The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-01-21
THE CHILD IN FICTION
es.Democrat.


 The most errant butterfly may be caught and pinned to the wall, and the cunning of the taXidermist may give to the dead body of the humming bird some semblance of that trcnIu- lous, pulsating vitality it once owned ; but rare is the skill that can transtiX the soul of the child upon printed page. How delicate q task it Is to set down, ill black and white, those little stammering words;
 "sweetly half said and tenderiy half guessed" and in achieving truth and pathos to steer clear of bathos. Most people who have arrived at years of discre- tion write of child life as though they had never been children. Too often the result of their efforts makes us think of the infant phenomenon of the modern stage, with thin legs and high pitched, sing song voice, who is brought forward for the purpose of effecting a reconciliation between "my dear papa and my dear mamma" Who will surpass, in fiction, the true story of sir Walter Scott's Pet Marjorie, so we'll told by the author of "Rab and His Friends?" Her history was hardly begun before Death wrote his stern "Finis :" and it is between a smile and sigh that we read of this tiny creature, so precocious, yet re- taining the charm of babyhoot., with her perusal of the "Newgate Calendar" and that irresistible, misspelled diary, and the wonderful poems.
 A phrenologist would say that the bump of phSlopros enitiveness is not largely developed in the case of Henry James and his disciples, judging from Daisy Mittei's unpleasant younger brother, and that strange little gnome in Lathrop's Newport" who goes about clasping his aching brow, and inquiring. 'Ain't we the best society ?" reminding the reader of "the en- feebled old dotard of five" who figures in "Bab Ballads" But all American writers do not display like spirit. Marred by exaggeration and over strained sentiment as ''The Story of Avis" is, Miss Phelps redeems herself in the portrait of the dear little man who hammers with his chubby fists, twenty times day, upon the door of his mothers studio, to ask, "Mamma, do you love me best of my little sister, or my little sister best of mel" Some of Craddock's most felicitous touches are expended upon the delineation of childhood. Sister Eudory seems rather a delightful reality than literary ere ation, on the memorable occasion when she is moved, in defense of her brother, to "hit Mts' Purcine departing, at length, consoled, with an indiscrimi- nate tumble of kitten, hot roasted po- tatoes and eggs in her apron. F.. H. House has entered new field in painting for us the innocently quaint and lovely Tone Sonto, the ''child of Japan"
 The children depicted bv the viva cious and prolific "Duchess" are about as real as paper dolls; while those who appear in Rhoda Broughton's novels are always rude, greedy and unpleas- antly sophisticated. They seem to exist solely for the purpose of asking unanswerable questions, telling un- f1attering home truths, and being pro- miscuously shaken and slapped by their parents aud guardians. Ouida goes step farther, and makes her juvenile characters talk not only like moadaiaes but demi- paondaiaes. It is pleasant to turn from such overdressed puppits to Charles Reade's comical urchin, Regiaald, who runs away from home, partly through desire to visit the North Pole, and partly goaded to this rash act by the too frequent appearance of "rice puddens' in his nursery bill of fare. Of the latter grievance, he says, in a letter left for his sorrowing parents, "There filthy there abommAnabel."
 It is strange fact that when Charles Dickens went deliberately to work to describe a child, the effect