Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — CHILDREN’S DRAWING. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CHILDREN’S DRAWING.

SCRIBBLING A UNIVERSAL INSTINCT. An Instinct Too Often Repressed by Parents— Encourage the Children ans We May Have a Unlveral Art Atmosphere. Pictures by Little Folks. All children draw. The Instinct is just as universal as the deep-seated desire for candy. Give a child a pencil and he shows his hereditary propensity to scribble just as certainly as, under certain conditions, he shows his hereditary propensity to kick and scream. If you do not give the child a pencil, you have only to notice what he will do without one. He will take a stick and mark in the sand just as surely as a young duck will strike a straight line for water. Right here it might be interesting to ask, how much the elegant arts of sculpture and pottery owe to the prehistoric man’s childish’desire to make mud pies, precisely as his little descendants do to-day? The present writer has never outgrown the love

for what was once the chief delight in life—“paddling mushmolly.” A baby of 2 begins its exercise long before it has seen or heard of anything of the kind. Happy baby! Its mamma says its performances are “too cute for anything.” But alas! by the time the same poor baby has arrived at the age of 8 the same nyrnima declares that such doings are “too naughty for anything!” The bad child will persist in scribbling all over the sitting-room wall and spoiling the paper; worse yet, she actually steals!

Yes, steals her mamma’s cards and her papa’s envelopes to scribble on! It must be stopped right away! The sequel is easily told. That child’s scribbling is stopped, of course. It never seems to occur to the mother that the child’s originality is also repressed, Its Individuality warped, Its immortal soul wounded. Is it any wonder that we have so few artists left? Some years later, when the same long-suffering child takes “drawing lessons” at school, what little true art instinct he has left is well-nigh

starved on a tasteless diet of straight lines and curves. How little necessity there would be for abstruse lectures and rigid measurements if the poor pupils had only been left free to fallow where their imaginations led! Parents, you all know just what kind of pictures your children make. Why does it not strike you all that slates and paper and pencil ought to be provided just as freely as sugar? Yes, sugar! Scientists have discovered that this childish craving for sugar is not an evidence of infantile depravity, but a cry of the developing human system for additional warmth.

Warm, so to speak, the art instinct, even if your fastidious eyes have to tolerate such dreadful caricatures as your own portraits in the style of “spiders” and “chicken-scratches.” With what sublime fearlessness a child invents a “new-fashioned horse ” On the principle that distance lends enchantment to the view, the animals in your neighbor’s barnyard are very much nicer than your own! Never such marvelous flowers grew as were evolved by your little girl from her inner consciousness. But

she knows what she sees, too, and has a name for it, even if she has never heard one. Ask her what the big engine is running past*your farm, and like as not she will say, “The stew fellow.” What child has not seen glowing visions In which figured the

dear personalty of the saint of childhood, “Old Kriss,” or Santa Clans? Give every child a pencil just as often as you do a stick of candy. Yes, and add colored crayons and paints, if you do not want the children to daub mud and cranberry juice oh your wall-paner quite ai often as they scribble. Do you know what would be the result in tb£ course of a generation? The question is easily answered. Regenerated art, and the blessed influence of a universal art atmosphere.

SMITH'S ANIMALS.

NEW-FASHIONED HORSE AND ODD KRISS.

GRANDMA’S HOUSE.

MAMMA AND GRANDMA.

THE “STEW” FELLOW.