The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old.  His fear of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper with the bloom of their childhood.  The young heiress of seventeen in the “Spectator” has looked upon herself as marriageable “for the last six years.”  The famous letter describing the figure, the dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, “willing to settle in the world as soon as she can.”  She adds, “I have a good portion which they cannot hinder me of.”  This correspondent is one of “the women who seldom ask advice before they have bought their wedding clothes.”  There was no sense of childhood in an age that could think this an opportune pleasantry.

But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a later century—­an age that has found all things to be on a journey, and all things complete in their day because it is their day, and has its appointed end.  It is the tardy conviction of this, rather than a sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of children to seem, at last, something else than a defect.

UNDER THE EARLY STARS

Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random.  There is a tide in the affairs of children.  Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.  Summer dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how you may.  They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over choppings and poundings.  But when late twilight comes, there comes also the punctual wildness.  The children will run and pursue, and laugh for the mere movement—­it does so jolt their spirits.

What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory dark?  The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and crickets in the grass.  It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours.  The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the mimicry of hunting.

The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a rebellion.  Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go home.  But, with more or less of life and fire, the children strike some blow for liberty.  It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is done for freedom under the early stars.

This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict with the weariness of men.  But it is less tolerable that the energy of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts of the poor.

Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved by children.  Three tiny girls were to be taught “old maid” to beguile the time.  One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was persuading another to play.  “Oh come,” she said, “and play with me at new maid.”