the soft airs to awaken and seek her charming abode. At length the gentle airs greeted her and she hailed them with a joyous welcome, and then commenced her work of change. The first object that met her vision was a tulip superbly arrayed in scarlet and gold. When she was aware of the intention
Ellen T. Fisher. Tulips. Color Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Boston Public Library. Public Domain.
of her neighbor her cheeks flamed with anger, her eyes flashed indignantly, and she haughtily refused to change her proud robes for the garb the rose tree had prepared for her, but she could not resist the spell that was upon her. And she passively permitted the garments of the rose to enfold her yielding limbs.—The verbenas saw the change that had fallen upon the tulip, and dreading that a similar fate awaited them crept closely to the ground, and while tears gathered in their eyes, they felt a change pass through their sensitive frames, and instead of gentle verbenas they were blushing roses. She breathed upon the sleepy poppies; a deeper slumber fell upon their senses, and when they awoke, they too had changed to bright and beautiful roses. The heliotrope read her fate in the lot of her sisters, and bowing her fair head in silent sorrow, gracefully submitted to her unwelcome destiny. The violets, whose mission was to herald the approach, were averse to losing their individuality. Surely, said they, we have a mission as well as the rose;
Ellen T. Fisher. Poppies No. 3. Color Chromolithograph, c. 1886, Boston Public Library. Public Domain
but with heavy hearts they saw themselves changed like their sister plants. The snow drop drew around her her robes of virgin white; she would not willingly exchange them for the most brilliant attire that ever decked a flower’s form; to her they were the emblems of purity and innocence; but the rose tree breathed upon her, and with a bitter sob she reluctantly consented to the change. The dahlias lifted their heads proudly and defiantly; they dreaded the change but scorned submission; they loved the fading year, and wished to spread around his dying couch their brightest, fairest flowers; but vainly they struggled, the doom was upon them, and they could not escape. A modest lily that grew near the rose tree shrank instinctively from her; but it was in vain, and with tearful eyes and trembling lips she yielded, while a quiver of agony convulsed her frame. The marygolds sighed submissively and made no remonstrance. The garden pinks grew careless and submitted without a murmur; while other flowers less fragrant or less
Auguste Schmidt. Floral Arrangement with Violets. Color chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Boston Public Library. Public Domain.
fair paled with sorrow or reddened with anger, but the spell of the rose tree was upon them and every flower was changed by her power, and that once beautiful garden was overrun with roses; it had become a perfect wilderness of roses; the garden had changed, but that variety which had lent it so much beauty was gone, and men grew tired of the roses, for they were everywhere. The smallest violet peeping faintly from its bed would have been welcome, the humblest primrose would have been hailed with delight;—even a dandelion would have been a harbinger of joy, and when the rose saw that the children of men were dissatisfied with the change
Ellen T. Fisher. Marigolds. Color chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Boston Public Library. Public Domain.
she had made, her heart grew sad within her, and she wished the power had never been given her to change her sister plants to roses, and tears come into her eyes as she mused, when suddenly a rough wind shook her drooping form and she opened her eyes and found that she had only been dreaming. But an important lessons had been taught; she had learned to respect the individuality of her sister flowers and began to see that they, as well as herself, had their own missions,—some to gladden the eye with their loveliness and thrill the soul with delight; some to transmit fragrance to the air; others to breathe a refining influence upon the world; some had power to lull the aching brow and soothe the weary heart and brain into forgetfulness, and of those whose mission she did not understand she wisely concluded there must be some object in their creation, and resolved to be true to her own earth mission and lay her fairest buds and flowers upon the altars of love and truth.
WATKINS, FRANCES E. “THE MISSION OF THE FLOWERS.” REPOSITORY OF RELIGION AND LITERATURE, AND OF SCIENCE AND ART’S VOL. III, NO. 1 (JANUARY 1860): 26-8.
[1] A Tree Rose or Rose Standard is not a rose variety, but the result of grafting a regular rose plant onto a trunk to achieve the appearance of a tree.
Verbena (Verbena chamaedrifolia), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Heliotrope (Heliotropium Peruvianum), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Snowdrop (Galanthus Nivalis), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Lily of the Valley (Convallaria Majalis), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dahlia (Dahlia Coccinea), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Pinks (Dianthus Caryophyllus), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Primrose (Primula Vulgaris), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Contexts
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was an African American public speaker, poet, teacher, and social activist. As a public intellectual, she advocated for antislavery, education, and temperance. Her short story “The Two Offers,” which appeared in 1859 in consecutive issues of The Anglo-African Magazine, is the first short story published by an African American writer in the United States.
