Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1882-05-17
Books for Children.

1t has become trite to say that children are
the most formidable Of all audiences; but why
are they so? Because they are interested in
nothing that does not appeal directly to the ele-
mental passions of the soul; because they will
not endure padding; because you cannot hum
bug them with what you have acquired in the
way OF knowledge; they care not pin the more
for you If you are professor Of all the languages.
sciences and vanitles of the world; you are
reduced to engaging them with your naked
mother-wit or not at all. Because they know
and care nothing about literature, have no re-
spect for literary traditions, but an Unsuitable
appetite for things, if they be the right kind
OF things, because they know nothing of COM
parison. and will not listen to you because yeu
assure them that, stupid though you are, some
other story-teller IS vet more stupid. Because,
in short. the man who tells stories to children
must be himself child and yet wiser and of
more experience than the great majority of
men. If he cannot combine these two ex-
tremities OF the great circle of human life let
him hold his peace when children are near
1t is true that children, nowadays, are
supposed to read terrible mass of hybrid
enorlnity-moral, useful. dogmatical, in
structive and what nOt-all which does them
Just as much good as if they were to be fed on
tobacco and spirits and wedding cake instead
of on bread and milk and fresh air. What
Child needs is not the precocious Gull
tivation of faculties which belong to mature
boast OF, but the fostering and announcement
of that Invaluable and only too evanescent wis.,
dOm-there is no other name for (which chill
dren are born into, which, once lost, can never
be recovered, and the poor, scattered vestiges
OF which become. In later life, the precious soil
wherein only the seeds Of poetry and the higher
hunor can terminate 1t is, however, unfOrtu-
nately true that our children are lowing to the
prevailing Incidence, Officiousness, and lack of
Imagination OF their elders) compelled to have
resort to a mass of mental nutriment Of quail
lty SO indigestible and heterogeneous that, were
it not for some chance occasional child in re-
mote districts who escapes being taught how to
read, and would rot understand what is meant
by morality and eternal punishment-werei it not
for few odd fugitives of the school board
like these 1t would become a serious question
where our next generation of social and politi-
cal refOrmers was to come from. We are ap-
pallingly reckless of our children. They are the
only children we shall have and they will have
put on" opportunity of being children; if they
mis- hat opportunity they viii never be of any
value to God or man. And yet we are doing
our best, from the moment they are able to dis
tinguish mamma" from ''papa," to make little
cut-and-dried mOralists, grammarians, linguists.
natl -ematicians, and. in short, premature men,
tally dyspeptic prigs. out of them. We have no
right to do this, for the children do not
belong to US, though they have been 30 ILL
advised as to throw themselves, like Bona
parte, on oura generosity. History records
what became Of Bonaparte, and, though our
children have not devastated Europe and been
beaten at Waterloo, we shut them up all the
same in the st. Helena of our formulas and pre-
judices. and 60 to sleep, forgetful that they are
our pOsterity and the worlds future Let us.
while there is yet time, change St. Helena into
Ell Dorado. And-to return to the remark with
which We began this paragraph-let us humbly
and repentently recognize the fact that If fairy
stories are commonly held to be the peculiar
pasturage of children it is because the deeper
spiritual discernment of mankind perceives that
the best literature which the human mind has
produced must of necessity be addressed chiefly
so those human beings who are best qualified to
appreciate it. And those beings are children
The Spectator.