The Ignominy of Being Grown-up

As I have already intimated, my greatest intellectual privilege is my acquaintance with a philosopher. He is not one of those unsocial philosophers who put their best thoughts into books to be kept in cold storage for posterity. My Philosopher is eminently social, and is conversational in his method. He belongs to the ancient school of the Peripatetics, and the more rapidly he is moving the more satisfactory is the flow of his ideas.

He is a great believer in the Socratic method. He feels that a question is its own excuse for being. The proper answer to a question is not a stupid affirmation that would close the conversation, but another question. The questions follow one another with extreme rapidity. He acts upon my mind like an air pump. His questions speedily exhaust my small stock of acquired information. Into the mental vacuum thus produced rush all sorts of irrelevant ideas, which we proceed to share. In this way there comes a sense of intellectual comradeship which one does not have with most philosophers.

For four years my Philosopher has been interrogating Nature, and he has not begun to exhaust the subject. Though he has accumulated a good deal of experience, he is still in his intellectual prime. He has not yet reached the "school age," which in most persons marks the beginning of the senile decay of the poetic imagination.

In my walks and talks with my Philosopher I have often been amazed at my own limitations. Things which are so easy for him are so difficult for me. Particularly is this the case in regard to the more fundamental principles of philosophy. All philosophy, as we know, is the search for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These words represent only the primary colors of the moral spectrum. Each one is broken up into any number of secondary colors. Thus the Good ranges all the way from the good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful ascends from the most trifling prettiness to the height of the spiritually sublime; while the True takes in all manner of verities, great and small. In comparing notes with my Philosopher I am chagrined at my own color-blindness. He recognizes so many superlative excellences to which I am stupidly oblivious.

In one of our walks we stop at the grocer's, I having been asked to fill the office of domestic purveyor. It is a case where the office has sought the man, and not the man the office. Lest we forget, everything has been written down so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,—baking-powder and coffee and a dozen eggs, and last and least, and under no circumstances to be forgotten, a cake of condensed yeast. These things weigh upon my spirits. The thought of that little yeastcake shuts out any disinterested view of the store. It is nothing to me but a prosaic collection of the necessaries of life. I am uncheered by any sense of romantic adventure.

Not so with my Philosopher. He is in the rosy dawn of expectation. The doors are opened, and he enters into an enchanted country. His eyes grow large as he looks about him. He sees visions of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in all their bewildering, concrete variety. They are in barrels and boxes and paper bundles. They rise toward the sky in shelves that reach at last the height of the gloriously unattainable. He walks through the vales of Arcady, among pickles and cheeses. He lifts up his eyes wonderingly to snowy Olympus crowned with Pillsbury's Best. He discovers a magic fountain, not spurting up as if it were but for a moment, but issuing forth with the mysterious slowness that befits the liquefactions of the earlier world. "What is that?" he asks, and I can hardly frame the prosaic word "Molasses."

"Molasses!" he cries, gurgling with content; "what a pretty word!" I hadn't thought about it, but it is a pretty word, and it has come straight down from the Greek word for honey.

He discovers works of art. Surprising pictures, glowing in color, are on the walls. These are cherubs rioting in health, smiling old men, benignant matrons, radiant maidens, all feasting on nectar and ambrosia. Here and there is a pale ascetic, with a look of agony on his emaciated face.

"What makes that man feel so bad?" asks my Philosopher, anxious to extract a story from the picture. It seems like an inadequate explanation to say that he is only a martyr to his own folly in not getting the right kind of breakfast food.

For one thing, my Philosopher has a great physical advantage over me when it comes to seeing things. His eyes are only two feet ten inches from the ground, while mine are some five feet ten. Three feet do not count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in the horizon line, and the realm of mystery begins much nearer. There is no disenchanting bird's-eye view of the counter with all things thereon. There are alluring glimpses of piled-up wealth.

There particularly is the land of the heart's desire in a square glass-covered case. There are many beautiful things in the store to be admired from below; but one supremely beautiful and delectable object is the crowning glory of the place.

The artist who spends his life in attempting to minister to dull adult sensibilities never created a masterpiece that gave such pure delight as the candy dog which my Philosopher spies.

