Atlantic Monthly | Page 5

great satisfaction, but children don't find it delightful by any
means. On the contrary, they are never so happy as when they can get a
little care, or cheat themselves into the belief that they have it. You can
make them proud for a day by sending them on some responsible
errand. If you will not place care upon them, they will make it for
themselves. You shall see a whole family of dolls stricken down
simultaneously with malignant measles, or a restive horse evoked from
a passive parlor-chair. They are a great deal more eager to assume care

than you are to throw it off. To be sure, they may be quite as eager to
be rid of it after a while; but while this does not prove that care is
delightful, it certainly does prove that freedom from care is not.
Now I should like, Herr Narr, to have you look at the other side for a
moment: for there is a positive and a negative pole. Children not only
have their full share of misery, but they do not have their full share of
happiness; at least, they miss many sources of happiness to which we
have access. They have no consciousness. They have sensations, but no
perceptions. We look longingly upon them, because they are so
graceful, and simple, and natural, and frank, and artless; but though this
may make us happy, it does not make them happy, because they don't
know anything about it. It never occurs to them that they are graceful.
No child is ever artless to himself. The only difference he sees between
you and himself is that you are grown-up and he is little. Sometimes I
think he does have a dim perception that when he is sick it is because
he has eaten too much, and he must take medicine, and feed on
heartless dry toast, while, when you are sick, you have the dyspepsia,
and go to Europe. But the beauty and sweetness of children are entirely
wasted on themselves, and their frankness is a source of infinite
annoyance to each other. A man enjoys himself. If he is handsome, or
wise, or witty, he generally knows it, and takes great satisfaction in it;
but a child does not. He loses half his happiness because he does not
know that he is happy. If he ever has any consciousness, it is an
isolated, momentary thing, with no relation to anything antecedent or
subsequent. It lays hold on nothing. Not only have they no perception
of themselves, but they have no perception of anything. They never
recognize an exigency. They do not salute greatness. Has not the
Autocrat told us of some lady who remembered a certain momentous
event in our Revolutionary War, and remembered it only by and
because of the regret she experienced at leaving her doll behind, when
her family was forced to fly from home? What humiliation is this!
What an utter failure to appreciate the issues of life! For her there was
no revolution, no upheaval of world-old theories, no struggle for
freedom, no great combat of the heroisms. All the passion and pain, the
mortal throes of error, the glory of sacrifice, the victory of an idea, the
triumph of right, the dawn of a new era,--all, all were hidden from her
behind a lump of wax. And what was true of her is true of all her class.

Having eyes, they see not; with their ears they do not hear. The din of
arms, the waving of banners, the gleam of swords, fearful sights and
great signs in the heavens, or the still, small voice that thrills when
wind and fire and earthquake have swept by, may proclaim the coming
of the Lord, and they stumble along, munching bread-and-butter. Out in
the solitudes Nature speaks with her many-toned voices, and they are
deaf. They have a blind sensational enjoyment, such as a squirrel or a
chicken may have, but they can in no wise interpret the Mighty Mother,
nor even hear her words. The ocean moans his secret to unheeding ears.
The agony of the underworld finds no speech in the mountain-peaks,
bare and grand. The old oaks stretch out their arms in vain. Grove
whispers to grove, and the robin stops to listen, but the child plays on.
He bruises the happy buttercups, he crushes the quivering anemone,
and his cruel fingers are stained with the harebell's purple blood.
Rippling waterfall and rolling river, the majesty of sombre woods, the
wild waste of wilderness, the fairy spirits of sunshine, the sparkling
wine of June, and the golden languor of October, the child passes by,
and a dipper of blackberries, or a pocketful of chestnuts, fills and
satisfies his horrible little soul. And in face