[ici THE EDIT011 OP TILE "SPECTATOR."] SIEjAll I have told
several unpleasant stories about children, I will take the unsavoury taste out of my mouth by ending with something agreeable to the moral palate. The following incident was reported to me by the late Rev. S. H. Reynolds, of Brasenose, who had it direct from another distinguished Oxford don, Whose little daughter was the heroine,—perhaps a heroine in a double sense. The child once went in great distress to her mother, saying that she had committed a sin which could never be forgiven, and which was too bad to be repeated. By dint of a little coaxing, she was induced to make a fall confession, which was on this wise : "I felt so sorry for poor Satan, and wanted to give him a little comfort. So I got a glass of cold water, and poured it down a little hole in the kitchen floor." The courage which the child had shown by her truly religions wish to let, as it were, her rain descend on the Evil One recalls to me the phrase which, of course with a wholly different suggestion, Horace applied to himself,—" Non sine Dis animosus infans." I am delighted with the instances of children's tenderness which I have been the means of eliciting, and especially with the charming letter of "Li." in the Spectator of January 21st. I feel entire sympathy with the spirit shown by your correspondents ; but, let me repeat, I approached the question as a scientific inquirer, and each an inquirer is chiefly attracted by the abnormal, which is often unpleasant. A total eclipse of the sun is an inconvenient, as well as a rare, occurrence ; yet, when thus shorn of his beams, our great source of light is more heeded by astronomers than when shining in his full noonday splendour. Let me conclude this apologia pro epistolis meis by saying that my own view is well expressed in a letter by an intimate friend of "Lewis Carroll," who thus writes to me :—" Healthy children, I always thInk, are naturally kindly and generous. But they are essentially non- moral, and occasional deviations into cruelty don't affect their imaginations as they do the imaginations of their self- conscious seniors."—I am, Sir, &c.,
LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
Hotel d'Angleterre, Biarritz, January 23rd.
[We cannot publish any more letters on this subject.— ED. Spectator.]
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