New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-01-06
NUMBER $50.

late dollars by trading in the flesh and blood of
his fellow creatures Did you ever know a child
to hoard halfpenee in rag or q teapot. to store
rinds Of mouldy cheese in secret, or to grow rich
in rotten apple parings' Did you ever hear a
child express an opinion that his friend ,roInrsv
must eternally be burnt, for not holding
exactly the same religious opinions as he,
Billy, did? Are children false swearers for
hire, liars for gain, parasites for profit Do
they begin to throw mud with their earliest
pothooks and hangers; do they libel their
nurse and vil1ify the doctor Men have their
playthings, it is true, and somewhat resemble
overgrown children in their purile eagerness for
blue ribbon, an embroidered garter, silver
cross dangling to a morsel Of red silk, OF gilt
walking stick. But will the child crawl in the
gutter ior the blue ribbon, OF walk barefoot
over broken bottles for the garter, or Ba1low in
the mire IT. 1or the gilt walking stick : / think
not. GIVe MIN string of red beads, A. uenny
trumpet, or stuck Of barley sugar, and he will
let the ribbons and garters 90 hano Trv 10
persuade, with your larger growth theory. one
of your smaller men to walk backwards down a
staircase before the King Of Lilliput Persuade
Colonel Fitz Tommy, aged four. to stand for Eve
hours on one leg behind the King OF LiIlinut,s
chair in his box at the Marionette Theatre
Try to induce little Lady Totsey, aged three. q
accede to the proposal Of being maid of honor to
her doll. Tommy and Totsey leave such TOM
fooleries to be monopolized by the larger chill
dren.
We have another school of automatic phiIoso-
pliers; who, abandoning the theorem that man
hood is but the enlarged identity of infancy
maintain that the child is an intellectual mega
tion-nothing at all physically or mentally.
The enlightened NJ. Fourier has denied children
the possession Of sex, calling them Neuters :;
and numbers of philosophers, with their attend
ant schools of disciples, have pleased themselves
by comparing the child's mind to blank sheet of
paper; innocent, but capable of receiving moral
oaligraphy good or bad. The mind of child is
like blank sheet Of Bath post? The sheet is
fair, hot-pressed, undefled BY blot or erasure
II you will, but it is not blank. In legible, in
etfaeeable characters thereupon, you NAV read
Faith and strong belief The child believes
without mental reservation; he does not re-
quire to be convinced: and if even, now and
then, some little struggling dawn of argu1nenta-
tive scepticism leads him to doubt flintIy. and
to ask how bogey can always manage to live In
the cellar among the Goals; how the black dog
can be on his shoulder, when he sees no do9s
there; why little boys should not ask questions,
and why the doctor should have brought baby
with him under his cloak-he is easily silenced
by the reply that good children always believe
what is told them; and that he must believe; SO
he does believe. His faith was but shaken for
moment. Belief was written too strongly in
ms little heart to be eradcated by his little logic
Would that when he comes to be a child of ar-
ger growth, forsooth, no subtle powers of rea-
soning should prompt him to dissect and anato-
mze his body of belief, till nothing but dry
bones remain, and it falls into pit Of indiffer-
ence and scepticism!
That child has MANNED child mind. who
does not believe implicitly in all the fairy tales
IN the existence of ogres, fairies, giants and
dwarfs. dare say thousands will read this
who have lain a-eed as children, awake, and
quaklng lest Hurley thrumbo, or the dread Giant
Blo.dybones, or the wolf that deyoured little
Red Riding Hood should enter unto them and
devour them. How many do | address who
have cherished one especial beanstalk in the
back garden as the very identical beanstalk up
which Jack clomb; and, in the slightness of
their childish vision, deemed that the stalk
grew up and up till it reached the wondrous
land-who, also, have firmly believed that the
huge pack the old Jew pedder carried carried
on his back was full of naughty children; that
from parsley beds, by means of silver SPADES.
marvellous fruits were procured I remember
having when very little child two strong le-
yers OF belief One was a very bright FIRE
place with very bright fender, very bright
hre-lrons, and a very bright colored rug before
it. lean see them now, all polished steel brass
and gay Worsted work-all of which | was
strictly forbidden to touch. The other was n
certain steel engraving in an album, land
scape with a lake, and swans and ladies with
parasols. / know the Fireplace now to have
been mere register stove with proper appurte-
nances, and the picture an engraving of the
Pare of st. Cloud after Turner; but asserer-
ave q e. that 1 hrmi y, heartily, uneompromsingly
believed then, that angels trumpets were like
those fre-irons, and that the gay rug, and the
pretty landscape was an accurate view if not an
actual peep into the Fairyland itself A little
dead sister Of mine used to draw what we called
fairyland on her slate. Twas after all /
dare say, but a vile childish scrawl, done over
half-smeared-out game of oughts and crosses,
with morsel Of slate pencil, two sticks a half
penny. Yet and she and all of us believed in
the tairyland she drew. We could pluck the
golden fruit on the boughs, and hear the silver
voiced birds, and see the fairy elves with their
queen (drawn very possibly with head like a
detormed oyster) dancing beneath the big round
moon upon the yellow sands. | am sure my
sister believed her doll was alive and peculiarly
susceptible to catching cold from draughts. /
am certain that never questioned the anima-
ted nature of the eight day clock on the stair
case that tickea so awfully in the hot silent
summer nights, and CRASHED his teeth sofright-
fully when his weights were moved NV aunt
promised every thing when her ship came home:
and L believed in the ship that was always
coming and never did come, without one spark
u scepticism. | believed in, and shuddered
1t, all the stories about that famous iu-
genile always held up to us as warning and
and alluded to as Sc there was once |
| little boy who') who was always doing the
hings he ought not to have done; and |
was, IN consequence, so perpetually being
whipped, caught in door jambs and suspended |
n the air BY meat-hooks, eaten up alive BY wild
1easts, burned to death in consequence of play
ng with Tommy at lighting straws,o that |
lave often wondered, SO many have been his
'erils, by food and field, that there should be
my of that little boy left He is alive though,
lever the less, and still implicitly believed in.
was under the necessity the other day of re-
ating horrible misadyenture of his to q little
ephew, showing how the little boy reaced over
dining table to put his digits into sugar dish,
nd came to signal shame by knocking over a
umbler and cutting his fingers herewith and
am happy to state that my aneedote was not
My received as genuine, but met with the ad-
itlonal criticism from my small nephew (his
wn fingers still sticking with the sugar. that it
served the little boy right" Faith and strong
elief! When children play at King or Queen,
Castle or School, they believe they are in
Gritty the persons they enact. We children of
larger growth yawn through our parts, re-
uiring great deal of prompting and waiting.
ow and then, for the applause; or, if we be Of
le audience, applaud listlessly, knowing the
lay to be deception.
Faith and strong belief How is the child to
lstinguish between the Witch of Endor and the
Witch of Edmonton; between Goliah whom