MARCH 253 



its occupations, shared at most by one of our own age — 

 a sister, a brother, or a friend. The elders appear from 

 time to time as the di ex machind of our existence, for 

 redress or for deliverance. We remember them as 

 teachers, as purveyors of pleasure, often as separators 

 of companions and terminators of delights, but rarely as 

 sharers in our most exquisite amusements. " What will 

 mother say?" had about it a half -gleeful anticipation of 

 disapproval, seldom destined to be unfulfilled ; and that 

 not because of any severity on the part of the parent, 

 but from a radical want of sympathy with the first prin- 

 ciples of enjoyment. Wet, dirt, fatigue, a very little 

 danger, late hours — all were in themselves positive 

 pleasures, and with some this flavour lingers till far on 

 in life ; but, as a rule, you cannot depend upon a grown- 

 up person not really preferring to be warm and dull and 

 dry, to any discomforts you can offer him. 



' Then what a strange twilight reigns in children's 

 minds ! What dim mysterious associations of words 

 and phrases lost to us through the garish light of gram- 

 mar, or of a clear and positive orthography ! Now and 

 then across the years comes a memory of difficulties 

 never guessed at by anyone but ourselves. How sur- 

 prising it was to hear of people with broken arms or 

 legs, which members nevertheless were not visibly sev- 

 ered from their persons nor lying on the floor, as in the 

 more rational world of doUdom ! And what mysterious 

 and terrible fate did "being killed on the spot " signify? 

 What spot, or, rather, which spot? for we invariably 

 referred it to some bodily blemish of our own. 



' Holy Writ, of course, offered countless problems to 

 the imagination, and so did the services of the church. 

 The collects were fraught with a meaning their authors 

 never dreamed of. ' ' The ills which the devil Orman 

 worketh against us" referred, we knew well enough, to 



