Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

to little men and women. A pine bucket full
is just as full as a hogshead. The ant has to tug just as hard to carry a
grain of corn as the Irishman does to carry a hod of bricks. You can see
the bran running out of Fanny's doll's arm, or the cat putting her foot
through Tom's new kite, without losing your equanimity; but their
hearts feel the pang of hopeless sorrow, or foiled ambition, or bitter
disappointment,--and the emotion is the thing in question, not the event
that caused it.
It is an additional disadvantage to children in their troubles that they
can never estimate the relations of things. They have no perspective.
All things are at equal distances from the point of sight. Life presents to
them neither foreground nor background, principal figure nor
subordinates, but only a plain spread of canvas on which one thing
stands out just as big and just as black as another. You classify your
_désagréments_. This is a mere temporary annoyance, and receives but
a passing thought. This is a life-long sorrow, but it is superficial; it will
drop off from you at the grave, be folded away with your cerements,
and leave no scar on your spirit. This thrusts its lancet into the secret
place where your soul abideth, but you know that it tortures only to
heal; it is recuperative, not destructive, and you will rise from it to
newness of life. But when little ones see a ripple in the current of their
joy, they do not know, they cannot tell, that it is only a pebble breaking
softly in upon the summer flow to toss a cool spray up into the white
bosom of the lilies, or to bathe the bending violets upon the green and
grateful bank. It seems to them as if the whole strong tide is thrust
fiercely and violently back, and hurled into a new channel, chasmed in
the rough, rent granite. It is impossible to calculate the waste of grief
and pathos which this incapacity causes. Fanny's doll aforesaid is left
too near the fire, and waxy tears roll down her ruddy cheeks, to the
utter ruin of her pretty face and her gay frock; and anon poor Fanny
breaks her little heart in moans and sobs and sore lamentation. It is
Rachel weeping for her children. I went on a tramp one May morning
to buy a tissue-paper wreath of flowers for a little girl to wear to a
May-party, where all the other little girls were expected to appear
similarly crowned. After a long and weary search, I was forced to

return without it. Scarcely had I pulled the bell, when I heard the quick
pattering of little feet in the entry. Never in all my life shall I lose the
memory of those wistful eyes that did not so much as look up to my
face, but levelled themselves to my hand, and filmed with bitter
disappointment to find it empty. I could see that the wreath was a very
insignificant matter. I knew that every little beggar in the street had
garlanded herself with sixpenny roses, and I should have preferred that
my darling should be content with her own silky brown hair; but my
taste availed her nothing, and the iron entered into her soul. Once a
little boy, who could just stretch himself up as high as his papa's knee,
climbed surreptitiously into the store-closet and upset the milk-pitcher.
Terrified, he crept behind the flour-barrel, and there Nemesis found
him, and he looked so charming and so guilty that two or three others
were called to come and enjoy the sight. But he, unhappy midget, did
not know that he looked charming; he did not know that his guilty
consciousness only made him the more interesting; he did not know
that he seemed an epitome of humanity, a Liliputian miniature of the
great world; and his large, blue, solemn eyes were filled with remorse.
As he stood there, silent, with his grave, utterly mournful face, he had
robbed a bank, he had forged a note, he had committed a murder, he
was guilty of treason. All the horror of conscience, all the shame of
discovery, all the unavailing regret of a detected, atrocious, but not
utterly hardened pirate tore his poor little innocent heart. Yet children
are seeing their happiest days!
These people--the aforesaid three-fourths of our acquaintance--lay great
stress on the fact that children are free from care, as if freedom from
care were one of the beatitudes of Paradise; but I should like to know if
freedom from care is any blessing to beings who don't know what care
is. You who are careful and troubled about many things may dwell on it
with