But Thomas Traherne said it much better three hundred years ago. The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels.
Children feel a natural kinship with all living things.
It is we adults who alienate them. Perhaps in Animals of the Bible I have taken a liberty in introducing children into the picture of the family dogs. But I felt sure that, though no children were mentioned in the text, where the dogs were, even in those ancient days, there the children would be also, and helping them to more crumbs than those which normally fell from their master's table. For there is a special link in all ages between children and animals, and this is, of course, why there are so many animal stories written for them. It never occurred to me to make a book of the animal stories of the Bible.