"I can spare the time," he repeated, while an air of grim satisfaction came over the tiny features. "I have stolen plenty—I have outwitted the arch-thief himself. I have survived my own death."
"What!" I gasped. "Have you already died?"
"No, no," he replied fretfully; "I am only just going to die. That is how I have survived my death. How dull you are!"
"You were going to begin at the beginning," I murmured feebly.
"No! What is the use of beginning at the beginning?" this enfant terrible enquired, in the same peevish tones. "I was going to begin before the beginning."
"Yes, yes," I said soothingly, patting his golden curls; "you were going to begin before you were born."
"With my mother," he said more gently. "She did not lead a very happy life—it enabled her to hymn the wrongs of her country. Her childhood was a succession of sorrows, her girlhood a mass of misfortunes; and when she married the man she loved, she found herself deserted by him a few months later. It was then that she first conceived the thought that has changed my life. It came to her in a moment of tears, as she sat over the ashes of her happiness. From that moment the thought never left her."
There was a wild look in the baby's eyes. I began to suspect him of premature insanity.
"What was this thought?" I murmured.
"I am coming to it. There came into her head suddenly the refrain of a song she had learnt at school: 'Life like a river with constant motion.' 'The river of life! The stream of life! How true it is!' she mused. 'How much more than mere metaphors these phrases are! Verily, one's life flows on towards the dark ocean of death, irresistibly, unrestingly, willy-nilly—whether swift or slow, whether long or short—whether it flows through pleasant champaigns or dreary marshes, past romantic castled crags, or by bleak quarries. What is the use of experience, of knowledge of past bits of the route, when no two bits are ever really alike, when the future course is hidden and is always a panorama of surprises, when no life-stream knows what awaits it round the corner every time it turns, when the scenery of the source avails one nothing in one's resistless progress towards the scenery of the mouth? What is life but a series of mistakes, whose fruit is wisdom, maybe, but wisdom overripe? We do not pluck the fruit till it will no longer serve our appetites. Nothing repeats itself on the stage of existence—always new situations and new follies. Experientia docet. Experience teaches, indeed; but her lesson is that nothing can be learnt.'"