"See the dog!" It is, indeed, a miracle of impressionist art. It is not like the dogs that bite. It offers itself alluringly to the biter,—or rather to one who would leisurely absorb it. Even now there is a vagueness of outline that suggests the still vaguer outlines it will have when it comes into the possession of a person of taste.

This treasure can be procured for one copper cent. My Philosopher feels that it is a wise investment, and I thoroughly agree with him. However much the necessaries of life may have advanced in price, the prime luxuries are still within the reach of all. We still have much to be thankful for when with one cent we can purchase a perfect bliss.

It is all so interesting and satisfactory that we feel that the visit to the grocer's has been a great success. It is only when we are halfway home that we remember the yeastcake.

Sometimes my Philosopher insists upon my telling him a story. Then I am conscious of my awkwardness. It is as if my imagination were an old work-horse suddenly released from its accustomed tip-cart and handed over to a gay young knight who is setting forth in quest of dragons. It is blind of both eyes, and cannot see a dragon any more, and only shies, now and then, when it comes to a place where it saw one long ago. There is an element of insincerity in these occasional frights which does not escape the clear-eyed critic. It gets scared at the wrong times, and forgets to prance when prancing is absolutely demanded by the situation.

When my Philosopher tells a story, it is all that a story ought to be. There is no labored introduction, no tiresome analysis. It is pure story, "of imagination all compact." Things happen with no long waits between the scenes. Everything is instantly moulded to the heart's desire.

"Once upon a time there was a little boy. And he wanted to be a cock-a-doodle-doo. So he was a cock-a-doodle-doo. And he wanted to fly up into the sky. So he did fly up into the sky. And he wanted to get wings and a tail. So he did get some wings and a tail."

Physiologists tell us that the trouble with advancing years is that the material which in youth went directly to building up the vital organs is diverted to the connective tissue, so that after a time there gets to be too much connective tissue and too little to connect. When the imagination is in its first freshness, a story is almost without connective tissue. There seems hardly enough to hold it together. There is nothing to take our minds off the successive happenings. If it is deemed desirable that a little boy should be a cock-a-doodle-doo, then he is a cock-a-doodle-doo. All else is labor and sorrow.

As a listener my Philosopher is no less successful than as an improviser. He is not one of those fickle hearers whose demands for some new thing are the ruination of literary art. When he finds something beautiful it is a joy to him forever, and its loveliness increases with each repetition. In a classic tale he is quick to resent the slightest change in phraseology. There is a just severity in his rebuke when, in order to give a touch of novelty, I mix up the actions appropriate to the big bear, the little bear, and the middle-sized bear. This clumsy attempt at originality by means of a willful perversion of the truth offends him. If a person can't be original without making a mess of it, why try to be original at all?

With what keen expectancy he awaits each inevitable word, and how pleased he is to find that everything comes out as he expected! He reserves his full emotion for the true dramatic climax. If a great tragedian could be assured of having such an appreciative audience, how pleasant would be the pathway of art! The tragedy of Cock Robin reaches its hundredth night with no apparent falling off in interest. It is followed as only the finest critic will listen to the greatest actor of an immortal drama. He is perfectly familiar with the text, and knows where the thrills come in. When the fatal arrow pierces Cock Robin's breast, it never fails to bring an appreciative exclamation, "He's killed Cock Robin!"

Of the niceties of science my Philosopher takes little account, yet he loves to frequent the Museum of Natural History, and is on terms of intimacy with many of the stuffed animals. He walks as a small Adam in this Paradise, giving to each creature its name. His taste is catholic, and while he delights in the humming birds, he does not therefore scorn the less brilliant hippopotamus. He has no repugnance to an ugliness that is only skin deep. He reserves his disapprobation for an ugliness that seems to be a visible sign of inner ungraciousness. The small monkeys he finds amusing; but he grows grave as he passes on to the larger apes, and begins to detect in them a caricature of their betters. When we reach the orang-outang he says, "Now let's go home." Once outside the building, he remarks, "I don't like mans when they're not made nice." I agree with him; for I myself am something of a misanthropoidist.

