Far Away and Long Ago | Page 7

never punished us, and never, unless we went too far in our domestic
dissensions or tricks, even chided us. This, I am convinced, is the right
attitude for parents to observe, modestly to admit that nature is wiser
than they are, and to let their little ones follow, as far as possible, the
bent of their own minds, or whatever it is they have in place of minds.
It is the attitude of the sensible hen towards her ducklings, when she
has had frequent experience of their incongruous ways, and is satisfied
that they know best what is good for them; though, of course, their
ways seem peculiar to her, and she can never entirely sympathize with
their fancy for going into water. I need not be told that the hen is after
all only step-mother to her ducklings, since I am contending that the
civilized woman--the artificial product of our self-imposed
conditions--cannot have the same relation to her offspring as the
uncivilized woman really has to hers. The comparison, therefore, holds
good, the mother with us being practically step-mother to children of
another race; and if she is sensible, and amenable to nature's teaching,
she will attribute their seemingly unsuitable ways and appetites to the
right cause, and not to a hypothetical perversity or inherent depravity of

heart, about which many authors will have spoken to her in many
books:
But though they wrote it all by rote They did not write it right.
Of all the people outside of the domestic circle known to me in those
days, two individuals only are distinctly remembered. They were
certainly painted by memory in very strong unfading colours, so that
now they seem to stand like living men in a company of pale phantom
forms. This is probably due to the circumstance that they were
considerably more grotesque in appearance than the others, like old
Pechicho among our dogs--all now forgotten save him.
One was an Englishman named Captain Scott, who used to visit us
occasionally for a week's shooting or fishing, for he was a great
sportsman. We were all extremely fond of him, for he was one of those
simple men that love and sympathize with children; besides that, he
used to come to us from some distant wonderful place where
sugar-plums were made, and to our healthy appetites, unaccustomed to
sweets of any description, these things tasted like an angelic kind of
food. He was an immense man, with a great round face of a
purplish-red colour, like the sun setting in glory, and surrounded with a
fringe of silvery- white hair and whiskers, standing out like the petals
round the disc of a sunflower. It was always a great time when Captain
Scott arrived, and while he alighted from his horse we would surround
him with loud demonstrations of welcome, eager for the treasures
which made his pockets bulge out on all sides. When he went out
gunning he always remembered to shoot a hawk or some
strangely-painted bird for us; it was even better when he went fishing,
for then he took us with him, and while he stood motionless on the
bank, rod in hand, looking, in the light-blue suit he always wore, like a
vast blue pillar crowned with that broad red face, we romped on the
sward, and revelled in the dank fragrance of the earth and rushes.
I have not the faintest notion of who Captain Scott was, or of what he
was ever captain, or whether residence in a warm climate or hard
drinking had dyed his broad countenance with that deep magenta red,
nor of how and when he finished his earthly career; for when we moved
away the huge purple-faced strange-looking man dropped for ever out
of our lives; yet in my mind how beautiful his gigantic image looks!
And to this day I bless his memory for all the sweets he gave me, in a

land where sweets were scarce, and for his friendliness to me when I
was a very small boy.
The second well-remembered individual was also only an occasional
visitor at our house, and was known all over the surrounding country as
the Hermit, for his name was never discovered. He was perpetually on
the move, visiting in turn every house within a radius of forty or fifty
miles; and once about every seven or eight weeks he called on us to
receive a few articles of food--enough for the day's consumption.
Money he always refused with gestures of intense disgust, and he
would also decline cooked meat and broken bread. When hard biscuits
were given him, he would carefully examine them, and if one was
found chipped or cracked he would return it, pointing out the defect,
and ask for a sound one in return. He