The Repository of Religion and Literature, and of Science and Arts was a short-lived (1858-63) quarterly for Black children published by a group of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) societies.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
emblem: A picture of an object (or the object itself) serving as a symbolical representation of an abstract quality, an action, state of things, class of persons, etc.
beauteous: Highly pleasing to the senses, esp. the sight; beautiful; (also, in recent use) sensuously alluring, voluptuous. Chiefly literary.
bier: The movable stand on which a corpse, whether in a coffin or not, is placed before burial; that on which it is carried to the grave.
vigil: An occasion or period of keeping awake for some special reason or purpose; a watch kept during the natural time for sleep.
Resources for Further Study
Tabitha Lowery’s scholarly essay “‘Thank God for Little Children’: The Reception History of Frances E. W. Harper’s Children’s Poetry,” included in volume 67, number 2, of ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (2021).
The house where Frances Ellen Watkins Harper lived in Philadelphia, PA, from 1870 until 1911 is a National Historic Landmark.
Maria Sibylla Merian. Spiders, Ants and Hummingbird on a Branch of a Guava. Colored copper engraving from Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate XLIII, 1705, Wikimedia. Public Domain.
A big black spider, homed in my tulip bed,
So that her children might be comfortably fed.[1]
She wove her dainty web, with such cunning art,
Around every stamen in the tulip’s heart,
That never a bee, called by the colours gay,
Lived to hunt honey on another fair day.
STRATTON-PORTER, GENE. “THE SPIDER’S TRAP,” IN MORNING FACE, 29. NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, 1916.
[1] Although all spiders wrap their eggs with silk to keep them protected, only a few species like cellar spiders, crab spiders and wolf spiders, among others, actively guard these egg sacs from predators. Upon hatching, most spiderlings are left to survive on their own.
Contexts
In her introduction to the 1996 anthology Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter, Sydney Landon Plum reveals that, after the commercial success of Gene Stratton-Porter’s 1909 novel A Girl of the Limberlost, the author and conservationist talked Doubleday, Page & Company into publishing once nature work for each of her subsequent novels. Morning Face, a collection of prose and poems published by Doubleday in 1916, probably saw the light as a result of this agreement. Most of the book’s illustrations are photographs by the author herself, an accomplished self-taught photographer. In fact, according to Plum, Stratton Porter “ardently supported the use of photography for nature study as a substitute for the common practice of killing scores of the natural subjects in order to study them.” As evident in the quatrain that serves as the dedication of Morning Face, Stratton-Porter had a juvenile audience in mind for this book, although one can also make the case that, by identifying herself with the “little girl with a face of morning,” she is also extending her appeal to the inner children within readers of all ages:
One little girl with a face of morning, a wondering smile her lips adorning, wishes her pictures and stories to share, so she sends them to children, everywhere.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
stamen: Botany. The male or fertilizing organ of a flowering plant, consisting of two parts, the anther, which is a double-celled sac containing the pollen, and the filament, a slender footstalk supporting the anther.
Resources for Further Study
A list of 26 common spiders found in the United States.
Kathryn Aalto’s “The Legend of Limberlost,” available through the Smithsonian Magazine‘s website, offers a portrait of Stratton-Porter that emphasizes her love of nature and her conservationist efforts.
Gene Stratton-Porter’s Cabin at Wildflower Woods is a museum open to the public in Rome City, Indiana. Stratton-Porter designed the cabin, which was completed in 1914 and sits on 148 acres of fields, woods, and gardens.
Contemporary Connections
Did you know that March 14 is National Save a Spider Day in the United States? Of about 50,000 different kinds of spiders in the world,
L. Prang & Co. (publisher). To my Valentine. Color chromolithograph, 1882, Library of Congress. Public Domain.
O dandelion, yellow as gold,
What do you do all day?
I just wait here in the tall green grass
Till the children come to play.
O dandelion, yellow as gold,
What do you do all night?
I wait and wait till the cool dews fall
And my hear grows long and white.
And what do you do when your hair is white,
And the children come to play?
They take me up in their dimpled hands,
And blow my hair away.[1]
ANONYMOUS. “THE DANDELION,” IN STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, COMPILED BY SUSAN S. HARRIMAN, 10 [VOLUME ONE OF THE KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN’S HOUR, ED. BY LUCY WHEELOCK]. BOSTON, NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1920.
[1] A time lapse video shows a single dandelion’s cycle from yellow flower to puffy head of seeds. Also, did you know that each dandelion’s petal is, in fact, a flower?
