The Plateau of Fatigue

WHEN the arrival of Oscar Edward completed the triune nature of our household, it seemed for a season that such happiness as ours had until this time existed only in the garden now declared mythical by the exponents of the New Theology.

Oscar Edward’s round fat face, flattened in farewell against the windowpane each morning, remained with me to sustain me through the cares of the day; at night, at sight of his bald head and pudgy features, all worries were forgotten. Juliet declared that for the first time in her social career was she able to send regrets without regret, so much occupied was she with the all-absorbing baby.

Yet it must be confessed that in these first few months of his existence Oscar Edward was not an interesting child. When he was not lying in his crib asleep, or in a condition approaching stupor, he was either employed with his bottle or screaming with the colic. He had “no language but a cry,” and we did not attempt to communicate with him in this medium because he did enough of it himself. There was no gleam of intelligence in his gray eye or in his somewhat wrinkled features. In fact, to possession alone was due our first great pleasure in Oscar Edward.

Upon this paradisaical content, as might be expected, appeared the serpent, though it is hardly fair to call so charming a specimen of her sex as Miss Josephine Holcroft by such a name. However, in apology, it may be stated parenthetically that the serpent of modern Biblical criticism in no wise resembles the snake of our fathers, — this a concession to Eve’s descendants who will not admit that one of their sex could be tempted by a monster so loathsome.

Oscar Edward had just completed his twelfth month when I noticed simultaneously new tenants in the ground-floor flat opposite ours and a trim and handsome young lady who passed the window each morning just as Oscar Edward’s face was flattened against the pane to observe my departure. Her eyes, bright gray in color, becomingly accompanied by masses of well-arranged light brown hair, were attracted by the baby’s face, and she soon began to smile and nod to him.

“They ’re lovely people,” Juliet explained a few days later. “I called on them this afternoon. Mrs. Edson told me about them ; they are old friends of hers. The daughter is as sweet as she is pretty, and so intelligent! And Edward, she has taken such a fancy to the baby! ”

“As that is sufficient proof of her intelligence ” —

“When her father died she had to take up teaching,” continued Juliet, “but she gave me very distinctly to understand that she is in love with her work. And so ambitious! And she thinks if she does satisfactory work this year she may get the Hatton Scholarship next year.”

Hatton was a benevolent old gentleman who had long ago settled a fund on the Tipton schools, providing that the interest on the money should pay for scholarships at various institutions of learning, to be given each year under certain binding conditions to a few teachers selected by the school authorities.

The acquaintance so auspiciously begun soon ripened into friendship, so it was not long until Miss Holcroft began to run in every evening for a romp with the baby before he was carried off to bed. It was on one of these occasions that she ventured to speak to us of the purpose nearest her heart. She had just risen to go and stood with her pretty hair disheveled and her face flushed, tapping Oscar Edward with her toe as he rolled on the rug at her feet. “I’ve been wanting to ask you for some time — have you ever kept a record of Oscar Edward — a record of his mental development ? ” she explained as our blank faces expressed our ignorance of her meaning.

“Mental development? ”

She failed to note my incredulous tone as she hurried on. “You know, Mr. Thornton, if you had noted in addition to his weight — of course you weigh him — the movements of his eyelids, fixation, distance, direction, color, preferences, form, pictures, and interest in seeing, it would not only have been extremely interesting, but would have been such a valuable contribution to science.”

“And such a help to Josephine,” chimed in Juliet.

“Yes, that’s it,” said the girl, blushing and twisting her clasped hands. “You know, Mr. Thornton, Child Study is considered so important now, and if I could make some original investigations it would be such a help to me in getting my scholarship. It is n’t too late yet — to keep such a record; he is really at his most interesting age; and if you would only let me — Oh, you darling! ” she stooped to disentangle Oscar Edward from her shoe lace. “But please don’t think,” she continued, raising her clear gray eyes to mine, “ that I’m doing this just selfishly. I really truly love this darling baby, and I can’t tell you what a delight it will be to me to study him.”

It so happened that Oscar Edward entered on his fourteenth month the very next evening, which event was celebrated by appropriate notes set down in a small red book with a brown pencil brought in by Miss Holcroft for this purpose.

Months, fourteen; weight, twentythree pounds; height, twenty - nine inches.

“Now that that is done,” said Miss Holcroft briskly, “let us take up his vocabulary. You think of all the words he says, and I will write them down.”

I retired behind the paper to listen with much interest to the discussion which ensued. Oscar Edward doubtless had a vocabulary, but as it was about as intelligible to us as that of a Fiji Islander would be, I wondered how Miss Holcroft would go about it. It was soon evident that it was open to different interpretations, for while Juliet contended that Bă, must mean black and showed his knowledge of the color, Miss Holcroft assured her that it might also mean back or bad, and that so important a point as color distinction must be decided by certain experiments.

