Time was when this was made penitential to them, like the
rest of life, upon a principle that no longer prevails. It was
vulgarized for them and made violent. A bathing woman, type of all
ugliness in their sensitive eyes, came striding, shapeless, through the
unfriendly sea, seized them if they were very young, ducked them, and
returned them to the chilly machine, generally in the futile and
superfluous saltness of tears. "Too much of water had they," poor
infants.
None the less is the barren shore the children's; and St. Augustine,
Isaac Newton, and Wordsworth had not a vision of sea-beaches without a
child there.
THE BOY
After an infancy of more than common docility and a young childhood of
few explicit revolts, the boy of twelve years old enters upon a phase
which the bystander may not well understand but may make shift to note as
an impression.
Like other subtle things, his position is hardly to be described but by
negatives. Above all, he is not demonstrative. The days are long gone
by when he said he wanted a bicycle, a top hat, and a pipe. One or two
of these things he has, and he takes them without the least swagger. He
avoids expression of any kind. Any satisfaction he may feel with things
as they are is rather to be surprised in his manner than perceived in his
action. Mr. Jaggers, when it befell him to be astonished, showed it by a
stop of manner, for an indivisible moment--not by a pause in the thing he
chanced to be about.
Pages:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58