[Blind Children playing in a World of Darkness.]

May not we be but blind children, suggests the poet, living in a
world of darkness--laughing, weeping, loving, dying--knowing nothing
of the wonder round us?

The ghosts about us, with their god-like faces, it might be good to
look at them.

But these poor, pale-faced spooks, these dull-witted, table-thumping
spirits: it would be sad to think that of such was the kingdom of
the Dead.



CHAPTER XVII



[Parents and their Teachers.]

My heart has been much torn of late, reading of the wrongs of
Children. It has lately been discovered that Children are being
hampered and harassed in their career by certain brutal and ignorant
persons called, for want of a better name, parents. The parent is a
selfish wretch who, out of pure devilment, and without consulting the
Child itself upon the subject, lures innocent Children into the
world, apparently for the purpose merely of annoying them. The
parent does not understand the Child when he has got it; he does not
understand anything, not much. The only person who understands the