Contexts
Lucy Wheelock (1857-1946), the main editor of the multivolume anthology The Kindergarten Children’s Hour, was at one point the president of the International Kindergarten Union. Through her pedagogical practice, she supported the kindergarten reform in the United States and helped bridge early disagreements about how to teach 5-year-olds. She believed that kindergarten education could help tackle the cycle of poverty, a concern that remains relevant today.
The Kindergarten Children’s Hour was comprised of five illustrated volumes. Susan S. Harriman was in charge of the first one, a collection of stories and rhymes for little children. In the second, Maude C. Nash suggests home activities, while in the third Winthrop Packard turns her interactions with her own children in a series of “Talks to Children.” Following a logical progression, the fourth volume consisted of “Talks to Mothers.” In the fifth and final book, Alice Wyman anthologized songs and music for children.
Resources for Further Study
Native to Asia and Europe, dandelions arrived in America in the seventeenth century. An article from the National Library of Medicine documents many of the uses of this perennial plant.
Dandelions fell out of favor among home gardeners in the twentieth century as lawns in the United States became popular as status symbols. Ketzel Levine, writing for NPR, asks us to reconsider the collective dislike of the wish-granting plant.
J. & J. G. Low Art Tile Works. Tile [Tile face decorated with stylized dandelions]. Molded glazed earthenware, 1877-83, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Dandelions in the sun,
Golden dollars every one,
Let us pick them and go buy
All the sea and all the sky.
Dandelions in the sun,
Golden dollars every one–
Who can be as rich as we
Buying sky and hill and sea!
Wynne, AnNette. “Dandelions in the Sun,” in for Days and Days, 106. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1919.
Contexts
Annette Wynne was an American poet who mainly wrote for children. In addition to For Days and Days: A Year Round of Treasury of Child Verse (1919), she also published Treasure Things (1922).
Resources for Further Study
Native to Asia and Europe, dandelions arrived in America in the seventeenth century. An article from the National Library of Medicine documents many of the uses of this perennial plant.
Dandelions fell out of favor among home gardeners in the twentieth century as lawns in the United States became popular as status symbols. Ketzel Levine, writing for NPR, asks us to reconsider the collective dislike of the wish-granting plant.
Original 1940 woodcut for “Indian Pipe,” by Lois Mailou Jones. Public Domain.
The Indian pipe folk stand around[1]
With white pajamas on,
And look so lazy in the gloom,
I almost hear them yawn.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Indian Pipe.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 105.
Cover of Emily Dickinson’s Poems, 1890. Public Domain.
[1] Often known as the “ghost plant,” the Indian pipe is nearly transparent. It emerges, sometimes suddenly, from forest floors in early summer to early autumn. Emily Dickinson admired the plant; see Dubrow’s blog below.
Contexts
Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, focuses on nature’s power to spark children’s imagination. It may respond to one of two Emily Dickinson poems, “White as an Indian Pipe” or “’Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe.”
Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).
Daffodils in Winter. Pastel, c1902, by Sarah Wyman Whitman. Public Domain.
When Death has shut the blue skies out from me, sweet Daffodil,[1]
And Years roll on without my memory,
Thou’lt reach thy tender fingers down to mine of clay,
A true friend still,
Although I’ll never know thee till the judgment day.
Posey, Alexander. “To a Daffodil.” Indian School Journal 6, no. 10 (April 1910): 30.
[1] Popular in the United States and around the world, daffodils are a type of narcissus that flower in early spring. Mentioned in gardening books and journals as early as the 1600s, they encompass 32,000 cultivars today, though many fewer are commercially available.books and journals as early as the 1600s, they encompass 32,000 cultivars today.
Contexts
The Indian School Journal was the official publication for the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School (also known as the Haworth Institute, the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, and the Chilocco Indian School). Located in north-central Oklahoma near the Kansas border, it began taking students in 1884, enrolling 150 from seventeen tribes that first year. Enrollment had more than doubled by 1895, with students coming from various tribes, including the Cherokee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Pawnee tribes. The Oklahoma Historical Society notes that “significant enrollment from the so-called ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ did not occur until after 1910 but by 1925, Cherokee constituted the largest single tribal affiliation at the school (26 percent of approximately nine hundred students).” Following World War II and the expansion of public education, the school enrolled mostly students who lacked access to such education.
Like most federally funded Indian schools, Chilocco sought to assimilate Native children into white society. Also like other schools, it stressed “industrial” education—manual and domestic labor—over academic pursuits, aiming to train them as workers for white families. Education at Chilocco was notably militaristic; students attended weekly Christian religious services, also intended to weaken their ties to family and tribe. In the 1950s, student numbers peaked at around 1300, and the school closed in 1980.
