The Caxtons | Page 7

his heir sprawling on the grass and
plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother's voice rose
merrily, laughing at the child's glee.
"I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see," said Mr.
Squills.
Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived
and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pot-hooks, under the
joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins. This last was one of an
old race fast dying away,--the race of old, faithful servants; the race of
old, tale-telling nurses. She had reared my mother before me; but her
affection put out new flowers for the new generation. She was a
Devonshire woman; and Devonshire women, especially those who have
passed their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious. She
had a wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was
erudite in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are
traced to a common fountain,--Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio,
Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally familiar,
under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh and the
hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an
examination in those venerable classics I could have taken honors!
My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be
derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father
thereon.
"My love," answered my father, in that tone of voice which always
puzzled even my mother to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest,
"in all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic

significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a treatise to
prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of the human
understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of the Egyptian
priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship rendered at Thebes
and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they make both
religious symbols and elaborate mummies."
"My dear Austin," said my mother, opening her blue eyes, "you don't
think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!"
"My dear Kitty," answered my father, "you don't think, when you were
good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine
things I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless
creature who was happy enough to please your fancy. By and by you
discovered that I was no worse for all the quartos that have
transmigrated into ideas within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to
myself. If Sisty, as you call the child (plague on that unlucky
anachronism! which you do well to abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if
Sisty can't discover all the wisdom of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then?
Puss in Boots is harmless, and it pleases his fancy. All that wakes
curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all that pleases the fancy now, turns
hereafter to love or to knowledge. And so, my dear, go back to the
nursery."
But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to
suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so
careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart,
indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became
more sensibly aware that a father's eye was upon me. I distinctly
remember one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in
my infant life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that
calm great soul.
My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over
his eyes (it was summer), and his book on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful
delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill
of an upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments
spluttered up round my father's legs. Sublime in his studies as

Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read,--Impavidum ferient
ruince!
"Dear, dear!" cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, "my poor
flower-pot that I prized so much! Who could have done this? Primmins,
Primmins!"
Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the
summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.
"Oh!" said my mother, Mournfully, "I would rather have lost all the
plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,--I would rather
the best tea-set were broken! The poor geranium I reared myself, and
the dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me my last
birthday! That naughty child must have done this!"
Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father,--why, I know not,
except that very talkative social persons are