Topical Guide 106
Mark Dorset
Childhood
“I think it isn’t the right atmosphere for Peter,” she said. … “I think we should take him out of the school. … [If] they’re going to be reading that sort of story, I think it’s just not the right sort of atmosphere for a child.” Several of the mothers were using the same phrase that evening. It had originated with Mrs. Hosmer, who, entirely by coincidence, had been reading a magazine article on the importance of the right atmosphere in child-rearing on the very morning of the fox-and-clam incident at the Misses Leighton’s School. … “There’s time enough later for them to see the misery and unhappiness of life. They should be allowed to spend some time on that mountaintop, in the sun—”
Little Follies, “The Fox and the Clam”
One’s age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful.
Thomas Arnold, educator (1795-1842)
[I haven’t been able to find the source of this quotation. MD]
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood and go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin. In the other there are no coffins, no deaths, only childhood pictures: big colored books to look at but not to read.
Fernando Pessoa, as Bernardo Soares, The Book of Disquiet, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
[more to come on Monday, October 11, 2021]
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