There is nothing unusual about my Philosopher. He is not a prodigy or a genius. He is what a normal human being is at the age of four, when he is still in possession of all his faculties. Having eyes he sees with them, and having ears he hears with them. Having a little mind of his own, he uses it on whatever comes to hand, trying its edge on everything, just as he would try a jackknife if I would let him. He wants to cut into things and see what they are made of. He wants to try experiments. He doesn't care how they come out; he knows they will come out some way or other. Having an imagination, he imagines things, and his imagination being healthy, the things he imagines are very pleasant. In this way he comes to have a very good time with his own mind. Moreover, he is a very little person in a very big world, and he is wise enough to know it. So instead of confining himself to the things he understands, which would not be enough to nourish his life, he manages to get a good deal of pleasure out of the things he does not understand, and so he has "an endless fountain of immortal drink."

What becomes of these imaginative, inquisitive, myth-making, light-hearted, tender-hearted, and altogether charming young adventurers who start out so gayly to explore the wonder-world?

The solemn answer comes, "They after a while are grown-up." Did you ever meditate on that catastrophe which we speak of as being "grown-up"? Habit has dulled our perception of the absurd anti-climax involved in it. You have only to compare the two estates to see that something has been lost.

You linger for a moment when the primary school has been dismissed. For a little while the stream of youthful humanity flows sluggishly as between the banks of a canal, but once beyond the school limits it returns to nature. It is a bright, foaming torrent. Not a moment is wasted. The little girls are at once exchanging confidences, and the little boys are in Valhalla, where the heroes make friends with one another by indulging in everlasting assault and battery, and continually arise "refreshed with blows." There is no question about their being all alive and actively interested in one another. All the natural reactions are exhibited in the most interesting manner.

Then you get into a street car, invented by an ingenious misanthropist to give you the most unfavorable view possible of your kind. On entering you choose a side, unless you are condemned to be suspended in the middle. Then you look at your antagonists on the opposite side. What a long, unrelenting row of humanity! These are the grown-ups. You look for some play of emotion, some evidence of curiosity, pleasure, exhilaration, such as you might naturally expect from those who are taking a little journey in the world.

Not a sign of any such emotion do you discern. They are not adventuring into a wonder-world. They are only getting over the ground. One feels like putting up a notice: "Lost, somewhere on the road between infancy and middle age, several valuable faculties. The finder will find something to his advantage."

I have no quarrel with Old Age. It should be looked upon as a reward of merit to be cheerfully striven for.

Nor do I object to the process of growth. It belongs to the order of nature. Growing is like falling,—it is all right so long as you keep on; the trouble comes when you stop.

What I object to is the fatalistic way in which people acquiesce in the arrest of their own mental development. Adolescence is exciting. All sorts of things are happening, and more are promised. Life rushes on with a sweet tumult. All things seem possible. It seems as if a lot of the unfinished business of the world is about to be put through with enthusiasm. Then, just as the process has had a fair start, some evil spirit intervenes and says: "Time's up! You've grown all you are to be allowed to. Now you must settle down,—and be quick about it! No more adolescing; you are adults!"

Poor adults! Nature seems to have been like an Indian giver, taking away the gifts as soon as they are received,—

The extinction of the early poetry and romance which gave beauty to the first view of these realities has often been accomplished by the most deliberate educational processes. There are two kinds of education,—that which educates, and that which eradicates. The latter is the easier and the more ancient method.

Wordsworth writes:—

But with this broad-sowing of the highest gifts it is astonishing how few come to maturity. I imagine that the Educational Man with the Hoe is responsible for a good deal of the loss. In his desire for clean culture he treats any sproutings of the faculty divine as mere weeds, if they come up between the rows.

If the Educational Man with the Hoe is to be feared, the Educational Man with the Pruning Shears is an equal menace.

There is an art, once highly esteemed, called topiary. The object of topiary when carried to excess was to take a tree, preferably a yew tree, and by careful trimming to make it look like something else, say a peacock standing under an umbrella. Curious effects could be produced in this way, leafy similitudes of birds and animals could be made so that the resemblance was almost as striking as if they had been cut out of gingerbread.

