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[Illustration]




CHILD LIFE IN PROSE.

EDITED BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

==Illustrated.==

[Illustration]

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
==The Riverside Press, Cambridge.==


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington,

TWENTY THIRD IMPRESSION.




[Illustration]

"We behold a child. Who is it? Whose is it? What is it? It is in the
centre of fantastic light, and only a dim revealed form appears. It is
God's own child, as all children are. The blood of Adam and Eve,
through how many soever channels diverging, runs in its veins; and the
spirit of the Eternal, which blows everywhere, has animated it. It
opens its eyes upon us, stretches out its hands to us as all children
do. Can you love it? It may be heir of a throne,--does it interest
you? Or of a milking-stool,--do not despise it. It is a miracle of the
All-working; it is endowed by the All-gifted. Smile upon it, it will a
smile give back again; prick it, it will cry. Where does it belong? In
what zone or climate? It may have been born on the Thames or the
Amazon, the Hoang-ho or the Mississippi. It is God's child still, and
its mother's. It is curiously and wonderfully made. The inspiration of
the Almighty hath given it understanding. It will look after God by
how many soever names he may be called; it will seek to know; it will
long to be loved; it will sin and be miserable; if it has none to care
for it, it will die."

                                                  JUDD'S _Margaret_.




PREFACE.


The unexpectedly favorable reception of the poetical compilation
entitled "Child Life" has induced its publishers to call for the
preparation of a companion volume of prose stories and sketches,
gathered, like the former, from the literature of widely separated
nationalities and periods. Illness, preoccupation, and the inertia of
unelastic years would have deterred me from the undertaking, but for
the assistance which I have had from the lady whose services are
acknowledged in the preface to "Child Life." I beg my young readers,
therefore, to understand that I claim little credit for my share in
the work, since whatever merit it may have is largely due to her taste
and judgment. It may be well to admit, in the outset, that the book is
as much for child-lovers, who have not outgrown their child-heartedness
in becoming mere men and women, as for children themselves; that it is
as much _about_ childhood, as _for_ it. If not the wisest, it appears to
me that the happiest people in the world are those who still retain
something of the child's creative faculty of imagination, which makes
atmosphere and color, sun and shadow, and boundless horizons, out of
what seems to prosaic wisdom most inadequate material,--a tuft of grass,
a mossy rock, the rain-pools of a passing shower, a glimpse of sky and
cloud, a waft of west-wind, a bird's flutter and song. For the child is
always something of a poet; if he cannot analyze, like Wordsworth and
Tennyson, the emotions which expand his being, even as the fulness of
life bursts open the petals of a flower, he finds with them all Nature
plastic to his eye and hand. The soul of genius and the heart of
childhood are one.

Not irreverently has Jean Paul said, "I love God and little children.
Ye stand nearest to Him, ye little ones." From the Infinite Heart a
sacred Presence has gone forth and filled the earth with the sweetness
of immortal infancy. Not once in history alone, but every day and
always, Christ sets the little child in the midst of us as the truest
reminder of himself, teaching us the secret of happiness, and leading
us into the kingdom by the way of humility and tenderness.

In truth, all the sympathies of our nature combine to render childhood
an object of powerful interest. Its beauty, innocence, dependence, and
possibilities of destiny, strongly appeal to our sensibilities, not
only in real life, but in fiction and poetry. How sweetly, amidst the
questionable personages who give small occasion of respect for manhood
or womanhood as they waltz and wander through the story of Wilhelm
Meister, rises the child-figure of Mignon! How we turn from the light
dames and faithless cavaliers of Boccaccio to contemplate his
exquisite picture of the little Florentine, Beatrice, that fair girl
of eight summers, so "pretty in her childish ways, so ladylike and
pleasing, with her delicate features and fair proportions, of such
dignity and charm of manner as to be looked upon as a little angel!"
And of all the creations of her illustrious lover's genius, whether in
the world of mortals or in the uninviting splendors of his Paradise,
what is there so beautiful as the glimpse we have of him in his _Vita
Nuova_, a boy of nine years, amidst the bloom and greenness of the
Spring Festival of Florence, checking his noisy merry-making in rapt
admiration of the little Beatrice, who seemed to him "not the daughter
of mortal man, but of God"? Who does not thank John Brown, of
Edinburgh, for the story of Marjorie Fleming, the fascinating
child-woman, laughing beneath the plaid of Walter Scott, and gathering
at her feet the wit and genius of Scotland? The labored essays from
which St. Pierre hoped for immortality, his philosophies,
sentimentalisms, and theories of tides, have all quietly passed into
the limbo of unreadable things; while a simple story of childhood
keeps his memory green as the tropic island in which the scene is
laid, and his lovely creations remain to walk hand in hand beneath the
palms of Mauritius so long as children shall be born and the hearts
of youths and maidens cleave to each other. If the after story of the
poet-king and warrior of Israel sometimes saddens and pains us, who
does not love to think of him as a shepherd boy, "ruddy and withal of
a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look upon," singing to his
flocks on the hill-<DW72>s of Bethlehem?

