They would like to share all our pleasures; keep the
same hours, eat the same food; but they are met on every side with the
seemingly impertinent piece of dogmatism, "It isn't good for little
boys," or "It isn't nice for little girls."
Robert Louis Stevenson shows, in his "Child's Garden of Verses," that
he is one of the very few people who remember and appreciate this
phase of childhood. Could anything be more deliciously real than these
verses?
"In winter I get up at night,
And dress by yellow candle light:
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day;
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
And hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me on the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
That when the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
I have to go to bed by day?"
Mr. Hopkinson Smith has written a witty little monograph on this
relation of parents and children. I am glad to say, too, that it is
addressed to fathers,--that "left wing" of the family guard, which
generally manages to retreat during any active engagement, leaving the
command to the inferior officer.
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