“in age to wish for youth is full as vain,
as for a youth to turn a child again.”
denham.
it is to be supposed that there are few men and women who do not occasionally look back on the days of their childhood with regret. the responsibilities of age are sometimes so pressing, its duties so irksome, that the most contented mind must travel back with envy to a period when responsibilities were not, and duties were merely the simple rules of a pleasing game, the due keeping of which was sure to entail proportionate reward.
and this being so, and the delights of the golden age always being kept in the back of our mind, as a favourable contrast to the present state of things, it is hardly p. 226surprising that in course of time, the memory of the earlier days of our life is apt to become gilded and resplendent, and very unlike the simple, up and down april existence that was really ours. the dull wet days, the lessons and the tears are all forgotten; it is the sunshine and the laughter and the play that remain. but it by no means follows that such hoarding up of pleasant memories tends to make a man discontented with his lot; it would rather seem that they impart something of their good humour to the mind in which they are stored, so that the sunshine of former jolly days returns to yield an aftermath of more sober joy, and to help to light out our later years with a becoming glow of cheerfulness. and on the other hand you will find that an habitually discontented man will be quite unwilling to own that the days of his youth, at all events, were happy.
there is no doubt that the most natural result of this glorification of our own childhood is a liking for children. seeing them naughty or good, at work or at play, our minds straightway step back through the p. 227span of years to greet a little one who behaved in just such a way; and the sympathetic understanding thus engendered, shows us the surest way, both to manage children of our own, and to make friends with those of others.
it is impossible to conceive a man, bearing his own childhood in mind, behaving unjustly or unkindly to a child. for seeing that we perceive in every child a more or less distinct reflection of our own child nature, such conduct would be something suicidal. how much of the child is still contained within our mature mind is difficult to judge—some people have much more than others. and it is these people who can peel off their experience and knowledge like an athlete stripping for a race, and who can step out to play not only with the same spirit and excitement, but even with the same mental processes as a child; these are they who can readily obtain admission into the sacred circle of child games, and who can fancy, for just as long as the game lasts, that they are once more wandering in that fairy garden from whose easy paths p. 228of laughter and innocence our aching feet are banished for ever.
here, then, is the cure for this nostalgia of childhood, which seizes the best of us from time to time, and causes us to batter vainly at fast-locked nursery doors, or to look sadly at the gaudy toyshops, robbed by the cynical years of their fit halo. when this melancholy falls on us, and we who are respectable forty feel like senile eighty, let us forthwith seek the company of little children, and so elude the fatal black dog. “sophocles did not blush to play with children.” why should we? and for those who are not fortunate enough to number in their acquaintance children of the right age and humour, here, as the cookery books say, is a tried receipt.
take a copy of mr. barrie’s “little white bird,” together with a large bag of sweets, and sally to the park. the rest depends on your address, but for a shy man a puppy will prove an invaluable aid to the making of acquaintances. and if, as has happened to ourselves, at the end of a delightful afternoon a little lady of some seven years should, p. 229abjuring words, fling her arms round your neck and press an uncommonly sticky pair of lips on a cheek which, till that moment we will suppose better acquainted with the razor, why then, if not sooner, you will have learnt that the whole philosophy of growing old is the increasing pleasure you can take in the society of the young; this, once determined, a vista of most charming days lies before you, and sorrow for a nursery cupboard that has gone into the ewigkeit will be forgotten in helping some diminutive neighbour to explore hers.
southey was really stating this idea when he wrote in “the doctor” that “a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it rising three years or a kitten rising six weeks,” though to our mind the presence of both would be the ideal arrangement, since the kitten would take the place of the puppy previously mentioned, for the child to play with.
if we wish to support age kindly, it is only to be done by surrounding ourselves with youth. and the laughter of children, surely the purest and sweetest of all music, p. 230will strike a responsive chord in our breasts, and will enable us to live through the years that wither, in all harmony and contentment.
