hese minds, unexperienced, fresh, simple, sensible of the slightest
impressions, which make their way through the midst of the unknown.

What immense labor is gone through by them in a few months! To notice
noises, classify them, understand that some of these sounds are words,
and that these words are thoughts; to find out of themselves alone the
meaning of everything, and distinguish the true from the false, the real
from the imaginary; to correct, by observation, the errors of their too
ardent imagination; to unravel a chaos, and during this gigantic task to
render the tongue supple and strengthen the staggering little legs, in
short, to become a man. If ever there was a curious and touching sight
it is that of this little creature setting out upon the conquest of
the world. As yet he knows neither doubt nor fear, and opens his heart
fully. There is something of Don Quixote about a baby. He is as comic as
the Knight, but he has also a sublime side.

Do not laugh too much at the hesitations, the countless gropings, the
preposterous follies of this virgin mind, which a butterfly lifts to
the clouds, to which grains of sand are mountains, which understands the
twittering of birds, ascribes thoughts to flowers, and souls to dolls,
which believes in far-off realms, where the trees are sugar, the fields
chocolate, and the rivers syrup, for which Punch and Mother Hubbard are
real and powerful individuals, a mind which peoples silence and vivifies
night. Do not laugh at his love; his life is a dream, and his mistakes
poetry.

This touching poetry which you find in the infancy of man you also find
in the infancy of nations. It is the same. In both cases there is the
same necessity of idealization, the same tendency to personify the
unknown. And it may be said that between Punch and Jupiter, Mother
Hubbard and Venus, there is only a hair's breadth.

CHAPTER XXIX. HIS FIRST BREECHES

The great desire in a child is to become a man. But the first symptom
of virility, the first serious step taken in life, is marked by the
assumption of breeches.

This first breeching is an event that papa desires and mamma dreads. It
seems to the mother that it is the beginning of her being forsaken.
She looks with tearful eyes at the petticoat laid aside for ever, and
murmurs to herself, "Infancy is over then? My part will soon become a
small one. He will have fresh tastes, new wishes; he is no longer only
myself, his personality is as