The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1920-11-01
THOSE "SMART" KIDS.

New York Sun: We are glad to re-
port. for the benefit OF all who love
the precocious and the sweetly pref
ty. that "The Story Of Opal which
engaged the attention OF some OF the
readers of the Atlantic for several
months, is now in book form. The
Atlantic Monthly press has made a
handsome volume OF it, and there is
an introduction in which Mr.. Ellery
Sedgwick tells how he came to learn
from Miss Opal Whiteley that she
once kept diary and how he di-
yined, upon being told that she had
torn it rp, that she had preserved the
fragments.
It is not necessary either to quar-
rel or to agree with the suspicious
writer in the English Teachers
World who denounces the Opal book
as the work Of "a calculating adult
who knows the things the world
loves to think about children and
who has played sknlfully upon the
worlds love for child" When the
Atlantic vouches for the authenticity
of what it calls "the journal of an
understanding heart" who on this
side of the herring pond shall be
wicked enough to doubt? Sometimes
the demon of unbelief will gnaw at
the readers mind, just as it did when
the adventures of Ethel Monticue
we're barred to him, but it should be
instantly exercised.
IF YOU read 1.-THE Story of Opal
and are surprised that while the
child spells correctly the name OF
Mendelssohn but writes one or her
early studies as fiziologie, please
do not suggest that any child you
know in attempting to spell "phys1-
ology'' would have worked in the in
trodnctory "ph" even If all the rest
of the word went wrong Opal is not
any child you know. Far, FAR better
it is to shun critical analysis and
reyel in the authors sympathetic
treatment of Aphrodite the pig, Brave
Horatius the dog, Sophocles Diogenes
the lamb and the numerous other ami
nal and vegetable pets about which
Opal printed so much in her diary
that it took her nine months to patch
the fragments together for the At
lartic printers.
OF course there Is no harm IN
OpaIs diary, and a great many per-
sons will find pleasure in it and see
the opening Of marvellous young
mind" The danger in ''The Story of
Opal" and "The Young Visiters' and
the other evidences of precocity that
are sure to follow is that impression
able parents may be inclined to ex-
pect too much from their children.
think of what Daisy Ashford did in
her tender years" says Father to
Mother, land OF the marvellous light
shed upon child psychology by Opa,
Whitely-whilo our Johnny sits out
there on the curb talking about Babe
Ruth and rever writes anything ex-
cept what the teacher makes him
COPY from a book" The wise mother
will recall Aaron Burr, who was fit
to enter Princeton at the age of IL
and see what he came to! Or she
will speak of the Harvard prodigy
who mastered more intellectual stuff
at IL years than would fill DIT. Eliot's
fiye-foot shetland was not heard OF
again until he was arrested for car
rying a red flag.
So whatever attitude the parent
reader may adopt toward Opars
diary, let him or her not carry ad,
niration for the author into the
nursery. In year Opal will be for
gotten ard the folk who like to mar.
vel at the source rather than the