1 6 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



most tyrannical. Its limitations and restrictions 

 follow us and harass us wherever we are and what- 

 ever we do, and remind us at every turn that we are 

 slaves. It intrudes upon us in most unreasonable 

 and capricious particulars. We may not wear com- 

 fortable clothing, must swelter in the heat, be sod- 

 den in the rain, and pinched and frozen in the cold. 

 It follows us with its requisitions from the cradle to 

 the grave, and snatches at our fleeing spirits for a 

 further dole. 



Our little boys do not forget. They are epit- 

 omes of the early life of the race, as their whole 

 lives will, in old age, be handbooks of the history 

 of man, each individual volume complete in itself. 

 The charming little barbarians do not forget. In 

 no way can they be more delighted than by permit- 

 ting them to build a mimic camp-fire, a thing which 

 has no attraction except curiosity for any other 

 creature that creeps or flies. To the boy it is a 

 resistless attraction and an unfailing delight. 

 Wordsworth finds expression for this fact in the 

 higher realms of being when he says: 



" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 



The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

 Hath elsewhere had its setting, 



And Cometh from afar: 

 Not in entire forgetfulness. 

 And not in utter nakedness, 

 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

 From God, who is our home." 



