Clubs Among the Cubs
‘MOTHER, I don’t think it’s fair!’
Jack burst into the room and dumped himself on the lounge.
‘What isn’t fair?’ said his mother.
‘I got up a club with Ned and Tommy, and they ’lected me president, and then I just went into the house for a minute, and while I was gone they ’lected Tommy president!’
About half the history of the world is typified in this incident, and about three quarters of the history of politics. But the aspect of it that particularly struck me when I heard the story was the extreme youth of the protagonist. Jack was seven years old. It seemed to me that things were beginning early.
As always happens, once my attention was directed to the matter, other little incidents of a similar nature began to present themselves to my notice. Six-year-old Paul was taking me for a walk up the farm-lane.
‘That’th where they ’nithated me,’ he lisped, trying to give his momentous words the air of a careless aside.
‘They what?’ I asked, surveying the gray rock half buried in huckleberry bushes.
‘Nithated,’ said Paul slowly.
‘What’s that?’ I asked again.
I was really very stupid, but children bear a great deal from grown-ups.
‘Why, don’t you know?’ said Paul patiently. ‘You put your hand on it, and hold the other hand up, and then you thay — I muth n’t tel! you what you thay, becauthe you’re not a member; and, anyway’ — this was added with a far-away look — ‘I gueth I’ve forgotten what it wath.’
‘So you’re a member? What is it? A club?’
‘A thothiety, — the D. L. S.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That’th a thecret. It’th a thecret thothiety.’
‘Oh, I see. And what do you do? Is that a secret too?’
‘Oh, we have meetingth — we don’t do very much — ’thept when there ’th thomebody to ’nithate.’
‘And that happens rather often, I suppose,’ I suggested.
‘Ye-e-th,’ doubtfully. ‘They ’nithated me latht week.’
‘And who else is in the society?’
‘Willie and Kate. They have two other thothieties, but I ’m only in thith one.’
While I was still brooding over this conversation, I picked up a slip of paper in a friend’s house, and, without realizing that I was intruding on mysteries, read as follows: —
DEAR LILLIE —
I am going to get up another club Its called the S T S If you come over after school I will tell you what it means You can join it and Billy is in it Then we can conect up with the other clubs, and have an affiliation
Yours truly
JAMES BURTON
I was deeply impressed with this document, especially with the ‘affiliation ’ idea, and I inquired into the ages of the persons involved in the scheme. James is nine years old, Lillie is seven, Billy is eight. Evidently we are in an organizing age, and the new generation is not going to be left behind.
Lately, with the desire of finding out something about these matters from another set of witnesses, I have been sounding various parents on the subject. As soon as I mention the word ‘clubs,’ I am sure to see some sort of vivid expression flash up in the face of my interlocutor. Sometimes it is amusement, and there follows a funny story about some of the school societies; sometimes it is sarcastic; sometimes it is rather desperate. One mother confesses that she has forbidden her little daughter to belong to any school club whatever; one father has sent his boy away to boarding-school to escape the problems and dangers of the highschool secret societies. Obviously, I have stumbled upon a live issue, and one that is puzzling wiser heads than mine.
Puzzled I surely am. In ‘my day’ there were baseball clubs for the boys, and sewing or cooking clubs for the girls, and there an end, with no secret societies at all. Moreover, the baseball clubs really played baseball, and the sewing and cooking clubs really sewed and cooked, or tried to. But that was long ago. In those days, too, the club life of the grown-ups was correspondingly simple: a charitable sewing society for the ladies, where they met to sew and talk; a club for the men, where they smoked and talked politics or science or whatever interested them; and for men and women together, a euchre club, and perhaps a ‘literary’ club.
But the plot has thickened. We are beset by clubs on all sides, and one of the chief problems of life, if I can trust my observation, seems to be how to keep out of the wrong ones and get into the right ones, while, with regard to the officering of them, the predicament of the martyr Jack may be taken as typical. I have even been assured, by a very high authority indeed, that most clubs are started by people who have a craving to be president of something, and who therefore get up a club to meet this ‘long-felt want.' Moreover, it is apparently a widespread desire, this wish to ‘ conect up’ with other clubs and make an ‘afilliation.' If, then, the old cocks — and hens — are crowing and cackling after this fashion, what else is to be expected of the young ones?
But I have no intention of drifting into an argument. I am merely observing, and wondering how it is all going to come out. Being, in general, no friend to repressive measures, I have a feeling that it will do little good to prohibit clubs and secret societies among the children. I should rather favor letting them go on, if they must, but giving them something really to do. Societies that chiefly ‘hold meetings,’ and ‘ initiate,’seem to my plain mind to be in need, not so much of repressing, as of being given a job. And meawhile, I confess that I am sorry for Jack, I admire James, and I am proud that I know Paul and Lillie.