SCENES FROM CHILDHOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16925, 10 August 1918, Page 1 (Supplement)

SCENES FROM CHILDHOOD.

' THE LURE OF YOUTH.

BY UEEIUN HAim/rOK.

Ween you are a child you have no difficulty In locating fairyland} you simply "enter in by the ancient way, by the ivory gates and the golden," as an old song says. That Is one or the joys of childhood, the possession of a season ticket, so to speak. .There is a theory propounding that age does not, bar one from the delectable land, providing one retains the unsullied heart of one's youth. Possibly so, but as the years slip by, purgatory (I use the word euphemistically, oh, etymologist) may be entered by several thousand gates. It is, as the land agents would say, easy of access, and one is much more likely to find oneself there rather than among the elves and fairies.

If youth had but the wisdom of age I Little realising how soon that fairy world will vanish from their ken, small folk turn eagerly to the visible, tangible, audible world. Oh, the delicious thrills tha five senses can afford in the heyday of youth. Take' the sense of hearing, for instance. Schopenhauer went to the trouble of writing a whole essay indicting noise. He would mako it a criminal offence. Dear Schopenhauer, it is a matter of nerves. ' Abolish noise, and you deprive childhood of a goodly portion of its birthright. I know, because I have Been and heard!' Recently two small boys were wandering along I 'in front of me-in that alluringly unsteady fashion peculiar to those small people whose, legs have not been in lite carrying business long enough to' have learnt efficiency. • They gabbled inconsequently till one burst out in a new place. , " You know that bang 'n Saturday—one Saturday" (with sudden vague misgivings as to the accuracy of the date). "Did you hear it?" '"No, I never," said the other. "Yob, you did". You know that Saturday it was," impatiently argued the first fat thing. A heated argument began when suddenly they halted, clasping each other tightly. "Listen!" said one, breathlessly. A moment's pause, then, "It is I" burst ram them conjointly, and forthwith they raced madly down 'the hill. As a study in simultaneous action it would give points to any drill exhibition. The exacting "it" was apparently a drum and fife band, the shrill sound of which reached me even as I watched my Twesdledee and Tweedledum fetching mad bounds in the distance. 0, Schopenhauer, how art thou damned! I for one would like to! be fatly crammed Lite a green jersey, and to feel my heartbeat accelerate at the. sound of a drum, and my blood tinglo in response to the piercing note of the fife. It' is good to be young and to have precious bangs to treasure in one's memory. Lifo has > nothing to give equal to the bangs it takes away.

But it is not meet that one should bo flippant when discussing . that strangest, sweetest mystery,.a dirty little fat boy in a jersey. He is rather to be treated with reverence Despise him you cannot, for ho is crammed with all sorts of possibilities of greatness. To his parents, he is a strange composite, of both sides of tho family, with (by the grace of Gpd) an unaccountable something of his own added. Long acquaintance with the family characteristics having bred the proverbial contempt, they stake their hopes on this indefinable something . that is apart from themselves, and on it base their optimistic forecast of his future. Fascinating and Human. Later, when tho small person loses in fatness and washes his face with design to improve his appearance, you may begin to dissect, ard in consequence condemn ' hint—for it if. frequently true that the vanishing of smears from ' his face synchronises with the disappearance of tho bloom from his soul, lie becomes a conscious villain and as such stands for. judgment. Not that he then passively accepts your verdict or admits your right to hold a bed of justice upon him— recognises that he has rights cf his own Simms j

id, for one, Doubtless Simmß wits ex-

ceptionally advanced for his dozen years, but there being! very few single exception to natural laws, you may concludo 'that there are others of the same way of thinking. But you have yet to meet Simms. ~ r It once foil to my lot to reprove the said/ youth for that; ancient schoolboy folly, cribbing in class. '; Rsdfafed, goggle-eyed, tongue-tied, he seethed with various emotions till pressed to explain the why.'and wherefore 'his iniquity. And jit was I who . became redfaced, goggle-eyed and tongue-tied when he blurted forth indignantly. "Please, sir, I'm,only human I" -Wot ye of Robert Browning's persecuted wretch who "caught at tho skirts of God—and prayed" Here, i' faith, stood a lineal descendant. Still, he was rather young to be so tolerant of himself and his airs3—thai .privilege belonged to his later years. The excuse was a potent one, but the task beforo him wat the effort, futile indeed, of endeavouring to eradicate' those troublesome human roots. When the roots decline to be eradicated, our modern educational system substitutes a course in pruning.. For after all, none but the over-righteoua expects any fellow creature to do more than, restrain his capacities for wrong-doing. So much for Simms~ho had found the open sesame to tho wide brotherhood of the human. race, though forfeiting some of his chances of the companionship of the saints in a possible future life. Happiness Their Birthright. The subject of children is fascinating— indeed I know of one writer who invariably ends up by writing of them, no matter where ho begins. 'The theme apparently acts as a kind of magnetio pole to which his mind adjusts itself unceasingly, The most entrancing piece of writing dealing. with a child is perhaps Dr. John Brown's Pet Marjorie., In literature, as in life, she has no peer, for the mould in which the fairies made her was surely broken into a thousand bits at her birth. • The driving power of her Intellect was too great for the frail body, and one cannot' imagine her living to fulfil the promise of those early years. After all, a normal child leads the happior life, and, as R.L.S. says, there is no duty .we under rats so much as the duty of being happy. Happiness is the inalienable birthright of every child. In theory we admit the truth of this statement, but in practice we are prone to put grown-up boots on the child's small feet, and to expect him to.' walk our asphalt path of righteousness instead of following his own sweet will over, the daisy-starred grass. For him the world holds a number of wonderful things, the very existence of which we have long since forgotten. We were wiser in our generation if we would be content to sigh over our lost youth, and knowing how soon the rising ' generation will be in ; a position to echo that sigh, if we would allow these little souls all the Joys of unfettered action for a few short.year* v- \ ,><-o v -,;-,•'.'. ,;■■:,':'•;., rfy,"' ',« 'v,.-,\ .r . ... ''./'.K-vViV;:.- ■'-:■ '~..<