His precedent might be cited to excuse every politician who
cannot remember whether he began his sentence with "people" in the
singular or the plural, and who finishes it otherwise than as he began
it. Points of grammar that are purely points of logic baffle a child
completely. He is as unready in the thought needed for these as he is in
the use of his senses.
It is not true--though it is generally said--that a young child's senses
are quick. This is one of the unverified ideas that commend themselves,
one knows not why. We have had experiments to compare the relative
quickness of perception proved by men and women. The same experiments
with children would give curious results, but they can hardly, perhaps,
be made, because the children would be not only slow to perceive but slow
to announce the perception; so the moment would go by, and the game be
lost. Not even amateur conjuring does so baffle the slow turning of a
child's mind as does a little intricacy of grammar.
THE FIELDS
The pride of rustic life is the child's form of caste-feeling. The
country child is the aristocrat; he has _des relations suivies_ with
game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. He has a
perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or a suburb. No
essayist has so much feeling against terraces and villas.
As for imitation country--the further suburb--it is worse than town; it
is a place to walk in; and the tedium of a walk to a child's mind is
hardly measurable by a man, who walks voluntarily, with his affairs to
think about, and his eyes released, by age, from the custom of perpetual
observation.
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