Читать книгу A Montessori Mother онлайн

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But, on the other hand, I was forced to consider that I knew from bitter experience that children of that age are still near enough babyhood to be absolutely primeval in their sincerity, and that it is practically impossible to make them, with any certainty of the result, go through a form of courtesy which they do not feel genuinely. Also I observed that no one had pushed the children towards us, as I push mine, toward a chance visitor, with the command accompanied by an inward prayer for obedience, “Go and shake hands with Mrs. Blank.”

In fact, I noticed it for the first time, there seemed no one there to push the children or to refrain from doing it. That collection of little tots, most of them too busy over their mysterious occupations even to talk, seemed, as far as a casual glance over the room went, entirely without supervision. Finally, from a corner, where she had been sitting (on the floor apparently) beside a child, there rose up a plainly-dressed woman, the expression of whose quiet face made almost as great an impression on me as the children’s greetings had. I had always joined with heartfelt sympathy in the old cry of “Heaven help the poor teachers!” and in our town, where we all know and like the teachers personally, their exhausted condition of almost utter nervous collapse by the end of the teaching year is a painful element in our community life. But I felt no impulse to sympathize with this woman with untroubled eyes who, perceiving us for the first time, came over to shake hands with us. Instead, I felt a curious pang of envy, such as once or twice in my sentimental and stormy girlhood I felt at the sight of the peaceful face of a nun. I am now quite past the possibility of envying the life of a nun, but I must admit that it suddenly occurred to me, as I looked at that quiet, smiling Italian woman, that somehow my own life, for all its full happiness, must lack some element of orderliness, of discipline, of spiritual economy which alone could have put that look of calm certainty on her face. It was not the passive, changeless peace that one sees in the eyes of some nuns, but a sort of rich, full-blooded confidence in life.