From: Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS)
Author: Scott Nearing
Published:
When Fred Allen remarked on Tuesday evening that he was scarcely a stranger, he believed that he was staying close to the facts; but the next day held out to him some opportunities for acquaintanceship of which he had not dreamed.
All night he slept that dreamless sleep which follows a day of joyous activity, during which the mind is unworried and the food digests. Such a grip did this sleep have on Fred Allen that on the following morning when he opened his eyes, he found to his astonishment that the hands of his watch pointed to eight. He held the watch to his ear and shook it. It was never possible. When had he slept dreamlessly for ten hours? His memory was not so old. He had slept, though, and by the time he stepped out into the road, all hope of getting a breakfast at the Inn had passed. While he stood pondering the matter and feeling helplessly over the front of his khaki shirt, a child came slipping toward him.
“Aunty Ruff says please come over,” said the child. “She has something for you.”
“Uncle Will came by a while ago,” Ruth explained genially. “and said that since his door casings had been so largely responsible for intoxicating you with the sleeping wellness, it was only fair for the family to take care of you. As I am the family, the pleasant duty falls on me. Have some breakfast. Please don’t apologize, now.” she added decisively, as he was about to speak. “Eat breakfast. You will not have time even to wash the dishes. You see,” she added, “it is my morning at the playground, and I must be there by nine.”
Thus admonished, Fred Allen ate his breakfast with a silence and dispatch that would have graced the most exclusive club. His eyes followed Ruth as she moved easily about, putting this thing and that to rights. At least she should not prohibit looking, even though talking as against the rules.
“If you will over-sleep,” scolded Ruth, with mock severity when he had risen from the table, “you will be compelled to hurry—at times this is one of those times.”
“I was about to ask you who runs the playground,” said Fred Allen, as they left the house, “but of course you will say ‘we do’ so please start at once by telling me how “
“Of course you have heard of cooperation,” said Ruth Wade, with an air of beginning at the very beginning of things
“Of course I have,” he said.
“Cooperation means working together,” she continued. “Here, as everywhere else we try to work together. In Arden there are about twenty mothers who have young children, and beside that, several of us maidenly aunts take enough interest to join in. Each morning three of these women go down to the playground—my morning is Wednesday—staying from nine to twelve. That means that each of the seventeen other mothers can send her children to the playground with the assurance that they will be cared for and watched by responsible people. You see that gives seventeen Arden mothers three hours of freedom every morning of the week. If you will multiply three by seventeen, you will see that the whole amount of time gained is fifty-one hours a day, or three hundred and six hours a week, that sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It would sound like very much more if you could understand the relief that these hours bring to the woman who has been caring for her children earnestly, day and night for years
Then the children learn to play with one another. That is also a great help. You see all are helped, and each one pays for the help by watching all of the children for one morning a week. That sounds like pretty good business, doesn’t it, Mr. Commercial Success?”
There was no sting in the words, for she laughed gayly as she said them but Fred Allen felt, for the moment, just a little bit ashamed of his commercial success, when he was compared with this peaceful joy or Arden. Ruth Wade added,—
“No one pays anything. That is the nice part of it. Your children are given motherly care without money and without price, as the Scripture has it, in return for a little offering on your part. It’s the service idea, you know. But of course you don’t know, do you? How could you when you come from the city and a successful competitive business, where the idea is to do the other fellow —first? It’s so different here.”
“Yes,” he pleaded guilty with an excellent grace. “It is so different.”
Their arrival at the playground was the signal for an assault. Already a dozen children had gathered. With one accord they attacked Ruth with,—
“Here’s Aunt y Ruth. “
“How-de-do, Aunty Ruff.”
“Tome play wif me, Aunty Ruff.”
“Oh, Aunt Ruth, will you swing us?”
Fred Allen stood by, enjoying this popularity as much as though it had been his own. Perhaps he had begun to feel a sense of proprietorship, for when things had settled down, and he had met the two mothers who were already on duty, he turned to them with the remark,—
“The children seem to be very fond of my conductor. “
“Of course they are,” answered Ruth, paying no attention to his tone.