When the evening was over, Miss Holcroft’s list contained but three words, “dada,” “mamma,” and “Dofeen, ” which was supposed to be his rendition of her name, and the discussion had consumed so much time that except for an occasional affectionate tap from “Dofeen’s ” slippered toe, as she wrote, Oscar Edward had received no attention whatever. There could be no doubt that he noticed it, and while I had no hand in the record, I made a mental note of this glimmer of intelligence, which it is needless to say escaped the two ladies.

The experiments with the vocabulary lasted for a week, although the vocabulary itself occupied a very few lines in the small notebook, and the time was taken up principally with long and animated discussions over the meaning of certain sounds. Bā, for instance, was vase; bĭ must surely be big, and so on. Oscar Edward was repeatedly dragged from the rug and carried to different apartments to give the names of various familiar objects at which he stared blankly, and whose acquaintance he refused to acknowledge with a persistency that caused me much enjoyment behind the newspaper.

Child Study was beginning to assume in our erstwhile happy household a position altogether disproportionate to its importance. Taylor’s Study of the Child, Notes on the Experimental Study of Children, the works of Barnes, of Hall, and of Sully were heaped on our tables to the exclusion of the light literature formerly found there.

If I could have been persuaded to buy the machines, I doubt not that Oscar Edward would have possessed the following instruments of torture, to wit: one pair of calipers with which to measure his cranium, thereby to determine whether or not he was long-headed, or dolichocephalic; medium, or mesocephalic; broad-headed, or brachycephalic; a thermæsthesiometer, for the purpose of locating his temperature spots or sensibility to heat; a dynamometer, to determine the strength of his hand grasp, and an æsthesiometer, an instrument for indicating the least sensibility to locality. But I was obdurate, declaring that ignorance as to Oscar Edward’s normality or abnormality was far preferable to the possible knowledge that one’s only son was sadly deficient mentally and physically. If, when he was of school age, the authorities were still ridiculous enough to make a Spanish Inquisition of themselves and their innocent victims, that of course I could not help, but now no Bertillon system should be applied to my son with my consent.

Perhaps, however, I was unconsciously affected by the atmosphere; at any rate, I did a little Child Study on my own account behind the evening paper. Oscar Edward’s face was still fat and inexpressive, but from his actions, and more especially his eye, I surmised that he was beginning to feel a decided disgust for the laboratory methods affected by the expounders of the New Psychology.

We, that is, Josephine and Juliet with the notebook and I behind the paper with my eye on the infant, were busily engaged one evening when young Harris dropped in. Harris is an attorney who had recently come to Tipton, and as his office is next to mine we had some communication which finally ripened into friendship, and I had invited him to call. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, fine-looking fellow, a cross between the Greek god type and the modern hero of the gridiron, and extremely agreeable in the bargain.

When, on his entrance, Josephine closed her book, Juliet protested.

“Don’t go yet, Josephine!” she cried. “I am sure Mr. Harris will be interested in what we are doing. You see, Mr. Harris ” — And off she went into an account of what she and Josephine had been doing for Oscar Edward.

“Pray don’t stop on my account. I am immensely interested in that sort of thing, ” declared young Harris. “That is, I’ve a friend who is; in fact, he is the whole thing in the Child Study movement, so I have heard. I’ve always wanted to know just what it is like, so please go on just as though I was not here.”

I was inclined to think Harris’s interest rather sudden, but the women took him at his word, and the experiments in color continued.

“Now, Mr. Harris,” began Josephine, “I want you to watch this color experiment. I am especially interested in Oscar Edward because he is so remarkably advanced in color distinction, more than any child on record, more than Preyer’s child for instance, who has always been the standard. Just watch him now; he is too sweet. What color is this, baby dear ? ” She took up a red book from the table and held it before Oscar Edward, whom Juliet had taken on her lap.

“ Lě, ” gurgled Oscar Edward, with his eye on Harris.

“No, no! Lě is yellow,” she explained. “He is attracted by you, Mr. Harris; he is n’t even looking at the book. He must wear off this self-consciousness.” Juliet twisted him about again. “This book, sweetheart; look what ‘ Dofeen ’ has for you! What color is it? ”

Oscar Edward’s eyes were at last fixed on the book. “What color? ”

“ Boo! ” Oscar Edward grinned virtuously.

“Try again, dearest! Tell ' Dofeen,’ won’t you? ”

Oscar Edward’s face became serious. He first eyed Harris and then me, and in turn Josephine and Juliet. “What color ? ” she repeated patiently.