Archuleta, Margaret L., Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled), eds. Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000.
Connelley, William Elsey. “Memoir or Alexander Lawrence Posey.” In The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey. Ed. Mrs. Minnie H. Posey. Topeka, KS: Crane and Company, 1910. Pp. 5-65.
Littlefield, Daniel F. Jr. Alexander Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
Lomawaima, K. Tsianina (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled). “Chilocco Indian Agricultural School.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society.
Lomawaima, K. Tsianina. (Mvskoke/Creek Nation of Eastern Oklahoma, not enrolled). They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (1995).
The World is But a Dream. Courtesy of Peakpx. Public domain.
Down by the spring one morning Where the shadows still lay deep, I found in the heart of a flower A tiny fairy asleep.
Her flower couch was perfumed, Leaf curtains drawn with care, And there she sweetly slumbered, With a jewel in her hair
But a sunbeam entered softly And touched her, as she lay, Whispering that ’twas morning And fairies must away.
All colors of the rainbow Were in her robe so bright As she danced away with the sunbeam And vanished from my sight.
‘Twas while I watched them dancing, The sunshine told me true That my sparkling little fairy Was lovely Drop O’ Dew. [1]
WILDER, LAURA. “THE FAIRY DEW DROP,” IN LAURA INGALLS WILDER, FAIRY POEMS, ED. STEPHEN W. HINES, 11-15. NEW YORK: BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL, 1998.
[1] Drop O’ Dew is the fairy who helps take care of the flowers. All night she carries drink to the thirsty blossoms, bathes the heads of those who have the headache from the heat of the day before, straightens them up on the their stems, and makes their colors bright for the morning.
Contexts
According to editor Stephen W. Hines, “The Fairy Dew Drop” was originally published in February 1915. His book collects five poems Ingalls wrote while visiting her daughter Rose in San Francisco. Ingalls aspired to authorship but had not yet written her famous Little House on the Prairie novels. With her daughter’s encouragement, she submitted poems to the San Francisco Bulletin, which eagerly accepted them. Hines includes Rose’s short essay, “Fairies Still Appear to Those With Seeing Eyes,” which she explains her feelings about fairies and the importance of imagination for children:
“I have a feeling that childhood has been robbed of a great deal of its joys by taking away its belief in wonderful, mystic things, in fairies and all their kin. It is not surprising that when children are grown, they have so little idealism or imagination, nor that so many of them are like the infidel who asserted that he would not believe anything that he could not see.” The Quaker made a good retort, ‘Friend? Does thee believe thee has any brains?'”
Laura Ingalls Wilder is best known for her books about growing up in a pioneer family, beginning with Little House on the Prairie. Her autobiography, Pioneer Girl, tells the true story of a family moving to the frontier of the western United States in the nineteenth century. Some scholars note Wilder’s stereotypical portraits of Native Americans in her famous novels.
Contemporary Connections
Fairies continue to hold children in thrall, feeding imaginations and creativity. Tinker Bell is a well-known modern fairy first introduced in J. M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan. Tinker Bell has gone on to have a stellar career with Disney, along with a host of other fairy co-stars. A recent film example is Tinkerand the Legend of the Neverbeast. Tinker Bell and her fellow fairies have garnered great commercial success, so much so that since 2005 Disney has had a division devoted to them, the Fairy Franchise.
Barnes, Dr. Thomas G. Prairie Gentian and Grey Goldenrod Flowers. Public Doman.
The careful store of summer days The earth with bounty yields, And goldenrod [1], the fairies’ torch, Is glowing in the fields.
When early gentians [2] peeping out Reflect the heaven’s dome, Across the golden fields we hear The cry of, “Harvest home!”
And now the farmer toiling on His distant homestead sees, And once again we hear them shout Beneath the shading trees.
And now they turn along the road And gaily onward come To gather for the yearly feast The joyous harvest home.
Webb, Doris. “Harvest Home.” St. Nicholas Magazine Vol. 28, no. 11 (september 1901): 1051.
[1] Goldenrod is a native flower that grows throughout the United States. It blooms in the late fall and has very bright yellow flowers that truly glow like a torch.
[2] Gentian is a fall-flowering herb with trumpet-shaped flowers, usually of an intense blue, which are reminiscent of a deep blue sky.
Gentian is native in alpine habitats in temperate regions of Asia, Europe and the Americas. Some species also occur in northwestern Africa, eastern Australia, and New Zealand.
Contexts
Doris Webb was sixteen when this poem was published in the September 1901 issue of St. Nicholas in the St. Nicholas League section.
