THE UNIMAGINATIVE COLONIAL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11692, 19 September 1903, Page 6

THE UNIMAGINATIVE COLONIAL.

It is one of the faults most frequently charged against the colonies that the practical affairs of life bulk so largely in the minds of the inhabitants as to leave no room for mental cultivation. There lis a gAieral impression that the over-seas Briton is too much engaged in the task of getting on in the world, whether by "carv- " ing a home out of the wilderness" or by the even more prosaic processes of commerce, to bother himself very much about anything that cannot be used as a means to that end. We are, in fact, credited with an absorbing preference for "red-lined accounts" and sin.'ilar material things as against "the songs of Grecian years." The criticism is, we admit, to a very large extent quite true. The colonies are the leading exponents of the utilitarian tendencies of this practical age, and this practical tone of life reacts upon colonial children, of whose lack of imagination a New Zealand writer in the London "Spectator" speaks with regret. "The colonial child," we are told by "E.K.," "moves in an emi"ently practical orbit." His mothers household cares compel her to leave him "half his time clinging to the skirts of "happy chance," and, in consequence, he puts everything to the test of experiment. In this particular, however, he differs little from the children of the Mother Country, and, indeed, the writer, we think, claims rather too much for the young colonial in the way of freedom . from illusion. He may have no nurse and 'no nursery, but assuredly fcn many cases he has to obey the wholesome rule of "early to bed," and we doubt if he is quite so contemptuous of unknown dangers as the writer would have us believe. For the average colonial child the night holds as many terrors as for the English child. A ghoit story will chill

the young blood of each to the, same degree, and fear of more- concrete objects is exhibited by the one as much as by the other. The country child in both cases will be unmoved by alarms that paralyse the town-bred child, and the latter will display a hardihood in respect to things with which he is familiar that extorts the admiration of the less experienced country cousin. If the colonial eliild is less often harassed by childish fears than Eis English brother, it is because he is more often in the company of his parents. As "E.K." says, "he sits "at the same table as his elders as soon "as he is breeched, and takes in everything " with open ears and eyes." The effect of tiiis is to make him, in some respects, older than his years; in the company of adults tin? natural childish tendency towards "mak"ing believe" is converted into unchildlike recognition of things as they are, and at an early age the mind acquires the habit of looking fur and at only the practical side of life. Not that the colonial child is quite unimaginative. Left to himself and the company of his peers, he throws himself into games of "make believe" with delightful enthusiasm and seriousness. But even these sports deal largely with materia,! things, and stop short of association with creatures of imagination. We doubt if the average colonial child evr really loses himself in the magiio land of faerie. That delightful land of elves and fays, of sprites and pixies, of ogre 3 and giants, in which s-> many staid and sober mothers and fathers of to-day wandered in their child life in England is to a large extent a "terra "incognita" to their New Zealand-born children. Perhaps this is due to the colony's youth. Belief in fairies seems to require a background and an atmosphere of legend and romance that is lacking out here. We deal too hardly with our country to encourage the "little people" to make it their home, burning off the forests to make room for sheep and cattle, and slaughtering the buds to increase our harvests. But such an atmosphere is part of every English child's heritage; it is breathed from the legend-haunted woods and lanes and fields, from ruins old in story, and villages that seem to belong to another age. Iu time, perhaps, such an atmosphere may surround the New Zealand child. Until then, however, even the depths of the bush will lack the imaginary tenants to whom the surroundings would be so congenial. Maori legend does not appeal to the European child, Maori fairies are unthinkable, and any attempt to transplant the childish beliefs of English homes must fail, for though the old fairy stories are still popular with little New Zealanders, they are far more unreal to them than to English children. In the meantime let us encourage as much as possible the growth of cliild imagination. It is the basis of much that is refining in after years, the soil from which may spring the desirable recognition that life's possibilities are not wholly bounded by its practical affairs.