Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

236 Child' s Play
mise-en-scenCy and had to act a business man
in an office before I could sit down to my
book. Will you kindly question your memory,
and find out how much you did, work or
pleasure, in good faith and soberness, and for
how much you had to cheat yourself with
some invention ? I remember, as though it
were yesterday, the expansion of spirit, the
dignity and self-reliance, that came with a
pair of mustachios in burnt cork, even when
there was none to see. Children are even
content to forego what we call the realities,
and prefer the shadow to the substance.
When they might be speaking intelligibly
together, they chatter senseless gibberish by
the hour, and are quite happy because they
are making believe to speak French. I have
said already how even the imperious appetite
of hunger suffers itself to be gulled and led
by the nose with the fag end of an old song.
And it goes deeper than this : when children
are together even a meal is felt as an inter-
ruption in the business of life ; and they
must find some imaginative sanction, and