By the Christmas Fire

ny of Bein

rs who put their best thoughts into books to be kept in cold storage for posterity. My Philosopher is eminently social, and is conversational in

ut another question. The questions follow one another with extreme rapidity. He acts upon my mind like an air pump. His questions speedily exhaust my small stock of acquired information. Into the m

ugh he has accumulated a good deal of experience, he is still in his intellectual prime. He has not yet reach

ood, the True, and the Beautiful. These words represent only the primary colors of the moral spectrum. Each one is broken up into any number of secondary colors. Thus the Good ranges all the way from the good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful ascends from the m

ten down so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,-baking-powder and coffee and a dozen eggs, and last and least, and under no circumstances to be forgotten, a cake of condensed yeast. These things weigh

They are in barrels and boxes and paper bundles. They rise toward the sky in shelves that reach at last the height of the gloriously unattainable. He walks through the vales of Arcady, among pickles and cheeses. He lifts up his eyes wonderingly to snowy Olympus crowned wi

word!" I hadn't thought about it, but it is a pretty word,

erubs rioting in health, smiling old men, benignant matrons, radiant maidens, all feasting on ne

ory from the picture. It seems like an inadequate explanation to say that he is

eet ten. Three feet do not count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in the horizo

ase. There are many beautiful things in the store to be admired from below; but

ull adult sensibilities never created a masterpiece that gave

f alluringly to the biter,-or rather to one who would leisurely absorb it. Even now there is a vagueness of outl

ghly agree with him. However much the necessaries of life may have advanced in price, the prime luxuries are still

the visit to the grocer's has been a great success. It is

to a gay young knight who is setting forth in quest of dragons. It is blind of both eyes, and cannot see a dragon any more, and only shies, now and then, when it comes to a place where it saw one long ago. There

roduction, no tiresome analysis. It is pure story, "of imagination all compact." Things happen

he was a cock-a-doodle-doo. And he wanted to fly up into the sky. So he did fly up int

re gets to be too much connective tissue and too little to connect. When the imagination is in its first freshness, a story is almost without connective tissue. There seems hardly enough to hold it togeth

nd its loveliness increases with each repetition. In a classic tale he is quick to resent the slightest change in phraseology. There is a just severity in his rebuke when, in order to give a touch of novelty, I mix up the actions appropriate t

such an appreciative audience, how pleasant would be the pathway of art! The tragedy of Cock Robin reaches its hundredth night with no apparent falling off in interest. It is followed as only the finest critic will listen to the greate

n the humming birds, he does not therefore scorn the less brilliant hippopotamus. He has no repugnance to an ugliness that is only skin deep. He reserves his disapprobation for an ugliness that seems to be a visible sign of inner ungraciousness. The small monkeys he finds amusing; but he grows grave as h

would try a jackknife if I would let him. He wants to cut into things and see what they are made of. He wants to try experiments. He doesn't care how they come out; he knows they will come out some way or other. Having an imagination, he imagines things, and his imagination being healthy, the things he imagines are very pleasant. In this way he comes to have a very

light-hearted, tender-hearted, and altogether charming young

ophe which we speak of as being "grown-up"? Habit has dulled our perception of the absurd anti-cl

It is a bright, foaming torrent. Not a moment is wasted. The little girls are at once exchanging confidences, and the little boys are in Valhalla, where the heroes make friends with one another by indulging in everlasting a

are condemned to be suspended in the middle. Then you look at your antagonists on the opposite side. What a long, unrelenting row of humanity! These are the grown-ups. You

only getting over the ground. One feels like putting up a notice: "Lost, somewhere on the road between

should be looked upon as a reward o

till his honor

e order of nature. Growing is like falling,-it is all righ

ife rushes on with a sweet tumult. All things seem possible. It seems as if a lot of the unfinished business of the world is about to be put through with enthusiasm. Then, just as the process has

n like an Indian giver, taking away t

ifts

noisy and slowe

the rapture

as often been accomplished by the most deliberate educational processes. There are two kinds of educati

orth w

the poets t

endowed with

and the fac

hat the Educational Man with the Hoe is responsible for a good deal of the loss. In his desire for clea

to be feared, the Educational Man wit

d by careful trimming to make it look like something else, say a peacock standing under an umbrella. Curious effects could be produced in this wa

dgeworth's "Frank," a book much admired in its day. Frank, to begin with, was a very likable little boy. If he was not made of the "sugar and spice and all things nice" that little girls are made of, he had all the more homely miscellaneous ingredients that little boys are made of. The problem of the careful fat

The evening meal was transformed into a purgatorial discipline, and as

ide it so that each of the five persons present should have a just share. Frank

revealed. What would Frank do with that sixth piece of cake? Perhaps-horrible thought!-he might eat it. From this crime he was saved only to fall into the almost equal sin of unscien

ize of the pieces, and you were to take care that we each have our just shar

eces and gave one of the large and one of the small pieces to each person, and he then said: 'I believe I have divided the cake fairly now.' Everybody present said 'yes,

nk's mother. She was afraid that the family m

how you will divide the sugar that was upon the top of the cake, and which is now broke

ar are of such different sizes and shapes. I do not know how I shall ever

, 'I beg you will divi

tle mounds, and after carefully measuring

th, I acknowledge,' said the father, 'b

! I never thoug

ave thought of it,

nt to the closet, and brought forth a pair of scales. "By patiently adding and taking away, he at la

amily meals, saved them from the temptatio

d in her story of Frank and his orrery. Frank had read of an orrery in which the motions of the

