The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

"I'll—tell you a story—Jimmie," I gulped foolishly, "and until Alicia comes back you must be the fine little man you are—and let me."

"When is she coming back?"

"I am not sure, Jimmie—possibly to-morrow." It was my throbbing hope. For that we could go on any longer without her was simply inconceivable to me.

Gradually his paroxysm subsided. He grew quiescent in my arms and heaved a deep sigh as we nestled against each other in silence. It is fortunate that the grief of children is like a summer shower. For so intense is it while it lasts that any serious continuation of agony would rack their small frames to pieces.

"All right, Uncle Ranny," he murmured finally. "Will you come in and give me my bath? I'll go and run it—I know how, first the hot and then the cold. And I'll put the ships in and undress. Then you come in and tell me a long story while I sail them." And he ran out of the room in a little whirlwind of energy.

I sat bowed in silence for a few minutes and then heavily made my way to the bathroom.

"Is the temp'ture a'right?" queried Jimmie, with an intense air of responsibility, his erect nude little figure standing with a ship under each arm, like a symbol of man adventuring his petty argosies on this storm-beaten planet. I put my hand judicially into the water. How important is the temperature of a child's bath! It must be neither too hot nor too cold, or disastrous results might follow.

I began to tell him an ancient story of an island that proved to be a sleeping whale, but he was impatient of that.

"'Licia," he informed me in deprecating protest, "tells me stories of Mowgli in the jungle—out of the 'Jungle Book.'" I endeavored with a heavy heart to match Alicia, and gradually I became absorbed in my task and in Jimmie, so that the darkness of life fell away from me. The water splashed and the ships tacked about in wild maneuvers, while Jimmie kept reminding me that "he was listening, Uncle Ranny."

The great mystics are those who submerge their intellect and senses into night so that their souls emerge before them like the full moon out of the blackness. Every parent, I suppose, must be in part a mystic: for by centering his heart on little children he discerns the pulsating irresistible life of the universe, the past and the future, alpha and omega.