OLDTOWN FOLKS.
Child’s intensity.
In childhood the passions move with a simplicity of action unknown to any other period of life, and a child’s hatred and a child’s revenge have an intensity of bitterness entirely unalloyed by moral considerations; and when a child is without an object of affection and feels itself unloved, its whole vigor of being goes into the channels of hate.
Child instinct.
That instinctive sense by which children and dogs learn the discerning of spirits.
Childish antipathies.
Among the many unexplained and inexplicable woes of childhood are its bitter antagonisms, so perfectly powerless, but often so very decided, against certain of the grown people who control it. Perhaps some of us may remember respectable, well-meaning people, with whom in our mature years we live in perfect amity, but who in our childhood appear to us bitter enemies. Children are remarkably helpless in this respect, because they cannot choose their company and surroundings as grown people can; and are sometimes entirely in the power of those with whom their natures are so unsympathetic that they may almost be said to have a constitutional aversion to them.
Getting used to the world.
Nobody that has not suffered from such causes can tell the amount of torture that a child of a certain nervous formation undergoes in the mere process of getting accustomed to his body, to the physical forces of life, and to the ways and doings of that world of grown-up people who have taken possession of the earth before him, and are using it, and determined to go on using it, for their own behoof and convenience, in spite of his childish efforts to push in his little individuality, and seize his little portion of existence. He is at once laid hold upon by the older majority as an instrument to work out their views of what is fit and proper for himself and themselves; and if he proves a hard-working or creaking instrument, has the further capability of being rebuked and chastened for it.
Quiet children.
I was one of those children who are all ear,—dreamy listeners, who brood over all that they hear, without daring to speak of it.
Individuality in children.
He was one of those children who retreat into themselves and make a shield of quietness and silence in the presence of many people, while Tina, on the other hand, was electrically excited, waxed brilliant in color, and rattled and chattered with as fearless confidence as a cat-bird.
A child’s philosophy.
“But, Tina, mother always told us it was wicked to hate anybody. We must love our enemies.”
“You don’t love old Crab Smith, do you?”
“No, I don’t; but I try not to hate him,” said the boy. “I won’t think anything about him.”
“I can’t help thinking,” said Tina; “and when I think, I am so angry! I feel such a burning in here!” she said, striking her little breast; “it’s just like fire.”
“Then don’t think about her at all,” said the boy; “it isn’t pleasant to feel that way. Think about the whip-poor-wills singing in the woods over there,—how plain they say it, don’t they?—And the frogs all singing, with their little, round, yellow eyes looking up out of the water; and the moon looking down on us so pleasantly! she seems just like mother!”
A child’s questions.
Is there ever a hard question in morals that children do not drive straight at in their wide-eyed questioning?