Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 680

A question or two convincing us that the rocks referred to would be well worth a visit, we gladly accepted the landlord's offer; and waiting only to make arrangements as to the time of starting, bade each other good-night and separated for our respective chambers.

CHILDREN'S TROUBLES

If children occasionally turn out to be 'Torturations,' their parents are not uniformly guiltless of bringing such a result on themselves. What with over-indulgence or neglect, or it may be harshness of discipline, there is little wonder that children fall short of expectations. We have known a father who paid no end of attentions to his girls, and let his boys grow up any way. We have also known the greatest mischief arise from unnecessary severity and snubbing. Some parents seem to imagine that they sufficiently perform their duty when they give their children a good education. They forget that there is the education of the fireside as well as of the school. At schools and academies there is no cultivation of the affections, but often very much of the reverse. Hence the value of kindly home influences that touch the heart and understanding. Children need to be spoken to and treated as if they were rational beings, and who are for the most part keenly observant of what goes on before their eyes. Good example along with gentle hints as to manners and conduct are consequently of first importance. As children learn much from being allowed to listen to conversations on subjects of interest, it is an unwise policy to turn them out of the room when any useful information may be picked up. Of course they must be taught to be discreetly silent, and not lend in their word on subjects they know nothing about.

It is useless to speak of the terribly real suffering which selfish, careless parents cause their children; but we shall advert to a few of the common mistakes of well-meaning persons who, from want of thought, prevent their children being as happy as they ought to be. How much happiness and improvement do those children miss who are never encouraged to observe the beauties and marvels of nature! Instead of this, they are put to books, containing dull abstractions, far too soon, and as a consequence they remain all their lives bad observers, seeing everything through books – that is, through other men's eyes, and ignorant of almost everything except mere words.

When a child begins to cross-examine its parents as to why the fire burns, how his carte-de-visite was taken, how many stars there are, and such like – grown-up ignorance or want of sympathy too often laughs at him; says that children should not ask tiresome questions, and, as far as it can, checks the inquiring spirit within him. 'Little people should be seen and not heard,' is a stupid saying, which makes many young observers shy of imparting to their elders the things that arrest their attention, until they stop learning and overcome their sense of wonder – the spur of all philosophy – from want of sympathy and encouragement. And yet grown-up people should surely be aware that Nature has implanted in us a desire to know and to communicate knowledge, considering how very much most of us love to hear and to spread gossip. Children 'would gladly learn and gladly teach;' but if they are early snubbed, they will not be glad to do either in after-life.

If we only reflected how 'queer' everything must appear to a mind newly arrived on such an earth as ours, children's questions would not appear at all foolish. During the first four or five years, which is occupied in distinguishing and naming the commonest objects, perhaps children solve more difficult intellectual problems than at any future period of their lives. How keenly, then, must young children feel want of sympathy and encouragement!

As an example of the physical misery which 'is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart,' we may allude to the 'Can't you be quiet?' which puts young children to the unnecessary torture of sitting still like 'big people.' Why do not parents reflect that it is almost a physical impossibility for any young animal to remain quiet for more than a few moments?

Then, as regards food; some are too prone to put in practice ascetic theories in the rearing of their offspring, which they shrink from as far as their own personal conduct is concerned. And yet, why should not appetite be a good guide for childhood as it is for animals; as it is for infancy; as it is for every adult who obeys Nature's laws?

We must, however, thankfully acknowledge that people are beginning more and more to conform their education to children's opinion; that is, generally speaking, to the promptings of Nature. It is found that those turn out worst who during youth have been subjected to most restrictions. 'Do children take to this or that?' is therefore a common question. Good teachers now endeavour to make the acquirement of knowledge pleasurable rather than painful. They study children's intellectual appetites, in order to discover what knowledge they are fit to assimilate. Disgust felt towards any information is now considered a sign either that it is prematurely presented, or that it is presented in an indigestible form.

