room for intelligent
study nor much result in the shape of genuine comprehension. Even women,
who understand men so well for practical purposes, do not know them well
enough for the purposes of art. Take even the very best of their male
creations, take Tito Melema, for instance, and you will find he has an
equivocal air, and every now and again remembers he has a comb at the
back of his head. Of course, no woman will believe this, and many men
will be so very polite as to humour their incredulity.

IX

CHILD'S PLAY

The regret we have for our childhood is not wholly justifiable: so much
a man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry; for although we
shake our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold
advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse we more
than gain in the habit of generously watching others; and the capacity
to enjoy Shakespeare may balance a lost aptitude for playing at
soldiers. Terror is gone out of our lives, moreover; we no longer see
the devil in the bed-curtains nor lie awake to listen to the wind. We go
to school no more; and if we have only exchanged one drudgery for
another (which is by no means sure), we are set free for ever from the
daily fear of chastisement. And yet a great change has overtaken us; and
although we do not enjoy ourselves less, at least we take our pleasure
differently. We need pickles nowadays to make Wednesday's cold mutton
please our Friday's appetite; and I can remember the time when to call
it red venison, and tell myself a hunter's story, would have made it
more palatable than the best of sauces. To the grown person, cold mutton
is cold mutton all the world over; not all the mythology ever invented
by man will make it better or worse to him; the broad fact, the clamant
reality, of the mutton carries away before it such seductive figments.
But for the child it is still possible to weave an enchantment over
eatables; and if he has but read of a dish in a storybook, it will be
heavenly manna to him for a week.

If a grown man does not like eating and drinking and exercise, if he is
not something positive in his tastes, it means he has a feeble body and
should have some medicine; but children may be pure spirits, if they
will, and take their enjoyment in a world of moonshine. Sensation does
not count for so much in our first years as afterwards; something of