save that tree for us. I
grew a foot, it seemed to me, and determined then and there to be a
forester."

This is but an instance; she showed me many. The big difference was that
whereas our children grow up in private homes and families, with every
effort made to protect and seclude them from a dangerous world, here
they grew up in a wide, friendly world, and knew it for theirs, from the
first.

Their child-literature was a wonderful thing. I could have spent years
following the delicate subtleties, the smooth simplicities with which
they had bent that great art to the service of the child mind.

We have two life cycles: the man's and the woman's. To the man there is
growth, struggle, conquest, the establishment of his family, and as much
further success in gain or ambition as he can achieve.

To the woman, growth, the securing of a husband, the subordinate
activities of family life, and afterward such "social" or charitable
interests as her position allows.

Here was but one cycle, and that a large one.

The child entered upon a broad open field of life, in which motherhood
was the one great personal contribution to the national life, and all
the rest the individual share in their common activities. Every girl I
talked to, at any age above babyhood, had her cheerful determination as
to what she was going to be when she grew up.

What Terry meant by saying they had no "modesty" was that this great
life-view had no shady places; they had a high sense of personal
decorum, but no shame--no knowledge of anything to be ashamed of.

Even their shortcomings and misdeeds in childhood never were presented
to them as sins; merely as errors and misplays--as in a game. Some of
them, who were palpably less agreeable than others or who had a real
weakness or fault, were treated with cheerful allowance, as a friendly
group at whist would treat a poor player.

Their religion, you see, was maternal; and their ethics, based on the
full perception of evolution, showed the principle of growth and the
beauty of wise culture. They had no theory of the essential opposition
of good and evil; life to them was growth; their pleasure was in
growing, and their duty also.

With this background, with their sublimated mother-love, expressed in
terms of widest social activity, every phase of their work was modified
by its effect on the national growth. The language itself they had
deliberately clarified, simplified, made easy and beautiful