It was a wonderful universe which Frank had created-as many great philosophers before him had created theirs-out of the inner consciousness. When it had been constructed to the best of his ability, the only question was, would his universe work,-would his planets go singing around the su

s eye rested upon it all,

one word, the absurdities,-but he did not use that offensive w

Mary, 'what is you

hat you abide steadily by whatever resolution you now make, either quite to finish or quite to give up this orrery. If you choose

of Time" and the

bserve that it will only be what others have repeatedly made before.... Master Frank will grow older, and when or why or how he made this orrery

"'Mary, bring your work b

work basket which Mary held. Mary sighed, but Frank did not sigh. He was proud to give his father a proof of

that I can keep to

but this is a good begi

ainst Frank's father. He was a truly good man, and well-to-do. Still, there have always been so many j

e making an experiment he did so. There was no one to tell him how it would come out, so he had to wait to see how it did come out. In this way he wasted a good deal of time that might have been spent in le

is father showed him the folly of it. Some of his experiments turned out to be very useful, but most of them did not. Some of them only proved that what people thought they knew was not so. Faraday seemed

a world, and if a person cannot be like Frank

was in regard to the seat of the soul. The question was suggested in this way. Being a small boy, and seeing the bars of an iron railing, he felt called upon to try experimentally whether he could squeeze thro

ay to study philosophy was to wait till one could sit down in a chair and read it out of a book. But to Faraday the tho

of poetry, he asked to be all

r would like you to repeat them if you u

ay from any poetry he could not altogether understand, he would soon be grown-up,

e poem is "A frog he would a-wooing go,"-especially the first quatrain. His analysis is very defective;

would a-

o! says

other would l

powly, gammon

says Antho

whose presence in the garden, in spite of his usefulness, is an affront. He is a creature of romance; he is going

other would l

is a great, jovial soul, who, when the poetry is going to his liking, cries, "Heigh ho!"-and when Rowley cries, "Heigh ho!" my Philosopher cries, "Heig

ng go" as the high-water mark of poetical genius; but I should wish him to bring

estion wait

alth o

, appetite, and health, I cannot but feel that something is wrong. I am remi

t down like

son of

*

e amazing

bout by i

mployed his

untimely,

baking powder, and a small teacupful of hot water. She has beaten the eggs very light and stirred in the flour only a little at a time. She has beaten the dough and added granulated sugar with discretion. She has resisted the temptation to add more flour when she has been assured

dients of the educational cake are excellent, and an immense amount of faithful work has been put i

ascinating and disconcerting uncertainty. One thing is obvious, and that is that it is no more safe for the teacher than for the preacher to "banish Nature from his plan."

bout "the process of becoming" than about the thing which we have already become. She is quite capable of taking the finished product upon which we had prided ourselves an

t the function of teaching, and seem to imagine that it might go on automatically. We sometimes think of

c method must be subordinated to the vital. Teaching may be developed into a very neat and orderly system, but learn

as being quite upsetting. They have found out something that they had never known before, and the di

ll boy who had just got the answer to his sum in vulgar fractions. Nobody had helped him; he had found it out for himself; and now he could go out and play. "Let nothing confine me: I w

ind it so hard to keep still and to listen respectfully to people whose knowledge is merely reminiscent. Above all, it is

hat it takes a little time for us to make sure that it's the same old Alphabet this morning that we had the other day. She is the victim of preconceived ideas on the subject, but our minds are op

us for not paying attention to a new letter that is just swimming into our ken. If, however, she is fortunate e

hild, we say, has eager curiosity, a myth-making imagination, a sensitiveness to momentary impressions, a desire to make things and to destroy things, a tendency to imitate what he admires. His mind goes out not in one direction, but in many directions. Th

n these primitive things are the potentialities o

the boy David felt whe

ncies g

go on the pasture, wh

, the one eagle whee

ow and mused on the

I saw but the strip 'tw

y days are ordained to

, with my fancies, the

never to mix with,

ve in those fashions

and crave expression. The things he sees, the people he meets, are all symbols to him, just as the one eagle which "wheeled slow as in sleep" was to the shepherd lad the symbol of a great unknown world. That

we cannot understand him, and we employ people to explain him to us. We treat his works as alcohol is treated in the arts. It is,

on who is still in possession of all his early qualities. Wordswo

heart the

gination hav

orld, he sees all things as m

fixed and st

ebbing and a

on ever

ylark." The student of Child Psychology never found more images chasing one another through the mind. The fancies follow one another as rapidly as if Shelle

d joy whose rac

gain,

star of

broad d

w

poet

ight of

he mind wanders off and sees visions of purple evenings and golden lightnings and whi

hat e

, and fresh, thy

s the ideal life. The artist, the reformer, the inventor, the poet, the man of pure science, the really fruitful and original man of affairs,-these are the incorrigibles. They refuse to accept the hard-and-fast rules that are laid down for them. They insist upon finding

eas and su

t beauty o

ibilities. They see no reason to give up the habit of wonder. They never

a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have

n bards

ideas

ays find

ays kee