"It's something to discuss," said the Little Old Woman.
"Why don't they ask their mothers?"
"The mothers are too busy. Besides, their children are all exceptions. You can't make anything out of exceptions,—there are too many of them. If you let them in, it just musses up the Science. The best way is to keep them out."
"But their mothers like them," said Miss Muffet.
"Yes; they think that they are the nicest kind."
When she had time to look around her, Miss Muffet was surprised to see how different the company was from that in the other parts of the palace.
"They look as if something had been done to them," said Miss Muffet. "Oh! now I know who they are! They must be Youths. I've always read about Youths in the books mamma makes me read on Sunday afternoon, but I didn't know that they were real. Some of them look almost like boys and girls, only less so."
Sure enough, the room was full of Youths. They came out of the Sunday-school books and the Fifth Readers and the Moral Tales and the Libraries of Instructive Juvenile Literature. Some had never been out of a book before, and found it impossible to talk in anything but the book language. Some were evidently very good, and some were painful examples of youthful wickedness, while others were chiefly interested in Natural History.
"Youths," said the Little Old Woman, "are easier to understand than boys and girls and other young folks. Youths have habits, and each one practices only one at a time. When they do a naughty thing, they keep on doing it regularly; that's the way you come to know which is which. It doesn't matter what it is, whether Vanity or Procrastination or Not Bringing in the Wood, they keep it up till they have been made to see the folly of it, or are given over to their evil ways. Now children are more changeable. When I lived in a Shoe, I was driven half out of my wits, for I never could be thorough when I reproved them, they were always naughty in a different way. I don't believe that any one could have got any of my children into a book; they wouldn't keep still long enough to have their characters taken."
Almost all the Youths were accompanied by their parents or guardians, though some had private tutors. Two youthful persons from the eighteenth century attracted a great deal of attention. They were Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton. Harry was a great philosopher, and understood so perfectly the principles of the Wedge and the Inclined Plane and the Moral Law that it was hard to believe his friend, Mr. Barlow, who stated that he was only six years old. Tommy, on the other hand, until his sixth year had been quite worldly, and had held a number of erroneous opinions. Under Harry's instruction, however, he had been much improved and was now quite sedate and observing.