“Wě! ”

“Good! He knew it all the time, but when he becomes excited or confused he says the first thing that comes into his head. Now let us try the tablets.” As she spoke, she took up some little sheets of blue, yellow, and red paper and held them up before the baby.

But Oscar Edward evidently considered that the exhibition of his talents had continued long enough, for he persisted in shouting, “Wě, ” “Lě, ” “Boo” at each and all, looking about with a sickly grin when Josephine and Juliet expressed their disapproval.

“I heard of something only to-day that would be the very thing for Oscar Edward if only I could get it,” said Josephine, as we sat in the comparative peace and quiet that followed the removal of Oscar Edward to his crib for the night. “It is to show the way in which a child’s vocabulary increases. But it has never been put on the market. It is an invention of Professor Brunton; one of his students told me about it.”

“Why, Brunton ’s the fellow I was talking about! ” exclaimed Harris with quite unnecessary zeal. “ He is my old college friend. I can get the thing for you if anybody can. What’s its name ? I ’ll write to-morrow.”

And he whipped out his notebook and pencil and wrote the name at Miss Josephine’s dictation. I was surprised at Harris, but Josephine was certainly very pretty, and the way in which she thanked him ought to have been, as no doubt it was, sufficient reward.

We were a happy family when that Plateau of Fatigue arrived, at least some of us were, though Oscar Edward and myself could not be listed in that category. Harris had become quite one of us by this time, and his interest in Child Study was something wonderful. He had found Brunton a name to conjure with, and since reminiscences of brunton caused Josephine’s cheeks to hum and her eyes to sparkle as nothing else could do he invented incidents in Brunton’s career which I have no doubt would have astonished that worthy beyond measure.

“You can’t know how much this means to me, ” said Josephine, the evening she first held the bit of cardboard in her hand. “If I can only keep Oscar Edward’s record correctly on this, it will be such a valuable bit of original investigation that I am sure of securing the Hatton Scholarship without further difficulty. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”

Then, while we all sat around her in awed silence, Josephine began to explain the Plateau, which consisted of a series of minute squares on a parallelogram of cardboard. For each day that Oscar Edward learned a new word we were to make a diagonal mark through a square. If the next day he learned another word, a similar line was made above it, so that the lines would run diagonally upward. However, if the day came on which Oscar Edward did not learn a new word, the line was to run across the square, and the professor’s theory was that after a certain number of ascending lines, representing the acquisition of new words, we would see that a number of straight lines would run across the paper, these lines being Oscar Edward’s Plateau of Fatigue, the time in which his infant mind was resting from the fatigue induced by learning new words. The paper when completed ought to show a zigzag of plateaus and ascending lines.

Juliet, who was quite overwrought and excited by the novelty and honor of having a Plateau of Fatigue in her house, handled the card with extreme reverence, and declared that it ought to be framed when completed. “ What will it not mean to our little boy, ” she exclaimed, “when he is grown, and Child Study has become an exact science, to know that he was one of the first children on whom this wonderful experiment was tried! ”

I bore the honor meekly. I had my suspicions, from recent observations of Oscar Edward, as to the veracity of that report when completed. Oscar Edward had shown several times to my knowledge that he possessed a pretty fair share of the parental obstinacy ; in other words, he was as mulish as the average healthy boy, and as inclined to keep his vocabulary to himself if he suspected any one else of wanting it.

Now all went merry as a marriagebell. Harris’s visits were almost as frequent as Josephine’s, but we thought nothing of that, for his room was in the neighborhood, and since he had been the humble instrument of securing this honor to our household it was only natural that he should want to observe its working at first hand. Poor Oscar Edward was watched like a hawk through the day, through all his down-sittings and his uprisings, for fear that he might say a new word unheard, and at night he was reexercised, and the marks, if any, were made carefully with Josephine’s finetipped pencil on the precious Plateau.

As Oscar Edward’s activity increased his dislike of examinations became greater. Juliet, Josephine, and Harris seemed unconscious of it, but I observed very clearly the light in his eyes when the hated tablets, pictures, and Hailman beads were brought out, a light which indicated frenzy at the appearance of the Plateau.

There was no doubt of it, Oscar Edward recognized the Plateau as an additional instrument of torture and despised it. No wonder! For instance, Juliet would announce to Josephine that Oscar Edward had that morning for the first time noticed the nail brush and called it by name. Before the new word could be marked on the Plateau, although Juliet had already recorded it on her list, he must be tested by Josephine. So off Juliet would run for the nail brush, and then the two of them, supplemented by Harris, — and oh, how the youngster, if I read his glance correctly, detested that young man ! — must hold the nail brush before his eyes, making strenuous efforts to induce him again to pronounce the word.

