But all this presupposes
that we are not in the group of tyrants, either in the nursery,
schoolroom, or dining-room, and that those who have charge of us
remember their own days of childhood: recollect all the dreams, threats,
and fancies which can turn them into a period of absolute torture; and,
above all, consider that a child is not a sheet of plain blank paper,
but that it is a composite arrangement of all the ancestors that one can
remember, and of many that one cannot: for unless this is so, no words
of mine can describe the misery that can be inflicted on a sensitive,
dreamy child, who, to a certain extent, is heavily handicapped in the
race of life by the feeble vitality which, as a rule, accompanies such a
disposition, and who all too often is made a liar by harsh dealing, and
an invalid in life by the hardening process, so dear to the hearts of so
many fathers, mothers, and governesses. If, on the contrary, a child is
carefully studied--if it be regarded as one by itself and not a sample
of a batch, which must be just as are its brothers and sisters--I
maintain that childhood must be the very happiest time that we can have:
the dreams and happenings, which fill our nights and days, make both
equally delightful, while if we are tired to death by lessons and the
daily walk, we soon grow out of this, because we can build our own
castles in the air out of the driest possible task, and make long and
elaborate romances for ourselves out of the--most likely very
commonplace--people we meet on our morning scamper. Then, too, was there
not the never-to-be-forgotten joy of the yearly visit to the sea, and an
equally well-loved return to our usual routine in London, to say nothing
of the fascinations of making up one's mind on the subject of what one
was going to be, and how one was to benefit and astonish a world that up
to the present time has not seemed quite to come up to our expectations
on the subject? Undoubtedly then I say, if the child is in proper hands,
that childhood is the happiest time we can possibly have.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Barry Pain says childish happiness is a delusion.]

I have never understood the feelings of those who are sorry that they
are full-grown. To different children there is, of course, a different
childhood; but, as a rule, the happiness of childhood is a delusion, and
the peace of the perambulator a myth. I believe that any brave and
intelligent man c