“How could you have a personally conducted tour if the conductor wasn’t known?”
There were swings at the playground, a trapeze, a sand pile, benches, and tables. The whole lay in the shadow of a grove of great, cool trees. A more ideal spot could hardly be imagined.
One of the mothers, who was an adept at weaving, was teaching a group, of children to weave hats with straw. They were all working assiduously at one side, while the other children shouted at their games, and the younger ones built sand forts. Gradually the talk drifted to work and play, the meaning of childhood and the worth of schools.
“Do you notice how nicely the children are playing’?” Ruth Wade was addressing Fred Allen. “There is little quarreling, and no fighting. When they get into a dispute, they usually settle it for themselves. Do you see that?” Two boys were after the trapese. “Now watch.”
The boys stood eyeing one another. One jerked the trapeze; the other jerked back. Both held on. Suddenly the boy who had tried to jerk the trapese away let go his hold.
“You can have two swings, then I get two,” he said.
“All right,” replied the other, beginning his swings.
“That little chap was the most unsocial child I ever saw when he came here,” Ruth Wade said. “He could not play ten minutes without a fight. Besides being selfish, he was thoroughly spoiled and pampered. It took the school most of last winter to train him, but now he has learned—you can see how well.”
“Do you have a regular country school here in the winter?” Fred Allen asked. Schools had always interested him, largely because he had never been able to get along in them.
Ruth Wade Smiled sympathetically.
“I am awfully sorry to have to say it, but we do the school too.”
“What do you mean, teach it and all of that?”
“Certainly, why not?”
Fred Allen looked perplexed.
“Really,” said he, “I can’t say why not; but I never heard of it before.”
“Neither had we,” broke in, the mother who was teaching weaving. “We knew there must be a school, and it was a choice between a country school over on the hill, taught by an eighteen-year-old girl who is more ignorant than my children—at least in all of things that count – and having a. school of our own. So we decided on the latter plan.”
“It was hardly a school,” said Ruth Wade, “it was an experiment in child life. We could not afford to hire the kind of teachers we wanted, so we did it ourselves. Each one taught what she could and the children helped out.”
“The children?” Fred Allen queried.
“Of course, the children. You see, we let them do about as they pleased. We provided them with a play-room, a workshop, tables and chairs, tools, blackboards, books, papers and pencils. Besides, there was all out of doors. There was no fixed course of study. Sometimes we drew; at other times, read. Then we told stories or worked on the board. The moment the children tired of one thing we took up another. You have no reason to doubt my veracity?”
“Hardly,” answered Fred Allen, “why?”
“If you do not believe what I am going to tell you, ask either of those good people, they were both here. Listen! Our school was popular with the children!”
“Popular?” cried Fred Allen. “Not with boys, though.”
The three educators smiled.
“Yes, with boys,” Ruth Wade affirmed. “Do you know why we think it was popular?” she added. “I’ll tell you. It was almost impossible to get rid of the children at night. They would stay around to ‘finish up’, and, best of all, before we had been running a month, the children petitioned to have school on Saturdays; and the boys were the ringleaders in the revolt.”
“Whew,” said Fred Allen, incredulously. “I guess that is the end of wonders. There can be nothing after that.”
“Don’t be sure, “replied the mother who was weaving. “When the children from our school go into the regular public schools, we find that they can get on better than the children who have been trained there. You see the ordinary school practices impression and repression. We believe in expression. That is the foundation of growth.”
“A sadder and a wiser man,” Fred Allen commented. “I thought Arden was all fun. I came here to rest. Since I set foot in the place I have been doing or learning something every minute – except last night,” he hastened to add as he caught Ruth Wade’s eye. “Then I slept ten hours.”
They all laughed.
“You are in Arden, remember,” said Ruth. “Don’t flatter yourself though. You haven’t learned or done it all. Even now.”
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