The object of educational topiary is to take a child, and, by careful pruning away of all his natural propensities, make of him a miniature grown-up. It is an interesting art, for it shows what can be done; the only wonder is why any one should want to do it. If you would see this art at its best, turn to Miss Edgeworth's "Frank," a book much admired in its day. Frank, to begin with, was a very likable little boy. If he was not made of the "sugar and spice and all things nice" that little girls are made of, he had all the more homely miscellaneous ingredients that little boys are made of. The problem of the careful father and mother was to take Frank and reduce him in the shortest possible time to the adult frame of mind. To this end they sought out any vagrant fancies and inquisitive yearnings and wayward adventurousness, and destroyed them. This slaughter of the innocents continued till Frank's mind was a model of propriety.

It was hard work, but there was a satisfaction in doing it thoroughly. The evening meal was transformed into a purgatorial discipline, and as he progressed from course to course Frank's mind was purified as by fire.

Here is one occasion. There was a small plumcake, and Frank was required to divide it so that each of the five persons present should have a just share. Frank began to cut the cake, but by a mistake cut it into six pieces instead of five.

This miscarriage of justice sent dismay into the hearts of his parents. They felt that he was at the parting of the ways. It was a great moral crisis, in which his character was to be revealed. What would Frank do with that sixth piece of cake? Perhaps—horrible thought!—he might eat it. From this crime he was saved only to fall into the almost equal sin of unscientific charity. In order to save trouble he proposed to give the extra piece to his father, and when questioned he could give no better reason than that he thought his father liked cake.

"'What right have you to give it to any of us? You were to judge about the size of the pieces, and you were to take care that we each have our just share. But you are going to give one of us twice as much as any of the others.'"

Justice triumphed. "Frank took the trouble to think, and he then cut the spare bit of cake into five equal parts, and he put these parts by the side of the five large pieces and gave one of the large and one of the small pieces to each person, and he then said: 'I believe I have divided the cake fairly now.' Everybody present said 'yes,' and everybody looked carefully at each of the shares, and there appeared exactly the same quantity in each share. So each person took a share, and all were satisfied."

That is to say, all were satisfied except Frank's mother. She was afraid that the family meal had not yielded its full educational value.

"'My dear Frank,' said his mother, 'as you have divided the cake so fairly, let us see how you will divide the sugar that was upon the top of the cake, and which is now broken and crumbled to pieces in the plate. We all like sugar; divide it equally amongst us.'

"'But this will be very difficult to do, mamma, because the pieces of sugar are of such different sizes and shapes. I do not know how I shall ever divide it exactly. Will it do if I do not divide it quite exactly, ma'am?'

"'No,' said his mother, 'I beg you will divide it quite exactly.'"

Frank gathered his fragments into five little mounds, and after carefully measuring their height, declared that they were equal.

"'They are of the same length and breadth, I acknowledge,' said the father, 'but they are not of the same thickness.'

"'Oh, thickness! I never thought of thickness.'

"'But you should have thought of it,' said his father."

At last Frank, seeing that there was no other way to satisfy the demands of distributive justice, went to the closet, and brought forth a pair of scales. "By patiently adding and taking away, he at last made them each of the same weight, and everybody was satisfied with the accuracy of the division."

This habit of accuracy, developed in the family meals, saved them from the temptation of wasting time in flippant conversation.

Miss Edgeworth's most striking plea for grown-up-edness versus childish curiosity was elaborated in her story of Frank and his orrery. Frank had read of an orrery in which the motions of the planets were shown by ingenious mechanism. Being a small boy, he naturally desired to make one.

For several days he almost forgot about his Roman History and Latin Grammar and the "Stream of Time," so absorbed was he in making his orrery. He had utilized his mother's tambour frame and knitting needles; and wires and thread held together his planets, which were made of worsted balls. It was a wonderful universe which Frank had created—as many great philosophers before him had created theirs—out of the inner consciousness. When it had been constructed to the best of his ability, the only question was, would his universe work,—would his planets go singing around the sun, or was there to be a crash of worlds? Frank knew no other way than to put it to the test of action, and he invited the family to witness the great experiment. He pointed out with solemn joy his worsted earth, moon, and planets, and predicted their revolutions according to his astronomy.

