“But you have some friends of your own age among the real people—those we call real—have you not?”
“Yes; and I play with them sometimes in their way; but in a little while I am tired of them, and am generally glad when they are gone, so that I can be with the friends I have been telling you about. But I have one comrade of my own age whom I love. She talks very little; but she understands. We often spend whole days together away from everybody. She doesn’t fit into her family much better than I do in mine, but she is happier, because her family are kinder than mine. They love each other better.”
The stranger was struck with the simple and forceful analysis of the difference between the two families.
“When people love each other they are kinder, as a matter of course,” he said, feeling that he was guilty of the stupidest of platitudes, but anxious to keep the young philosopher talking. “But your family love you, surely?”
“No,” she said, decisively, the mottled eyes showing a flash of pain so intense that he turned away.
“What makes you think so?”
“They find fault with me all the time. It is a terrible thing to be blamed always and never praised. When I am grown, should I have power, should I be able to get others to listen to me, I shall tell them that if they want to make people better they must praise them. Fault-finding helps nobody. I am sure of that. It is the worst possible thing for me, for it fills my heart with rage and a sense of injustice, and of course it has the same effect on everybody else. I can see plainly enough what would make an angel of me, and angels of all others, too. Love and praise are what is needed. What couldn’t I be and do if they only loved me and saw good in me, and told me so. But to be nagged, and blamed, scolded, rebuked and humiliated incessantly is making me wicked in my mind all the time. I know how devils are made. They just take a child, neither better nor worse than others, and put it some place where it hears nothing but blame all the time, never a word of love or praise, and when it is grown up it is a devil, ready to give back the pain that had been inflicted on it. If it were not for my own people, my thought people, I could not endure life at all.”
“A bad case,” said the stranger to himself, with a sigh, “heart and intellect both hungry. I fear the road will be very rough.
“Why did you let your friend Helen go away? Since she is your own creation, why not keep her here at will, when you are so fond of her?”
“She is my own creation, but I could not keep her here. She has her own life to live, so she went back to the world from which I drew her, for I do truly believe away down inside of me, that she is what you call real. Just now she is in Paris, and she is a famous author, but not too conceited to love me and find pleasure in talking and writing to me. I was willing she should go away, as it gives me an opportunity of writing to her. I enjoy writing even more than talking, sometimes. I get letters from her often. I have a box full of them. Of course I have to write them myself, but after they are written it really seems that she, not I, is their author, and I enjoy reading them just as other folks enjoy sure-enough letters that come from the post office.”