The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1867-03-09
Rocks of Fiction for Children.

/ BOOKS Oh
The London Quarterly Revie,o re-
marks: "The mind Of child" says a
wise thinker, sis like the acorn its
powers are folded up, they do not yet ap-
pear, but they are all there. The memo
ry, the Judgment, the invention, the feel
ing of right and wrong, are all in his mind,
even of an infant just born. One by one
they awake" His imagination-one of the
earliest powers that awakens within him,
even before he has passed through the mys-
teries of pap, and found out that being
naughty differs from being good-must be
fed. And fed it will be; either on the
make-b believe talk of his sister Mary nurs-
ing her doll, the idle stories of Betsy, the
nursemaid, when he is naughty about
"bogey" and the "black man" who car
ries off bad boys; or about the golden
fairy who is to give him tatiey and ginger
bread-when he is good. By-and-by, as he
grows older, his sister Mary reads to him,
and last he learns to read for himself, the
charming adventures Of the Fox and the
Crow" "Blly goat Gruf," "Sinbad the
Sailor" or Diamonds and Pearls" the
delicious history of "PusS in Boots" the
tragedy of "Blue Beard" the heroic
drama of "Jack the Giant Killer"
But whichever of these or hundred
other such delightful pages it be, his faith
is boundless. Happiest of mortals, for a
time at least, he can believe all he reads,
with the one happy proviso, that if it is
not true, it ought to be, ay, and is, because
his sister says so. While he is absorbed in
the misfortunes of the "Tin Soldier or
the "Ugly Duck" the breakfast bell is
unheard, and dinner unheeded /; he is feast
ing in Dreamland, on stirabont in the
| Giants Castle, or on those famous cheese
cakes of Queen SchehereZade, whore vital
charm was pepper. Not that he is forget
full of fact, even while in full pursuit of
fiction. Indeed, he is always burning for
facts. He wishes to know what glass is,
where Robinson Crusoe was buried, how
much gold it takes to make the inside Of a
watch, why the sun sets later in June than
December, what thunder is, if the end Of
the rainbow touches the ground, why firing
off a cannon once made man deaf, what
sago is, and thousand other things; which
papa, not being Q walking encyclopedias,
is not always able to tell him. And what
ever answer he can obtain, he is ready to
believe implicitly as long as he is dealt
fairly with.
"Yet, though st. George and the ORA
gon, Ali Baba and Robinson Crusoe, are in
one sense as true to him as the History OF
England, there are shades and degrees OF
belief in his own mind both as regards the
domain of fact and fiction which he can
not. perhaps define, and Of which he is
scarcely sensible, yet on which he uncon-
sciously acts; setting each narrative or
story, tale or fable, romance or chronicle,
In its own due place, and giving to each
his own royal favor and approval as good,
bad, or Indifferent. A child in good sound
health is insatiably curious, his thirst for
fiction OF one shape or other is quenchless,
and If he never asks questions, and cares
nothing for Jack and the Bean Stalk or the
Lad who went to the North Wind there
is a screw loose somewhere or other; he is
in morbid, unhealthy state Of body or