The children who have to think of their clothes before playing with
the dogs, digging in the sand, helping the stableman, working in the
shed, building a bridge, or weeding the garden, never get half their
legitimate enjoyment out of life. And unhappy fate, do not many of us
have to bring up children without a vestige of a dog, or a sand heap,
or a stable, or a shed, or a brook, or a garden! Conceive, if you can,
a more difficult problem than giving a child his rights in a city
flat. You may say that neither do we get ours: but bad as we are,
we are always good enough to wish for our children the joys we miss
ourselves.
Thrice happy is the country child, or the one who can spend a part of
his young life among living things, near to Nature's heart How blessed
is the little toddling thing who can lie flat in the sunshine and
drink in the beauty of the "green things growing," who can live among
the other little animals, his brothers and sisters in feathers and
fur; who can put his hand in that of dear mother Nature, and learn his
first baby lessons without any meddlesome middleman; who is cradled in
sweet sounds "from early morn to dewy eve," lulled to his morning nap
by hum of crickets and bees, and to his night's slumber by the sighing
of the wind, the plash of waves, or the ripple of a river.
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