The St. Nicholas League, with the motto “Live to learn and learn to live,” was a monthly feature in the magazine. The editors encouraged children to join the League and participate in competitions in prose, verse, drawing, photography, and both puzzle-making and puzzle-solving. The League’s founder and editor from 1899-1908, Albert Bigelow Paine, served as a mentor and tutor to the League’s members. He and the magazine’s longtime editor, Mary Mapes Dodge, judged the submissions and awarded prizes in the form of gold and silver badges. In the early twentieth century many Americans farmed for a living. St. Nicholas published “Harvest Home” in September 1901 among other autumnal-themed work.
Resources for Further Study
Anna M. Recay’s essay “‘Live to learn and learn to live’: The St. Nicholas League and the Vocation of Childhood” is an in-depth analysis of the St. Nicholas League and its founding editor Albert Bigelow Paine. In the essay Recay explores the paradox inherent in Paine’s approach to training children in the arts: celebration of a child’s freedom and relationship with nature paired with an insistence in learning adult forms of literary expression.
E. B. White, the author of Charlotte’sWeb and Stuart Little, was active in the St. Nicholas League as a young writer, and later wrote “The St. Nicholas League” [password protected], an essay reflecting on its role in nurturing many young writers, among them Edna St. Vincent Millay, who had seven poems published.
An example of a contemporary version of St. Nicholas is Cricket Magazine, which began publishing in 1973. Founded by Marianne Carus,Cricket has a target audience of children from six to fourteen. It includes works from notable artists, including original stories, poems, folk tales, non-fiction articles, and illustrations. As did St. Nicholas, Cricket also runs contests and publishes work by its readers.
In 2011 a Canadian digital education platform, ePals Corporation, purchased Cricket and brought it into the digital age. The target audience has expanded to include children from birth to the age of fourteen. It is still alive and well and is now part of the Cricket Media enterprise.
Bridges, Fidelia. Pink Roses. Watercolor on wove paper, 1875. Public Domain.
Hid in a close and lowly nook,
In a city yard where no grass grows—
Wherein nor sun, nor stars may look
Full faced—are planted three short rows
Of pansies, geraniums, and a rose.
A little girl with quiet, wide eyes,
Slender figured, in tattered gown,
Whose pallored face no country skies
Have quickened to a healthy brown,
Made this garden in the barren town.
Poor little flowers, your life is hard;
No sun, nor wind, nor evening dew.
Poor little maid, whose city yard
Is a world of happy dreams to you—
God grant some day your dreams come true.
BRAITHWHITE, WILLIAM STANLEY. “A CITY GARDEN,” IN THE DUNBAR SPEAKER AND ENTERTAINER, ED. ALICE MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON, 28. NAPERVILLE, ILL: J. L. NICHOLS & CO., 1920.
Contexts
The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer‘s dedication reads: “To the children of the race which is herein celebrated, this book is dedicated, that they may read and learn about their own people.” In the foreword, Leslie Pinckney Hill, an African American educator, writer, and community leader who graduated from Harvard University in 1903, criticizes the one-sidedness of prevailing reading courses: “In vain may you search their pages—those pages upon which all our reading has been founded—for anything other than a patronizing view of that vast, brooding world of colored folk—yellow, black and brown—which comprises by far the largest portion of the human family.” Hill further writes that Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s book seeks to prove “that the white man has no fine quality, either by heart or mind, which is not shared by his black brother.”
Think of reading this poem out loud. Elocution (or public speaking) was a highly valued and widely taught skill in nineteenth-century America. In her introduction to the Dunbar Speaker, Alice Dunbar-Nelson offers some advice: “Before you begin to learn anything to recite, first read it over and find out if it fires you with enthusiasm. If it does, make it a part of yourself, put yourself in the place of the speaker whose words you are memorizing, get on fire with the thought, the sentiment, the emotion-then throw yourself into it in your endeavor to make others feel as you feel, see as you see, understand what you understand. Lose yourself, free yourself from physical consciousness, forget that those in front of you are a part of an audience, think of them as some persons whom you must make understand what is thrilling you–and you will be a great speaker.”
Before appearing in The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, “A City Garden” was included in Braithwhite’s Lyrics of Life and Love (1904), fully available on Google Books.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
pallor: Paleness or pallidness, especially of the face.
tattered: Clad in jagged or slashed garments.
Resources for Further Study
In the early 1900s, Americans started to concentrate in cities, lured by the promise of better jobs and higher wages. However, the lives those who worked in the city factories (mainly former rural families and immigrants) was harsh. The Library of Congress offers information on American cities during the Progressive Era (1896-1920).
Smithsonian Gardens offers a comprehensive timeline of American Garden History.
