I once overheard one little girl at a theatre—­a splendid spectacle, calculated to dazzle and delight imaginative childhood—­say to another:  “It is nothing but make-believe!  That house and garden are only painted.  See how they shake!  And the women are dressed in paste jewelry, like that our cook-maid wears to parties, and no jeweler would give a cent for them; and the fairies are poor girls, dressed up for the occasion; and the whole play is made up as they go.  You see, I know all about it, father says.”

I heard no more, but had a glimpse of a little, eager face suddenly dashed in its expression, and of small fingers pressed to unwilling ears to shut out unwelcome truths.

The discriminating child seemed a little monster in my eyes, who ought to have been sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of abandon and enjoyment; and, as to the “father” she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak—­the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines its devotees to idiocy!

I knew very well that Wattie was not of the stamp to doubt the truth and splendor of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” or “Cinderella,” as surveyed from the stage-box, in his confiding infancy, any more than to believing in baubles when the time came to justly discriminate.  Woe for the incredulous child, too matter-of-fact to be enlisted in the creations of fancy, and who tastes in infancy the chief bitterness of age—­the incapability of surrendering life to the ideal!

How fresh imagination keeps the heart—­how young!  What a glorious gift it is when rightly used and governed!  Hear Charlotte Bronte’s testimony, as recorded by her biographer:  “They are all gone,” she says, “the sisters I so loved, and I have only my imagination left to comfort me.  But for this solace I should despair or perish.”  The words are not exact—­the book is not beside me, but such is their substance.  He who lists can seek them for himself in the pages of that wondrous spell woven by Mrs. Gaskell—­that tragic and strange biography which once in a season of deep despondency did more to reconcile me to my own condition, through my pity and admiration for another, than all the condolences that came so freely from lip and pen.  Every fabric that love had erected crumbled about her or turned to Dead-Sea ashes on her lip.  See what a world of passion those French letters and themes of hers betray!

The brand of suffering and suffocating sorrow is on every one of them, plain to the eye of the initiated alone, they who have gazed on the wonders of the inner temple—­the holy of holies—­and gone forth reverently to dream of the revelation evermore in silence.

But, above every ruin of hope, or pride, or affection, like an imperial banner flung from “the outer wall,” her imagination waved and triumphed.  “The clouds of glory” she trailed after her were dyed in spheres unapproachable by death, or shame, or disappointment, and the gift described in the Arabian story as conferred by the genii’s salve when he touched therewith the eyes of the traveler and caused him to see all the wonders of the earth, its gems, its gold, its gleaming chrysolites, its inward fires, unobscured by the interposition of dust and clay, which veiled them from all the rest of humanity, may stand as a type of her ideality.