Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 38

354 CHILD'S PLAY.
world in which they dwell. For other children, they almost invariably
show some intelligent sympathy. " There is a fine fellow making mnd
pies," they seem to say ; " that I can understand, there is some sense in
mud pies." But the doings of their elders, unless where they are speak-
ingly picturesque or recommend themselves by the quality of being easily
imitable, they let them go over their heads (as we say) without the least
regard. If it were not for this perpetual imitation, we should be
tempted to fancy they despised us outright, or only considered us in the
light of creatures brutally strong and brutally silly; among whom they
condescended to dwell in obedience like a philosopher at a barbarous
court. At times they display an arrogance of disregard that is truly
staggering. Once, when I was groaning aloud with physical pain, a young
gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly inquired if I bad seen
his bow and arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he
accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the inexplicable
conduct of his elders ; and, Like a wise young gentleman, he would waste
no wonder on the subject. Those elders, who care so little for rational
enjoyment, and are even the enemy of rational enjoyment for others, he
had accepted without understanding and without complaint, as the rest
of us accept the scheme of the universe.
We grown people can tell ourselves a story, give and take strokes
until the bucklers ring, ride far and fast, marry, fall, and die ; all the
while sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed. This is exactly
what a child cannot do, or does not do, at least, when he can find any-
thing else. He works all with lay figures and stage properties. "When
his story comes to the fighting, he must rise, get something by way of a
sword and have a set-to with a piece of furniture, until he is out of
breath. When he comes to ride with the king's pardon, he must
bestride a chair, which he will so hurry and belabour and on which he
will so furiously demean himself, that the messenger will arrive, if not
bloody with spurring, at least fieiy red with haste. If his romance in-
volves an accident upon a cliff, he must clamber in person about the
chest of drawers and fall bodily upon the carpet, before his imagination
is satisfied. Lead soldiers, dolls, all toys in short are in the same cate-
gory and answer the same end. Nothing can stagger a child's faith, he
accepts the clumsiest substitutes and can swallow the most staring in-
congruities. The chair he has just been besieging as a castle, or valiantly
cutting to the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the accommodation
of a morning visitor, and he is nothing abashed ; he can skirmish by the
hour with a stationary coal-scuttle; in the midst of the enchanted
pleasance, he can see, without sensible shock, the gardener soberly dig-
ging potatoes for the day's dinner. He can make abstraction of what-
ever does not fit into his fable ; and he puts his eyes into his pocket, just
as we hold our noses in an unsavoury lane. And so it is, that although
the ways of children cross with those of their elders in a hundred places
daily, they never go in the same direction nor so much as lie in the same