| | 1 | Author: | Grahame, Kenneth | Add | | | Title: | The Golden Age  | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | LOOKING back to those days of old, ere the
gate shut behind me, I can see now that to
children with a proper equipment of parents
these things would have worn a different
aspect. But to those whose nearest were
aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind
may be allowed. They treated us, indeed,
with kindness enough as to the needs of the
flesh, but after that with indifference (an
indifference, as I recognise, the result of a
certain stupidity), and therewith the
commonplace conviction that your child is
merely animal. At a very early age I
remember realising in a quite impersonal and
kindly way the existence of that stupidity,
and its tremendous influence in the world;
while there grew up in me, as in the parallel
case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense
of a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and
prone to the practice of vagaries—"just
choosing so"; as, for instance, the giving
of authority over us
to these hopeless and incapable creatures,
when it might far more reasonably have been
given to ourselves over them. These elders,
our betters by a trick of chance, commanded
no respect, but only a certain blend of
envy — of their good luck — and pity — for their
inability to make use of it. Indeed, it was
one of the most hopeless features in their
character (when we troubled ourselves to
waste a thought on them: which wasn't often)
that, having absolute licence to indulge in
the pleasures of life, they could get no good
of it. They might dabble in the pond all
day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the
most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were
free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the
full eye of the sun — free to fire cannons and
explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did
any one of these things. No irresistible
Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet
they went there regularly of their own
accord, though they betrayed no greater
delight in the experience than ourselves. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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