their
silent consciousness. Such as they do ask are superficial, and are
either a passing impulse of a dawning social nature or are inspired by
parents and teachers. I have observed that when they ask these questions
they care nothing and remember naught of the answers. What is deepest in
them is growing in silence; it is not yet formed into conceptions, and
has no language. The difference between the spoken questions of children
and their impressions, as yet so undefined, is like that between
pictures of the snapshot camera and the astronomer's plates which, for
hours, gather and develop the figure of some distant, unseen star.

My other childish observation was of shadows, especially my own, cast
upon the ground by a low afternoon sun. This never vexed or puzzled me
as did the outfooting moon. An old play says that the shadows of things
are better than the things themselves; and Pindar places man at two
removes from them. But indeed shadows pleased me before I knew of the
humiliating comparisons poets and prophets had made; and sometimes more
than the real substances with which I was familiar--trees, brooks and
pastures. In the shadow of myself were the flattering length and size
which I coveted, the huge man; for I wished above all other things to
become a man as fast as possible that I might do and have the things
which men do and have. These as I remember were trousers, long-legged
boots, two pieces of pie, to sit up in the evening and never to go to
school again; for I was always driven to bed and went unwillingly to my
books. Many were the subterfuges by which I escaped my lessons, a lost
book or a headache; and how I rejoiced in the storms which made it
impossible to send me the long mile through snow or rain. I remember
only one evening when I was allowed to sit up as long as I wished, my
parents, having gone to see a man hung in Dedham, one of the festive
occasions in old Norfolk County, the boy was left in charge of a sister.
I remember it chiefly because my sister read to me that evening John
Gilpin's Ride. It was the first, and for a long time, the only poem in
which I took any interest. Gilpin on his horse, his cloak and bottles
twain visualized themselves before me so clearly that they still remain
more vivid than what I read yesterday.

But my shadow, ah, that was quite enough to satisfy my most ardent
longings. Moreover I seemed able to step on it, to lengthen or shorten
it, to make it assume strange