Electronic Book page

You have watched a child playing--in those wondrous years when belief is
not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear
and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a
knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle
over the street, his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round
the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely
ten minutes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. Or,
suppose the young poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of
childhood, the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, 'Jack,
let's play that I am a Genius!' Jacky straightway makes Aladdin's lamp
out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural
powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two
urchins, have grown into men, and both have turned authors,--one says to
his brother, 'Let's play we're the American somethings or other,--say
Homer or Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them be big enough, no
matter what).


Pages:
266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290