By Gregory Clark, December 30, 1922.
The struggle now going on between science and grandmothers is really stupendous.
In my household I happen to be referee between science and grandmother. And while prejudiced, as a member of a generation fed on science and efficiency must be, in favor of the experts, I have to admit that in the case with which I am familiar science spends most of its time with its back flat on the mat with a grandmotherly shoe placed on its neck.
For some time before the subject of this colossal struggle between science and grandmother put in an appearance, science had a little the better of the first encounters. But he was not more than three weeks old before grandmother got in a vital blow. That was in regard to the question of regularity of meals. Science frowningly laid down the rule that he should be fed every four hours – and no oftener or sooner.
But he cried and cried so pitifully, and with so hoarse a tiny voice, about the third hour, that grandmother insisted that he was hungry, and she raised so whole-hearted a row that the boy was fed -though his parents stood fearfully by expecting the scientific heavens to fall.
Nothing happened except that the wee morsel leaned back luxuriously after his meal, rolled his eyes with contentment, and looking intently up at his mother’s face, as if seeing her for the first time, distinctly enunciated his first word on earth —
“Bgloobl!”
I shall always remember that remark. It seems to me to contain the complete refutation of all science.
From this incident onward, grandmother has won most points in the fifteen-month battle that has been waged. The “baby book,” a little manual which contains the cream of science’s pronouncements and which is to be found in most modern nurseries, grandma soon found to be the source of most of her difficulties. She has hidden the book in all possible places. She has loaned it to people. It has mysteriously fallen behind radiators, bookcases, and once I rescued it from under a whole year’s accumulation of magazines in the cellar. How it got there, grandmother had no idea. She advised me to call in a scientist to solve the mystery.
One thing we had our mind made up on, however, was candy. No candy should ever pass our boy’s lips until he was grown well out of babyhood. Grandmother solemnly agreed.
“There is nothing worse for a little child,” said she, “than candy.”
And I secretly rejoiced that here at least was one point on which grandmother and science were one.
For some weeks, I have observed a most touching relationship growing between the small boy and his grandma. First thing in the morning, when he is released from his coop, he rushes to his grandmother’s door and thumps heartily upon it, shouting his eloquent self-made words, and dancing up and down from the knees in most comic way. All day long, he pays her most sedulous attention. He comes when she calls and ceases his tumult when she admonishes him. If she tells him to eat his dinnie, he at once stops his favorite sport of seeing how far he can blow a spoonful of porridge.
They have a language of their own, too. There are words that only they two can comprehend. I have been just the least little bit jealous of this private little world of theirs into which I could not enter.
Coming into the living room the other afternoon, I interrupted a quaint little scene.
The boy was over at one end of the fireplace, dancing furiously up and down and exclaiming a sound that seemed to be
“Pease! Pease! Pease!”
And he was stretching himself up towards the mantel.
Grandma was sitting motionless in the shadow of the corner.
“Come here, my pigeon,” she said tensely. “Come to Dodo!”
“Pease! Pease!” cried the pigeon, reaching one little hand up towards the mantel.
I looked at grandmother and she seemed to be holding herself as with a leash.
“What is it, boy?” I asked. “Is there something up here you want?”
And I approached the mantel.
“No,” cried Grandma in a strong voice, leaping to her feet with sudden violence and picking the boy up in her arms. She placed herself in front of the corner of the mantel.
“What is it?” I exclaimed, alarmed.
Grandma looked at me with bright, excited eyes.
But the boy, the little pigeon, solved the mystery and betrayed his grandmother. Over his shoulder, he reached to the mantel, threw a photograph to one side and seized and triumphantly flourished – a barley stick!
A barley stick, partly gone!
I stared at grandmother with shocked eyes.
“Barley sugar,” said she in a soft dangerous voice, “is not candy.”
“What is it?” I retorted. “A vegetable?”
At this moment, I was reenforced by Science, in the form of the boy’s mother, coming into the room.
I held up the barley stick, which I had seized from the pigeon’s hand.
A long, tense, and most quiet battle then ensued between science and grandmother, quiet save for the voice of the pigeon shouting, “pease, pease, pease,” in a most compelling and persuasive tone.
Science won.
Grandmother walked over to the fire place and tossed the barley stick ostentatiously into the ashes.
“It’s all nonsense,” she stated. “Candy is chocolates and gum drops and those pink and yellow creams with scalloped edges. But barley sugar! My dear girl, you have eaten tons of it!”
But did science, win?
You don’t buy barley sticks one at a time. It seems to me, you buy them in a bottle, about twenty small sticks to the bottle.
At any rate, grandmother assisted her pigeon to bed. And, before retiring that night. I went in to see him.
On his rosy cheek, just beside his month, like a yellow jewel, there stuck a small, smooth, well polished little nugget of barley sugar.
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