with elaborate and lingering
detail, a puppet-show which in childhood enchanted him, and whose
mechanism he afterwards possessed and managed with enduring fascination.
Mariana yawns in listening; the lounging novel-reader will yawn too. But
under this tedious triviality, as the reader of stock-novels will deem
it, lurks a meaning serious enough to entice all save those who are
indeed trivial. It indicates the play-instinct in children as the first
fountain of growth. Nature justifies Goethe. How grave and absorbed are
children at their play! With what touching implicit faith do they assume
this as something that pays for its costs! Crabtree scowls; Moneybags
pooh-poohs; but Nature is too strong for them, and the children play on.
It is significant. In truth, a child's faculty for play, that is, for
imaginative engagement, is the prime measure of his capacity for growth.
Follow his play, you who would know him,--follow it with studious,
sympathetic eye; for in the range and depth of imaginative interest it
displays you read the promise of his being. The child that is not
fascinated by his fancies is of a meagre nature, and will come to
nothing great.

_Why_ is imagination so concerned in growth? That I call a delightful
question, and could run with rejoicing to answer it; but here, not
without effort, I must pass it by. There is more to be said upon it than
we have space for now: some other day. Enough now that imagination _is_
so concerned with growth; enough that Nature, by the being of every
child born into the world, makes oath to the fact.

But there is a spice of devil in this angel. Of old, when the sons of
God came together, Satan came with them; and still, when the primal
powers of man's soul assemble to perform their grand act of worship,
which is the complete upbuilding of a human spirit, Factitious Tendency,
the father of mischief, is punctually at hand. So in young Wilhelm. He
craves free _play_ for the divine energies of his being. But the hard
actual world resists him; instead of offering itself humbly as a vehicle
for his fine imaginings, it tries to make a mere tool of _him_. So he
flies from it in scorn. The cold, spacious emptiness of his father's
life, the shrivelled content of old Werner's,--these show him the
quality of real life. Fie upon reality, then! He will away, and find a
concocted play-world, where all shall suit his purpose, and where he
shall have nothing to do but picture forth in beauty