They also did not note, so absorbed were they, how long the Plateaus were growing in comparison with the ascending lines; but I did, however, and shuddered at the prospect of my son becoming a mute from the spirit of revenge.

So matters went on toward the holidays, the lines on the Plateau growing up or across according to Oscar Edward’s whims and tempers.

“Is n’t it fine!” exclaimed Juliet, to whom it had become a sort of fetich. “ When I think how much it will mean to Oscar Edward I am so rejoiced to think we got it I don’t know what to do, and when I realize what it will mean to Josephine, giving her her scholarship and the position for years afterward ” — “Humph! She would much better be getting married than signing away the best years of her life for teaching by accepting that scholarship.”

“Getting married! Why Edward Thornton! The idea of a finely equipped girl like Josephine throwing herself away on a man! I don’t suppose she ever dreamed of such a thing! If I thought Oscar Edward would never have the opportunity of working under her, I would cry my eyes out! ”

As Juliet flounced out of the room intent on some household task I looked up to meet the eyes of Oscar Edward fixed on me with a look of the most surprising intelligence. Just for a moment; then his lids dropped, and he proceeded with the destruction of the expensive mechanical toy that Harris had brought to him the evening before.

I could feel disaster in the very atmosphere the moment I opened the hall door the next evening. The same moment my ear caught the sound of suppressed weeping, and I hastened into the room to find Juliet shaken by sobs, her head on the table. Oscar Edward sprawled on the rug at her feet.

“What is the matter, my dear ? Are you ill? Is the cook ” —

“Os—Osc—c-c-ar Ed—w-ward!” she sobbed, without lifting her face from the table.

“Could Oscar speak he would probably say he was never better in his life. He looks all right so far as I can see, except that he is very dirty. ” For indeed his face and the front of his usually immaculate white frock were smeared with a grayish substance resembling ashes. His gray eye met mine unflinching, and I fancied I could see therein a look of bravado, as though already he defied paternal discipline.

“Oh, you don’t know what he has done ! The — the li - little wretch! Ed—Edward! ”

By this time I had taken Juliet on my knee where she could sob more comfortably, her head on my shoulder.

“I am waiting, ” I remarked calmly, “until some one sees fit to enlighten me as to the cause of this household disturbance. Oscar Edward, perhaps you can inform your fond parent. Speak up, my son, and I shall not fail to record your progress on your beloved Plateau! ”

At this, Juliet’s sobs rose to a shriek, and the grin that had distorted Oscar Edward’s face as I addressed him was quickly succeeded by an air of innocence that subsequently struck me as rather overdone.

“ It — it’s that! The Plateau! That little fiend a-ate it u-up! ”

“He was tiptoeing around the table,” she continued, “and as I thought I had put everything out of his reach, I was n’t watching him. I was awfully interested in the loveliest new book Josephine had just brought me, experiments on school-children about their size and weight, and everything, and then Mary called me into the dining-room. When I came back that ’s the way I found him ” — She made a tragic gesture toward the cause of all her sorrow, who lay lazily staring at the fire. “He had pulled it off the table and eaten it every bit up — that’s it on his dress. It would n’t have been so bad if he had just torn it, for we could have pieced it together, but now! I gave him a good spanking, and then I was so overcome with what the loss meant to me, and most of all to Josephine, after all her months of hard work, that I just broke down and cried.”

Her recital of particulars was interrupted by the arrival of Josephine and Harris, who came in, from a walk, flushed and smiling.

“Why, what is the matter?” exclaimed Josephine, running back to the fire with the privilege of old acquaintanceship.

Mopping her eyes with her handkerchief, Juliet dramatically explained the situation while Harris and I stood silently in the background.

“ What grieves me most, Josephine, ” she concluded solemnly, “is that this child’s thoughtlessness has crippled you at the outset of your career. Of course Oscar Edward recked not what he was doing; it makes me think of what’s his name’s dog, you know, ' O Diamond, Diamond, little knowest thou what thou hast done! ' but to have kept you from your scholarship ” —

“ Don ’ t let that worry you any longer, Mrs. Thornton, ” interrupted Harris. “She will have no use for it, any how. We ran in this way before dinner just to tell you people first, because it was at your house that we met, that Josephine is not going to teach any more after this year. She has decided to take me in charge instead.”

Josephine, her pretty face flushed and her eyes sparkling, knelt beside Oscar Edward.

“Oh, you darling, it was all your doing,” she murmured as she caressed him. And as Oscar Edward’s eyes turned toward Harris I am willing to swear that for the first time in months they wore a softened expression. Since then I have wondered often, did he devour that Plateau for purely selfish reasons, or was Oscar Edward in league with Cupid?

Kate Milner Rabb.