We shall say nothing about the sufferings endured by boys at public schools, because so many are the counteracting pleasures such places afford, that most boys would prefer school-life to remaining at home for a continuance. We are not sure, however, that the pains of school-girls are counterbalanced by their pleasures. They have not cricket, rowing, paper-chases, and the unequalled excitement of bolster-fights to compensate for indifferent food, home-sickness, the torture of 'deportment,' and the dreadful tread-mill exercise of the hour's promenade. We do not advocate girls adopting boys' sports; but surely they should have out-of-door games of some kind. Why will schoolmistresses care so little for health and happiness as never to allow the gardens of 'Establishments for Young Ladies' to ring with the laughter and shouts of romping children? Do they fancy that a miserable walk of one hour, during which the attention of the young ladies is on the rack about the proper holding of themselves, is as health-giving as out-of-door games in which the players can forget themselves?

In his book on Responsibility in Mental Disease, Dr Maudsley well says: 'There is hardly any one who sets self-development before him as an aim in life. The aims which chiefly predominate – riches, position, power, applause of men – are such as inevitably breed and foster many bad passions in the eager competition to attain them. Hence, in fact, come disappointed ambition, jealousy, grief from loss of fortune, all the torments of wounded self-love, and a thousand other mental sufferings – the commonly enumerated moral causes of insanity. They are griefs of a kind to which a rightly developed nature should not fall a prey. There need be no disappointed ambition if a man were to set before himself a true aim in life, and to work definitely for it; no envy nor jealousy, if he considered that it mattered not whether he did a great thing or some one else did it, Nature's only concern being that it should be done; no grief from loss of fortune, if he estimated at its true value that which fortune can bring him, and that which fortune can never bring him; no wounded self-love, if he had learned well the eternal lesson of life – self-renunciation.'

This may be called 'unpractical;' but we cannot help thinking that if parents would sometimes reflect on such ideals, they would have less of false and more of true ambition than they now have. They would wish their children to turn out useful rather than brilliant, good rather than clever. As it is, a dull child is too often snubbed and rendered miserable because he does not give promise of shining in the world; while his precocious brother, who will probably do far less (precocious brains being often the worst), is lionised to strangers, and regarded as a sort of Liebig's Essence for the support of the family. Perhaps it is owing to this association of early ideas that at school the clever boy who spends the shortest time possible at his books is considered by his companions a far greater man than his less clever class-fellow who wins in the long-run by working more conscientiously.

How much unhappiness then might children be spared if their parents would goad them less and sometimes cheer up that dullness which has fallen to the lot of most of us, by saying:

Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever;Do noble things – nor dream them all day long;And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,One grand sweet song.

If now we allow our thoughts to pass on from childhood to youth, we shall find that in the case of many young men the choice of a profession is attended with much anxiety and no little misery. Some there are who take kindly to the profession which their friends advise or which is cut out for them by circumstances. There is, however, a class of young men for whom we have much sympathy, who find it very difficult to get started in life, because they have no strong inclination or pre-arranged reason which would induce them to choose one profession rather than another. These are speculative rather than practical men, who are better adapted for taking college honours than for the struggle for existence. They do not wish to enter the clerical profession; they may not have sufficient money to enable them to live through the winter of discontented brieflessness at the bar; their tastes and nerves are not such as would qualify them for the medical profession; they may have no business connection. At last they begin to fancy that they are de trop in the world, and come to the very erroneous conclusion that mankind has no need for their service.

To such we would say: Go into the profession you dislike least, and habit will make it bearable. Remember that patience and conscientious plodding, though sneered at by shallow young men, are the highest virtues and synonymous with true genius. Life is too short to make ourselves miserable over the choice of a profession, or to spend years speculating about what is best to do, which would be better employed in doing it. We must not seek for mathematical demonstration that the road we propose to travel on is the right one, when we come to cross-roads in life. A certain amount of probability is sufficient to make us take either, especially if the wolf of Hunger be at our heels, or the nobler incentive of a desire to be useful to our fellow-creatures is urging us.

In the choice of a profession, as of a wife, there must be a certain venture of faith, and in this unintelligible world there is a rashness which is not always folly. Young men cannot always adapt circumstances to themselves, let them therefore endeavour to mould themselves to circumstances.