But the moment his father's eye rested upon it all, he saw that it was absurd.

He "pointed out the defects, the deficiencies, the mistakes,—in one word, the absurdities,—but he did not use that offensive word, for he was tender of Frank's feelings for his wasted work."

"'Well, papa,' said Mary, 'what is your advice to Frank?'

"'My first advice to you, Frank,' said his father, 'and indeed the condition upon which I now stay and give up my time to you is that you abide steadily by whatever resolution you now make, either quite to finish or quite to give up this orrery. If you choose to finish it you must give up for some time reading anything entertaining or instructive; you must give up arithmetic and history.'

"'And the "Stream of Time" and the lists?' said Mary.

"'Everything,' said his father, 'to the one object of making an orrery,—and when made as well as you possibly could with my assistance make it, observe that it will only be what others have repeatedly made before.... Master Frank will grow older, and when or why or how he made this orrery few will know or care, but all will see whether he has the knowledge which is necessary for a man and a gentleman to possess. Now choose, Frank.'"

Frank seized the orrery. "'Mary, bring your work basket, my dear,' said he.

"And he pulled off one by one, deliberately, the worsted sun, moon, earth, and stars, and threw them into the work basket which Mary held. Mary sighed, but Frank did not sigh. He was proud to give his father a proof of his resolution, and when he looked around he saw tears, but they were tears of pleasure, in his mother's eyes.

"'Are you sure yet that I can keep to my good resolution?'

"'I am not quite sure, but this is a good beginning,' said his father."

The aim of all this discipline was to make Frank just like his father. Now I am not saying anything against Frank's father. He was a truly good man, and well-to-do. Still, there have always been so many just like him that it would not have done much harm if Frank had been allowed to be a little different.

I cannot help thinking how different was a contemporary of his, Michael Faraday. Faraday had not any one to look after him in his youth, and to keep him from making unnecessary experiments. When he felt like making an experiment he did so. There was no one to tell him how it would come out, so he had to wait to see how it did come out. In this way he wasted a good deal of time that might have been spent in learning the things that every educated Englishman was expected to know, and he found out a good many things that the educated Englishman did not know,—this caused him to be always a little out of the fashion.

He let curiosity get the better of him, and when he was quite well on in years he would try to do things with pith-balls and electric currents, just as Frank tried to do things with worsted balls before his father showed him the folly of it. Some of his experiments turned out to be very useful, but most of them did not. Some of them only proved that what people thought they knew was not so. Faraday seemed to be just as much interested in this kind as in the other. He never learned to mind only his own business, but was always childishly inquisitive, so he never was so sure of things as was Frank's father.

Still, it takes all sorts of people to make up a world, and if a person cannot be like Frank's father, it is not so bad to be like Faraday.

Frank's father would have been shocked at Faraday's first introduction to the problems of metaphysical speculation. "I remember," he says, "being a great questioner when young." And one of his first questions was in regard to the seat of the soul. The question was suggested in this way. Being a small boy, and seeing the bars of an iron railing, he felt called upon to try experimentally whether he could squeeze through. The experiment was only a partial success. He got his head through, but he could not get it back. Then the physical difficulty suggested the great metaphysical question, "On which side of the fence am I?"

Frank's father would have said that that was neither the time nor the place for such speculation, and that the proper way to study philosophy was to wait till one could sit down in a chair and read it out of a book. But to Faraday the thoughts he got out of a book never seemed to be so interesting as those which came to him while he was stuck in the fence.

When Frank learned a few lines of poetry, he asked to be allowed to say them to his father.

"'I think,' said his mother, 'your father would like you to repeat them if you understand them all, but not otherwise.'"

Of course that was the end of any nonsense in that direction. If Frank was kept away from any poetry he could not altogether understand, he would soon be grown-up, so that he would not be tempted by any kind of poetry any more than his father was.

