As years round out the little life, the hands, reaching out to the tree
of knowledge, find themselves pushed back on all sides. The dearest
wishes are made light of, the most earnest desires slighted, the most
sacred thoughts ridiculed, till one marvels that men can grow up
anything but devils. In the path where Gail Hamilton's feet have trod I
need not follow, for she has told us what these 'Happiest Days' are, in
better words than my pen can find. It warmed my heart as I read her
protest against the platitudes concerning childhood and its various
imagined delights. Mentally I shook hands, for she expressed my ideas so
fully, that the notes I had long ago jotted down upon the subject I
committed at once to the flames, satisfied I never could do any better,
and might possibly do very much worse.
I believe that the major part of sour-tempered, perversely wrong-headed,
and unhappily disposed people, of hot-headed fanatics, victims to one
idea, of once noble souls who sink themselves in sensuality, and so go
down to death, and of all the sad cases one hears and reads of day after
day and year after year, are made so through unceasing aggravation at
the most impressible time of life. Do any of you who may be my readers
know of half a dozen happy families in your circle of friends and
acquaintance? Do you know of half a dozen where boys prefer home and
their sisters to the streets, or where girls do not court the most
uninviting boy in preference to their own brothers?
One would almost imagine spite had been the feeling implanted in all
homes, as they look at the private pinch exchanged between John and
James, the face made by Mary at which Martha cries and is slapped by way
of adjusting matters, and the general refusal of requests made to father
and mother, whether reasonable or not.
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