This poem is an interesting example of a turn of the century message about children. What did Americans at the time think of children? What did the publishers of the book think of children? The book, which reads rather as an instruction manual for both adults and children, seems to want to categorize children as special and precious. Something separate from the adult world. So sweet, so tender, so almost religiously pure.
I will bring in more things from this book and others that seem to have proliferated during this period of American history. The lessons are fascinating, and the very existence of these cheap volumes is evidence that children were garnering great attention in this era. I doubt it has always been so. The attention is almost fetishistic here. This book teaches both parents and children how to be, and the lessons are thought-provoking and enlightening. Perhaps, a book like "The American Speaker" can tell us more about attitudes relative to children than any of Hodgson's more arty english child photographs of his little friend, Alice.
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