Atlantic Monthly

Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63,
January, 1863

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63,
January,
1863, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 A Magazine Of
Literature, Art, And Politics
Author: Various
Release Date: May 21, 2004 [EBook #12412]
Language: English
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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF
LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XI.--JANUARY, 1863.--NO. LXIII.

HAPPIEST DAYS.
Long ago, when you were a little boy or a little girl,--perhaps not so
very long ago, either,--were you never interrupted in your play by being
called in to have your face washed, your hair combed, and your soiled
apron exchanged for a clean one, preparatory to an introduction to Mrs.
Smith, or Dr. Jones, or Aunt Judkins, your mother's early friend? And
after being ushered in to that august presence, and made to face a
battery of questions which were either above or below your capacity,
and which you consequently despised as trash or resented as insult, did
you not, as you were gleefully vanishing, hear a soft sigh breathed out
upon the air,--"Dear child, he is seeing his happiest days"? In the
concrete, it was Mrs. Smith or Dr. Jones speaking of you. But going
back to general principles, it was Commonplacedom expressing its
opinion of childhood.
There never was a greater piece of absurdity in the world. I thought so
when I was a child, and now I know it; and I desire here to brand it as
at once a platitude and a falsehood. How ever the idea gained currency
that childhood is the happiest period of life, I cannot conceive. How
ever, once started, it kept afloat is equally incomprehensible. I should
have supposed that the experience of every sane person would have
given the lie to it. I should have supposed that every soul, as it burst
into flower, would have hurled off the vile imputation. I can only
account for it by recurring to Lady Mary Wortley Montague's statistics,
and concluding that the fools are three out of four in every person's
acquaintance.
I for one lift up my voice emphatically against the assertion, and do
affirm that I think childhood is the most mean and miserable portion of
human life, and I am thankful to be well out of it. I look upon it as no
better than a mitigated form of slavery. There is not a child in the land
that can call his soul, or his body, or his jacket his own. A little soft
lump of clay he comes into the world, and is moulded into a vessel of
honor or a vessel of dishonor long before he can put in a word about the
matter. He has no voice as to his education or his training, what he shall
eat, what he shall drink, or wherewithal he shall be clothed. He has to

wait upon the wisdom, the whims, and often the wickedness of other
people. Imagine, my six-foot friend, how you would feel to be obliged
to wear your woollen mittens when you desire to bloom out in
straw-colored kids, or to be buttoned into your black waistcoat when
your taste leads you to select your white, or to be forced under your
Kossuth hat when you had set your heart on your black beaver: yet this
is what children are perpetually called on to undergo. Their wills are
just as strong as ours and their tastes are stronger, yet they have to bend
the one and sacrifice the other; and they do it under pressure of
necessity. Their reason is not convinced; they are forced to yield to
superior power; and of all disagreeable things in the world, the most
disagreeable is not to have your own way. When you are grown up, you
wear a print frock because you cannot afford a silk, or because a silk
would be out of place,--you wear India-rubber overshoes because your
polished patent-leather would be ruined by the mud; and your
self-denial is amply compensated by the reflection of superior fitness or
economy. But a child has no such reflection to console him. He puts on
his battered, gray old shoes because you make him; he hangs up his
new trousers and goes back into his detestable girl's-frock because he
will be punished if he