Medical men tell us that at every great physiological change in our systems the mind is apt to be for some time greatly out of tune. Now this is especially the case when boys and girls are becoming youths and maidens, and should not be overlooked when considering the sorrows of youth. At this period they see everything as it were upside down, and are sometimes tormented by strange fancies, which will vanish when the tissues of their flesh and of their characters become firmer. Mr Carlyle says that young men should be shut up in barrels and kept somewhere out of sight until they have passed their twenty-fifth year, because it is about this time that they 'attain to their maximum of detestability.' Now we are quite sure that this was not said in a cynical tone, for Mr Carlyle values the freshness and enthusiasm of youth, as every great man must. And indeed it must be acknowledged that some young men do make themselves very objectionable when they speak and act, as though they fancied that nothing half so valuable as themselves had ever been produced on this earth before.

Is it not probable, however, that young people would better attend to the lessons which their elders can teach them if these elders had more sympathy for their peculiar trials and sorrows, and were willing to consider the originality and fire of youth as little less indispensable to the movement of society, than is steam to the locomotion of a railway engine? Youth may make itself absurd, but it does not always become every old man to rebuke it. The old should not speak disparagingly of 'inexperienced young men,' unless they themselves make use of the experience they possess. One of the Earls of Chatham was once taunted on account of his youth, and his reply was: 'Sir – The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not, sir, assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided.'

We conclude these few random notes by saying that people should try to be the friends and companions as well as the parents of their children; for if true friends do not win their confidence, false ones will. Nothing is more difficult than to understand a thoughtful child; but if once you do so, you can bring him up in the way he should go. Do not solve your child's nature or anything else too quickly, for 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' or in mine, or in any man's. Certainly childhood ought to be the happiest period of life; but it greatly depends on the sympathy of parents whether it is so or not.

THE BECHE-DE-MER

On the reefs of the Southern Ocean is found a kind of sea-slug termed the Beche-de-mer. There are as many as sixteen different species found in Fiji alone, and known all over the group by the generic name of Dri (pronounced Endree); and this word we will continue to use throughout this article, as being shorter and more definite than the French term. It was the French who first came across the mollusc in China; and in that country it is held in great esteem, and commands a very high price, two hundred pounds a ton being paid for the best sorts. The mandarins and the porcelain-makers cannot do without their favourite dish of dri soup; and even in Paris it is coming into use; and in Melbourne beche-de-mer is by no means an uncommon dish. When cotton came down in Fiji from four shillings to one shilling a pound, many a planter not knowing what else to do, turned to dri-fishing; but several years ago, the price fell from one hundred and seventy pounds to seventy pounds a ton, and the inferior sorts became unsaleable. Some Chinamen say the fall was in consequence of the death of their emperor, and while in mourning for him (a year), they were obliged to give up their favourite soup; hence the fall. But some whites say that the Europeans in Sydney bought inferior dri, and shipped it to China direct on their own account in a leaky ship: the dri was all spoiled; the merchants lost heavily, and refused to have anything more to do with the article; and the Chinamen have the trade in their hands, and give what they like, and that the price in China still remains the same. However, it yet pays to fish for the two best sorts, the tit-fish4 and black-fish, which are now (1876) worth from sixty to seventy pounds a ton in Levuka – ten or fourteen corn-bagsful making a ton.

