Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/185

Popular Education value of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's much-quoted "Lantern Bearers" lies in its incisive and sympathetic insistence upon the aloofness of the child's world,—an admittedly imperfect world which we are burning to amend, but which closed its doors upon us forever when we grew into knowledge and reason.

My own childhood lies very far away. It occurred in what I cannot help thinking a blissful period of intermission. The educational theories of the Edgeworths (evolved soberly from the educational excesses of Rousseau) had been found a trifle onerous. Parents had not the time to instruct and admonish their children all day long. As a consequence, we enjoyed a little wholesome neglect, and made the most of it. The new era of child-study and mothers congresses lay darkling in the future. "Symbolic education," "symbolic play," were phrases all unknown. The "revolutionary discoveries" of Karl Groos had not yet 169