How The Bean Brothers Woke

1916

"Here are five little Bean Brothers for you," said mother one morning dropping something into Boykin's hand. "They have been in bathing all night long."

"With their clothes on too," exclaimed Boykin; "their little white coats are all wrinkled."

"You'd better put them to bed right away," suggested mother. "Here's a flower-pot on the sunny windowsill. The fresh soft earth will make a fine bed for the Bean Brothers. And if they have a good nap, who knows what will happen?"

So Boykin put them to bed in the soft, brown earth and covered them up snugly. Day after day the Bean brothers slept soundly and showed not a single sign of waking up. Then one morning Bean Brother poked up a tiny sign of slim green back, out from under the bedclothes, but his head kept safe underneath.

"Come, get up, you sleepyhead," cried Boykin, and, taking hold of Bean Brother's back, he pulled him straight out of bed.

"Oh, see," he called to mother, "Bean Brother has a leg, too, a long spindly one."

"Better put him back again, if you can, and let the others sleep a little longer. It's not time for them to be up yet," mother told him.

Next day the other Bean Brothers had poked up their little bent backs too, but Boykin only watched them and sprinkled their bed with fresh water. Day after day the Bean Brothers pushed up their backs higher.

"A funny way to get out of bed," declared Boykin; "they hump themselves up like green caterpillars."

Then one day the strongest of the Bean Brothers ventured to pull himself away from the warm bedclothes, but he could not stand up straight, and drooped his head sleepily.

"Oh, see, mother," cried Boykin, "Bean Brother has grown out of his old coat and split it in two."

True enough, what Boykin had called Bean Brother's coat before he had tucked him into bed was hanging in two pieces to his side.

Pretty soon the other Bean Brothers pulled themselves out from under the bedclothes. Then little by little they all straightened up and lifted their green plumy heads. The old coats clinging to their sides shrank and shriveled and finally dropped off altogether.

Boykin picked up two of the wrinkled bits.

"His coat is all worn out," said he.

"He won't need it again," mother explained. "But it was a good coat in its day and a wonderful one too, for it not only kept Bean Brother warm when he was a tiny baby, but it gave him food so that he could grow into this nice tall Bean plant."

"And will he always live in this [bed*]."

"No," answered mother; "when he is stronger we will take him and his four brothers out of this bed and put them in a corner of our big garden, where you can watch them." — Rebecca Deming Moore, in Mothers' Magazine.

*Note: This story was reprinted in a newspaper. And it is missing a line, leaving this paragraph hanging with "live in this".

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 4.

Knowledge of Self

1900

A Scientist's Observations of Certain Ways of Children

Dr. Sully remarks that children begin to acquire a knowledge of "self" when they are a few months old, and may be observed grasping, striking and biting their own hands or feet.

A boy, whose feet were stained with new stockings, cried to his mother, "These ain't the feet I had this morning." The trunk is first recognized as part of self; then the head is regarded as the seat of intelligence. A child will "make believe" that it is more than one self and personify its members.

When only a few months old a baby does not know its own face in a mirror until it finds out by experience. Children are often afraid of a shadow at first, but in time refer it to the sun. They attach every importance to their bodily appearance, can scarcely believe that an earlier photograph of them as babies is really meant for them and feel almost new beings when dressed for church on Sunday.

In time the conscious self which thinks, suffers and wills is dimly discerned. A girl of 3 years shut her eyes and believed her mother could see her body, but not her real self. One day she asked, "Mother, am I real, or only a pretend like my dolls?" The same child pitied the fallen leaves dying on the ground. A well known lady novelist when a child was amazed to think that she could feel and act by an internal self, and the consciousness of self came to George Sand one day as a sudden revelation.

Children want to know how their thoughts come to their tongue or limbs and imagine they travel down.

Metamorphosis of self is a common idea among children, who fancy they have been something different at one time. They also find it hard to believe they never existed at all and will ask where they were a hundred years ago. A little boy of 5 asserted that the world only began to go round when he was born. Another gravely said, when passing a street pump, "There are no pumps in heaven, where I came from." Children have a standard of time from adults, an hour seeming very long to them.

Grafting In a New Root — Renew Your Old Life, Do Something New

1921

By DR. WM. E. BARTON

IF THE top of a tree dies down, or does not bear a satisfactory kind of fruit, new branches can be grafted in. But what if it be the root that dies? Is there any way of grafting in a new root?

In Riverside, California, stand the two parent navel orange trees. If I have the information correctly, the entire navel orange industry on the Pacific coast began with the successful propagation of that kind of orange from these two trees.

One of them stands on Magnolia avenue, and the other was transplanted by President Theodore Roosevelt, and stands in front of the Mission Inn.

Both these trees are very old and manifestly dying. But they are trying the experiment of creating a new root for one of them. If that succeeds, I presume they will do the same for the other.

They take a vigorous young tree, cut off its top, plant it as close to the old tree as possible and at an angle, and graft the top into the side of the old tree a little above the root.

They have grafted in several such young roots, and they appear to be growing and to be saving the life of the old tree.

Such an undertaking lends itself to reflection. There are men who are dying at the top because they have not sufficient root. Why not dig down near the root, and put in a new one?

You can learn Greek at forty, or study Browning at fifty, or become an expert on psychoanalysis at sixty, or make yourself either a learned man or a fool at seventy.

Maybe you do not care for those particular studies — in that case there are others.

Why should not a man who lacked opportunities, in his youth for higher education, set about it in middle life, and pursue a course of good reading? Why not study astronomy, or botany, or literature?

Many men die a good many years before the undertaker carts them away. A man begins to die when he ceases to grow. Why not graft in a new root?