that whatever we are to expect at the hands of children, it should not
be any peddling exactitude about matters of fact. They walk in a vain
show, and among mists and rainbows; they are passionate after dreams and
unconcerned about realities; speech is a difficult art not wholly
learned; and there is nothing in their own tastes or purposes to teach
them what we mean by abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is
inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge
him with incompetence and not with dishonesty. And why not extend the
same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid
about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we
excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched
human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified
town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes
three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open
self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as
a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less
than decent. You do not consider how little the child sees, or how swift
he is to weave what he has seen into bewildering fiction; and that he
cares no more for what you call truth, than you for a gingerbread
dragoon.
I am reminded, as I write, that the child is very inquiring as to the
precise truth of stories. But indeed this is a very different matter,
and one bound up with the subject of play, and the precise amount of
playfulness, or playability, to be looked for in the world. Many such
burning questions must arise in the course of nursery education. Among
the fauna of this planet, which already embraces the pretty soldier and
the terrifying Irish beggarman, is, or is not, the child to expect a
Bluebeard or a Cormoran? Is he, or is he not, to look out for magicians,
kindly and potent? May he, or may he not, reasonably hope to be cast
away upon a desert island, or turned to such diminutive proportions that
he can live on equal terms with his lead soldiery, and go a cruise in
his own toy schooner? Surely all these are practical questions to a
neophyte entering upon life with a view to play. Precision upon such a
point, the child can understand. But if you merely ask him of his past
behaviour, as to who threw such a stone, for instance, or struck such
and such a match; or whether he had looked into a parcel or gone by a
forbidden path,--why, he can see no moment in the inquiry, and it is ten
to one, he has already half forgotten and half bemused himself with
subsequent imaginings.
It would be easy to leave them in their native cloudland, where they
figure so prettily--pretty like flowers and innocent like dogs. They
will come out of their gardens soon enough, and have to go into offices
and the witness-box. Spare them yet a while, O conscientious parent! Let
them doze among their playthings yet a little! for who knows what a
rough, warfaring existence lies before them in the future?
[Illustration]