• CI11LDREN AND CONFESSION.
(TO TUE EDITOR OF THE "Sexcvs.voa:'3 5111.,-1 notice in your issue of November 23rd a letter under the above .headline. I am reminded of Robert Louis .Steven- son in " Virginibus Puerisque." He makes a few remarks very apposite to the subject in hand. Of " Child'a Play" lie
• • -
"One thing, at least, comes very clearly out of these consid,ra- tins ;...that. whatever we are to expect at the bands of children; it should not be any peddling exactitude about matters of fact. They walk in a van show, and among mists and rainbow ; they are Passionate atter dreams and unconcerned about realities ; speech is a difficult art not wholly learned; aud there is nothing in their own tastes or purposes to teach them what we mean by abstract truthfulness But show Us . a miserable,' lin:. breeched human entity, whose whole profession is to take a tub for a fo. titled town, and a shaving-brush for the *deadly stiletto,' and who -passes three-fourths of his timu in & dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert hearing evidence. If you as him of his past behaviour, as to who threw such a Stone, for instance;or struck such-and-stich a match ; or whether he had loaled into a parcel, or gone by a forbidden path,—why, he can • see no *merit in the inquiry, and it is ten to 01K1 he has already hall forgotten and had bemused 'himself With subsequent imaginings."
• --1 am, Sir, &c • • 21 Coleford Road, WandsivAh,
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