PEDIATRICS Vol. 65 No. 1 January 1980, pp. 138
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HARRIET MARTINEAU AND THE MANNERS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN, AS VIEWED IN 1834

T. E. C. Jr. MD

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was an enormously popular English writer as well as a prominent figure in literary circles. A visit to America in 1834 inspired several unflattering words on the American way of life. However, her comments about the manners of American children were almost always favorable, as this excerpt will indicate.1

For my on part, I delight in the American children; in those who are not overlaid with religious instruction. There are instances, as there are everywhere, of spoiled, pert, and selfish children. Parents' hearts are pierced there, as elsewhere. But the independence and fearlessness of children were a perpetual charm in my eyes. To go no deeper, it is a constant amusement to see how the speculations of young minds issue, when they take their own way of thinking, and naturally say all they think. Some admirable specimens of active little minds were laid open to me at a juvenile ball at Baltimore. I could not have got at so much in a year in England. If I had at home gone in among eighty or a hundred little people, between the ages of eight and sixteen, I should have extracted little more than "Yes, ma'am," and "No, Ma'am." At Baltimore, a dozen boys and girls at a time crowded round me, questioning, discussing, speculating, revealing in a way which enchanted me. In private houses, the comments slipped in at table by the children were often the most memorable, and generally the most amusing part of the conversation.