The first thing required in dri-fishing is a good boat from twenty-five to thirty feet long with plenty of beam; then a dri station is settled on – an island, or on the coast close to the big reefs, as may be. The next thing is to get thirty or forty girls and boys, and curiously enough the girls are the best fishers and divers by far. At half-tide, all hands sail off to the reefs. Sometimes you fish the day, sometimes the night tides, according to the sort of fish you are getting and the stage of the moon; the tit-fish being a day-fish, and the black only coming out at night. When the tide is nearly low, you put your labourers on to the reef, and anchor yourself in a deep spot. The water on the reef is from six inches to three or four feet deep, according to the moon and state of the tide; and your labourers walk about and pick up the fish here and there, each having a basket and stick. Sometimes a shark comes up, looking for a tit-bit, when he is pelted off. If a black one (the most dangerous), it is hard to make him go; and if the water is deep (three or four feet), they generally sing out for the boat. You generally remain with the boat. Sometimes you go overboard and fish for yourself; but three hours in three-feet water is cold work, and if not accustomed to it one is apt to catch cold. The labourers pick up shell-fish, crabs, &c. for themselves. At the end of two or three hours, the tide begins to make fast; the boat is poled on to the reef, and you pick up your fishers and start for home.

After measuring the 'take' in order to pay your fishers, the fish are placed in large boilers. After being on the boil for half an hour they are done, taken up, a stick driven through them to clean and knock the water out; and are then taken to the smoking-house, where they are put on large frames of reeds over a slow smoky fire. These frames are technically called vatas; and they are left on the lower vata about three days, and then removed to the upper, where they are left eight or ten days longer. They are by that time smoked hard and dry; then sorted carefully (one improperly dried fish will injure the rest), and put in bags for sale.

Besides paying you also feed your labourers, giving them yams or Indian corn or sweet potatoes, with what shell-fish they get themselves. They work for two, three, or six months, or even a year; and on a good calm night an expert fishing-girl will fill what is termed a qui case and earn a shilling, occasionally two. Not bad for a little thing twelve or thirteen years old. In some parts of Fiji – Maenata, for instance – the natives get and smoke the dri themselves, and sell it to you cured; you giving about twenty shillings a bag for good cured fish. On dark nights, when there is no moon, torches are used; but the tit-fish is got during the day-tides. Five or six big tit-fish will fill a good-sized hand-basket. The labourers, after fishing, can hardly keep awake, and sleep all over the boat in every position.

Dri is an extraordinary sort of sea-slug; it moves very slowly, and has hundreds of little suckers or legs. It seems to feed on the small insects that live in the reef-sand, and very small fish. It has no bone. It has the power of covering itself with sand, to hide its whereabouts, and gives out a sort of gummy fluid, which makes the sand stick to it. This is only correct with regard to the tit-fish. The black-fish is not half the size of the other. The latter comes out only in calm sunshiny weather. Let a shower come, or even dark clouds, and hardly a slug will be got; it slips into holes in the rocks in no time. It has one or two young ones at a time, and is very domestic; where you find one, its mate is generally close by. Like many other favourite delicacies, such as the oyster of Great Britain, the beche-de-mer has been over-fished; and unless the government establish a close time the employment of gathering it must cease to exist.

EDITORIAL NOTE

Beginning another year, and again taking a short retrospect, we are glad to announce to our readers that Chambers's Journal continues to increase in circulation, and is to all appearance more acceptable as a Family Magazine than ever. This is encouraging. We feel satisfied that the resolution to exclude wild sensational fiction from our pages, however much that kind of literature may be in demand, has met with very general approval. We shall accordingly, as in the past twelve months, endeavour to sustain the reputation of the work on the basis which secured for it a high meed of popular favour pretty nearly half-a-century ago. We might be excused for indulging in some exultation, that our small periodical, without adventitious aid – without professing to lean upon great names, either as writers or patrons – has so successfully kept its ground for so long a period of time. But, while offering all proper acknowledgments for the esteem in which the work is apparently held, content ourselves with saying that now, as heretofore, no effort will be spared by the Editors of Chambers's Journal to maintain it as a weekly and monthly miscellany of recreative and instructive literature – a literature as free from political or sectarian bias as from aught that is morally objectionable.

1

They played long-whist in those times; we should say of course 'at four' nowadays.

2

Round my House; Notes on Rural Life in France. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. London, Seeley.

3

Journal, No. 578, January 23, 1875.

4

Though in commerce the Beche-de-mer is called 'fish,' it belongs to a family of invertebrate animals, and in consequence occupies a comparatively low rank in the scale of life. This delicacy is also termed trepang.