I had a sister; she came two or three years before me, and died at the
age of four or five and twenty, of typhoid fever. She was attended, but
in vain, by men of skill—Dr. J. A. Wilson, physician to St. George’s, and
Mr. Nussey, the king’s apothecary.
Then I have a brother, who came last—two years after me—my oldest friend.
We both had good abilities, as time has since shown, but being let to run
wild, we had no serious use for them, so we devoted them to mischief.
It seems a settled purpose in nature for children to destroy whatever
things they can lay their hands on, by way of testing the strength of
materials, and to privately annoy all who come within their reach, not
out of wickedness, but for fun. I and my brother fully entered into these
views, and did all in our power to assist them; the consequence was, we
were a good deal disliked. Another failing that we indulged in was a
love of the village boys’ society, and this caused us to be looked down
on by gentlemen’s sons. The street boys we found the best company, and
they were amenable to our orders, which could not be said of the genteel
class.
All this is defensible in children who are allowed to follow their own
devices, and is a sign of health, for good little boys and girls are
never very well. There is no intellectual endowment of such value as a
sense of the ridiculous; it argues the existence of imagination, to which
it is a supplement and corrective.
Can any one say he has more than one friend who makes him part of
himself? I have one—my brother. I used to say once, “If you want friends,
you must breed them;” but experience tells us that this method has
only an average success. Acquired friends must be engrafted in youth,
or before, while growth is going on. Friendships made later are only
impressions; they are not an integral part of us; and, though they may
flourish, are liable to be overturned. Stately as they may become, like
the elm, they have no tap-root.
I said, the other day at dinner, before one of my brother’s sons, but
playfully, “I and my brother are fonder of each other than we are of our
own children; but we have known each other longer than we have known
them.”
A child to be healthy should not be too clever; he should only have
receptive power and humour. How grown-up children even differ in this
respect!