Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

CHILD'S PLAY
through which we look abroad. We study shop
windows with other eyes than in our childhood,
never to wonder, not always to admire, but to make
and modify our little incongruous theories about
life. It is no longer the uniform of a soldier that
arrests our attention ; but perhaps the flowing car-
riage of a woman, or perhaps a countenance that
has been vividly stamped with passion, and carries
an adventurous story written in its lines. The
pleasure of surprise is passed away ; sugar-loaves and
water-carts seem mighty tame to encounter ; and
we walk the streets to make romances and to
sociologise. Nor must we deny that a good many
of us walk them solely for the purposes of transit or
in the interest of a livelier digestion. These, indeed,
may look back with mingled thoughts upon their
childhood, but the rest are in a better case ; they
know more than when they were children, they
understand better, their desires and sympathies
answer more nimbly to the provocation of the senses,
and their minds are brimming with interest as they
go about the world.
According to my contention, this is a flight to
which children cannot rise. They are wheeled in
perambulators or dragged about by nurses in a pleas-
ing stupor. A vague, faint, abiding wonderment
possesses them. Here and there some specially
remarkable circumstance, such as a water-cart or a
guardsman, fairly penetrates into the seat of thought,
and calls them, for half a moment, out of them-
selves ; and you may see them, still towed forward
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