Atlantic Monthly | Page 3

are parents who love their children like wild beasts. It is a
passionate, blind, instinctive, unreasoning love. They have no more
intelligent discernment, when an outside difficulty arises with respect
to their children, than a she-bear. They wax furious over the most richly
deserved punishment, if inflicted by a teacher's hand; they take the part
of their child against legal authority; but, observe, this does not prevent
them from laying their own hands heavily on their children. The same
obstinate ignorance and narrowness that are exhibited without exist
within also. Folly is folly, abroad or at home. A man does not play the
fool out-doors and act the sage in the house. When the poor child
becomes obnoxious, the same unreasoning rage falls upon him. The
object of a ferocious love is the object of an equally ferocious anger. It
is only he who loves wisely that loves well.
The manner in which children's tastes are disregarded, their feelings
ignored, and their instincts violated is enough to disaffect one with
childhood. They are expected to kiss all flesh that asks them to do so.
They are jerked up into the laps of people whom they abhor. They say,
"Yes, Ma'am," under pain of bread and water for a week, when their
unerring nature prompts them to hurl out, "I won't, you hideous old
fright!" They are sent out of the room whenever a fascinating bit of
scandal is to be rehearsed, packed off to bed just as everybody is settled
down for a charming evening, bothered about their lessons when their
play is but fairly under way, and hedged and hampered on every side. It
is true that all this may be for their good, but, my dear dolt, what of that?
So everything is for the good of grownup people; but does that make us
contented? It is doubtless for our good in the long run that we lose our

pocketbooks, and break our arms, and catch a fever, and have our
brothers defraud a bank, and our houses burn down, and people steal
our umbrellas, and borrow our books and never return them. In fact, we
know that upon certain conditions all things work together for our good,
but, notwithstanding, we find some things a great bore; and we may
talk to our children of discipline and health by the hour together, and it
will never be anything but an intolerable nuisance to them to be
swooped off to bed by a dingy old nurse just as the people are
beginning to come, and shining silk, and floating lace, and odorous,
faint flowers are taking their ecstatic young souls back into the golden
days of the good Haroun al Raschid.
Even in this very point lies one of the miseries of childhood, that no
philosophy comes to temper their sorrow. We do not know why we are
troubled, but we know that there is some good, grand reason for it. The
poor little children do not know even that. They find trouble utterly
inconsequent and unreasonable. The problem of evil is to them
absolutely incapable of solution. We know that beyond our horizon
stretches the infinite universe. We grasp only one link of a chain whose
beginning and end is eternity. So we readily adjust ourselves to mystery,
and are content. We apply to everything inexplicable the test of partial
view, and maintain our tranquillity. We fall into the ranks, and march
on, acquiescent, if not jubilant. We hear the roar of cannon and the
rattle of musketry. Stalwart forms fall by our side, and brawny arms are
stricken. Our own hopes bite the dust, our own hearts bury their dead;
but we know that law is inexorable. Effect must follow cause, and there
is no happening without causation. So, knowing ourselves to be only
one small brigade of the army of the Lord, we defile through the passes
of this narrow world, bearing aloft on our banner, and writing ever on
our hearts, the divine consolation, "What thou knowest not now thou
shalt know hereafter." This is an unspeakable tranquillizer and
comforter, of which, woe is me! the little ones know nothing. They
have no underlying generalities on which to stand. Law and logic and
eternity are nothing to them. They only know that it rains, and they will
have to wait another week before they go a-fishing; and why couldn't it
have rained Friday just as well as Saturday? and it always does rain or
something when I want to go anywhere,--so, there! And the frantic
flood of tears comes up from outraged justice as well as from

disappointed hope. It is the flimsiest of all possible arguments to say
that their sorrows are trifling, to talk about their little cares and trials.
These little things are great