“BIRDS

“The Animl kindom is devided into birds and reguler animls.  Our teacher says we had ougt to obsurv so I obsurv there is three kinds of birds Jingle birds Squeek birds and Clatter birds.  Jingle birds has fat rusty stumacks.  I have not the trouble to obsurv any more kinds.”

CHAPTER IX

ON SURVIVING THE IDOLS WE BUILD

It is the way of life to be forever building new idols in place of the old.  Into the fabric of these the most of us put so much of ourselves that a little of us dies each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with doubt.  This is why we fade and wither as the leaf.  Could we but sweep aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword.  But this may not be.  Fatuously we stake our souls on each new creation—­deeming that here, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond the end of time.  To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken.

And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some last idol triumphantly surviving us.  For—­and this is the third lesson from that tree of Truth—­we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their creator.  And it would seem that this is quite as it should be.  So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful dust.  Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself—­but this is mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper.

To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers—­as if we were not meant to fail in our idols forever!  Being, then, not come to this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a better one.

Not all one’s idols are shattered in a day.  This were a catastrophe that might wrench even youth’s divine credulity.

Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus was not a real presence.  And instead of wailing over the ruins of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard of any save himself—­an idol discernible only by him, but none the less real for that.