I am sure Frank's father would have disapproved of the way my Philosopher takes his poetry. His favorite poem is "A frog he would a-wooing go,"—especially the first quatrain. His analysis is very defective; he takes it as a whole. He likes the mystery of it, the quick action, the hearty, inconsequent refrain:—

This to him is poetry. Everything is lifted above the commonplace. The frog is no cousin to the vulgar hop-toad, whose presence in the garden, in spite of his usefulness, is an affront. He is a creature of romance; he is going a-wooing,—whatever that may be;—he only knows that it is something dangerous. And what a glorious line that is,—

It thrills him like the sound of a trumpet. And great, glorious Anthony Rowley! It needs no footnote to tell about him. It is enough to know that Rowley is a great, jovial soul, who, when the poetry is going to his liking, cries, "Heigh ho!"—and when Rowley cries, "Heigh ho!" my Philosopher cries, "Heigh ho!" too, just to keep him company. And so the poem goes on "with a rowly-powly, gammon and spinach," and nobody knows what it means. That's the secret.

Now I should not wish my Philosopher always to look upon "A frog he would a-wooing go" as the high-water mark of poetical genius; but I should wish him to bring to better poetry the same hearty relish he brings to this. The rule should be,—

When I see persons who upon the altar of education have sacrificed digestion, appetite, and health, I cannot but feel that something is wrong. I am reminded of an inscription which I found on a tombstone in a Vermont churchyard:—

Sometimes the good housewife has chosen carefully every ingredient for her cake, and has obeyed conscientiously the mandates of the cookbook. She has with Pharisaic scrupulosity taken four eggs and no more, and two cups of sugar, and two teaspoonfuls of sifted flour, and a pinch of baking powder, and a small teacupful of hot water. She has beaten the eggs very light and stirred in the flour only a little at a time. She has beaten the dough and added granulated sugar with discretion. She has resisted the temptation to add more flour when she has been assured that it would not be good for the cake. And then she has placed the work of her hands in a moderately hot oven, after which she awaits the consummation of her hopes. In due time she looks into the moderately hot oven, and finds only a sodden mass. Something has happened to the cake.

Such accidents happen in the best of attempts at education. The outcome is disappointing. The ingredients of the educational cake are excellent, and an immense amount of faithful work has been put into it, but sometimes it does not rise. As the old-fashioned housekeeper would say, it looks "sad."

It is easier to find fault with the result than to point out the remedy; but so long as such results frequently happen, the business of the home and the school is full of fascinating and disconcerting uncertainty. One thing is obvious, and that is that it is no more safe for the teacher than for the preacher to "banish Nature from his plan." Of course the reason we tried to banish Nature in the first place was not because we bore her any ill-will, but only because she was all the time interfering with our plans.

The fact is that Nature is not very considerate of our grown-up prejudices. She does not set such store by our dearly bought acquirements as we do. She is more concerned about "the process of becoming" than about the thing which we have already become. She is quite capable of taking the finished product upon which we had prided ourselves and using it as the raw material out of which to make something else. Of course this tries our temper. We do not like to see our careful finishing touches treated in that way.

Especially does Nature upset our adult notions about the relations between teaching and learning. We exalt the function of teaching, and seem to imagine that it might go on automatically. We sometimes think of the teacher as a lawgiver, and of the learner as one who with docility receives what is graciously given.

But the law to be understood and obeyed is the law of the learner's mind, and not that of the teacher's. The didactic method must be subordinated to the vital. Teaching may be developed into a very neat and orderly system, but learning is apt to be quite disorderly. It is likely to come by fits and starts, and when it does come it is very exciting.

Those who have had the good fortune in mature life to learn something have described the experience as being quite upsetting. They have found out something that they had never known before, and the discovery was so overpowering that they could not pay attention to what other people were telling them.

Kepler describes his sensations when he discovered the law of planetary motion. He could not keep still. He forgot that he was a sober, middle-aged person, and acted as if he were a small boy who had just got the answer to his sum in vulgar fractions. Nobody had helped him; he had found it out for himself; and now he could go out and play. "Let nothing confine me: I will indulge my sacred ecstasy. I will triumph over mankind.... If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I cannot help it." In fact, Kepler didn't care whether school kept or not.