In the compilation of this volume the chief embarrassment has arisen
from the very richness and abundance of materials. As a matter of
course, the limitations prescribed by its publishers have compelled
the omission of much that, in point of merit, may compare favorably
with the selections. Dickens's great family of ideal children, Little
Nell, Tiny Tim, and the Marchioness; Harriet Beecher Stowe's Eva and
Topsy; George MacDonald's quaint and charming child-dreamers; and
last, but not least, John Brown's Pet Marjorie,--are only a few of the
pictures for which no place has been found. The book, of necessity,
but imperfectly reflects that child-world which fortunately is always
about us, more beautiful in its living realities than it has ever been
painted.

It has been my wish to make a readable book of such literary merit as
not to offend the cultivated taste of parents, while it amused their
children. I may confess in this connection, that, while aiming at
simple and not unhealthful amusement, I have been glad to find the
light tissue of these selections occasionally shot through with
threads of pious or moral suggestion. At the same time, I have not
felt it right to sadden my child-readers with gloomy narratives and
painful reflections upon the life before them. The lessons taught are
those of Love, rather than Fear. "I can bear," said Richter, "to look
upon a melancholy man, but I cannot look upon a melancholy child.
Fancy a butterfly crawling like a caterpillar with his four wings
pulled off!"

It is possible that the language and thought of some portions of the
book may be considered beyond the comprehension of the class for which
it is intended. Admitting that there may be truth in the objection, I
believe with Coventry Patmore, in his preface to a child's book, that
the charm of such a volume is increased, rather than lessened, by the
surmised existence of an unknown amount of power, meaning, and beauty.
I well remember how, at a very early age, the solemn organ-roll of
Gray's Elegy and the lyric sweep and pathos of Cowper's Lament for the
Royal George moved and fascinated me with a sense of mystery and power
felt, rather than understood. "A spirit passed before my face, but the
form thereof was not discerned." Freighted with unguessed meanings,
these poems spake to me, in an unknown tongue indeed, but, like the
wind in the pines or the waves on the beach, awakening faint echoes
and responses, and vaguely prophesying of wonders yet to be revealed.
John Woolman tells us, in his autobiography, that, when a small child,
he read from that sacred prose poem, the Book of Revelation, which has
so perplexed critics and commentators, these words, "He showed me a
river of the waters of life clear as crystal, proceeding out of the
throne of God and the Lamb," and that his mind was drawn thereby to
seek after that wonderful purity, and that the place where he sat and
the sweetness of that child-yearning remained still fresh in his
memory in after life. The spirit of that mystical anthem which Milton
speaks of as "a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping
symphonies," hidden so often from the wise and prudent students of the
letter, was felt, if not comprehended, by the simple heart of the
child.

It will be seen that a considerable portion of the volume is devoted
to autobiographical sketches of infancy and childhood. It seemed to me
that it might be interesting to know how the dim gray dawn and golden
sunrise of life looked to poets and philosophers; and to review with
them the memories upon which the reflected light of their genius has
fallen.

I leave the little collection, not without some misgivings, to the
critical, but I hope not unkindly, regard of its young readers. They
will, I am sure, believe me when I tell them that if my own paternal
claims, like those of Elia, are limited to "dream children," I have
catered for the real ones with cordial sympathy and tender solicitude
for their well-being and happiness.

                                                            J. G. W.

AMESBURY, 1873.




CONTENTS.


                         STORIES OF CHILD LIFE.

                                                                    PAGE

LITTLE ANNIE'S RAMBLE                  _Nathaniel Hawthorne_          13

WHY THE COW TURNED HER HEAD AWAY       _Abby Morton Diaz_             22

THE BABY OF THE REGIMENT               _