Now in the first years of our existence we are in the way of making first-rate discoveries every day. No wonder that we find it so hard to keep still and to listen respectfully to people whose knowledge is merely reminiscent. Above all, it is difficult for us to keep our attention fixed on their mental processes when our minds make forty revolutions to their one.

There, for instance, is the Alphabet. Because the teacher told us about it yesterday she is grieved that we do not remember what she said. But so many surprising things have happened since then that it takes a little time for us to make sure that it's the same old Alphabet this morning that we had the other day. She is the victim of preconceived ideas on the subject, but our minds are open to conviction. Most of the letters still look unfamiliar; but when we really do learn to recognize Big A and Round O, we are disposed to indulge our sacred ecstasy and to "triumph over mankind."

If the teacher be a sour person who has long ago completed her education, she will take this occasion to chide us for not paying attention to a new letter that is just swimming into our ken. If, however, she is fortunate enough to be one who keeps on learning, she will share the triumph of our achievement, for she knows how it feels.

There is coming to be a greater sympathy between teachers and learners, as there is a clearer knowledge of the way the mind grows. But even yet one may detect a certain note of condescension in the treatment of the characteristics of early childhood. The child, we say, has eager curiosity, a myth-making imagination, a sensitiveness to momentary impressions, a desire to make things and to destroy things, a tendency to imitate what he admires. His mind goes out not in one direction, but in many directions. Then we say, in our solemn, grown-up way: "Why, that is just like Primitive Man, and how unlike Us! It has taken a long time to transform Primitive Man into Us, but if we start soon enough we may eradicate the primitive things before they have done much harm."

What we persistently fail to understand is that in these primitive things are the potentialities of all the most lasting satisfactions of later life.

Browning tells us how the boy David felt when he watched his sheep:—

All this is natural enough, we say, in a mere boy,—but he will outgrow it. But now and then some one does not outgrow it. He has become a man, and yet in his mind fancies are still rife. They throng upon him and crave expression. The things he sees, the people he meets, are all symbols to him, just as the one eagle which "wheeled slow as in sleep" was to the shepherd lad the symbol of a great unknown world. That which he sees of the actual world seems still to him only a strip "'twixt the hill and the sky,"—all the rest he imagines. He fills it with vivid color and absorbing life. He peoples it with his own thoughts.

We call such a person a poet; and if he is a very good poet, we call him a genius; and, in order to do him honor, we pretend that we cannot understand him, and we employ people to explain him to us. We treat his works as alcohol is treated in the arts. It is, as they say, "denaturized," that is, something is put into it that people don't like, so that they will not drink it "on the sly!"

Yet all the time the plain fact is that the poet is simply a person who is still in possession of all his early qualities. Wordsworth gave away the secret. He is a boy who keeps on growing. He is

Where others see a finished world, he sees all things as manifestations of a free power.

This ebbing and flowing mind with its ever-changing expression is the charm of early childhood. It is the charm of all genius as well. Turn to Shelley's "Skylark." The student of Child Psychology never found more images chasing one another through the mind. The fancies follow one another as rapidly as if Shelley had been only four years old. Frank's father would have been troubled at the lack of business-like grasp of the subject. What was the skylark like? It was

Then again, it was

It was

It was like a high-born maiden, like a rose, like a glow-worm, like vernal showers. The mind wanders off and sees visions of purple evenings and golden lightnings and white dawns and rain-awakened flowers. These were but hints of the reality of feeling, for

We know of religion—or at least we have often been told—that it is found in the purest form in the heart of a child, and that it consists in nurture and development of this early grace through all the years that may be allotted. The same thing is true of all that concerns the ideal life. The artist, the reformer, the inventor, the poet, the man of pure science, the really fruitful and original man of affairs,—these are the incorrigibles. They refuse to accept the hard-and-fast rules that are laid down for them. They insist upon finding time and room for activities that are not conceived of as tasks, but as the glorious play of their own faculties. They are full of a great, joyous impulse, and their work is but the expression of this impulse. They somehow have time for the unexpected. They see that which

The world is in their eyes ever fresh and sparkling. Life is full of possibilities. They see no reason to give up the habit of wonder. They never outgrow the need of asking questions, though the final answers do not come.

When to a person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It is the music of the