Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/162

 spozen it wuz, if her way wuz the right way why not let her have it?

It's very seldom that she duz a thing that is the least mite out of the way. I don't know that I could exactly approve of her burnin' up the world—that might not been exactly the fair thing to do, but it is very, very seldom she duz a thing a minister would be ashamed of doing. She is a oncommon child for goodness. I don't say it because she is my grandchild, not at all. But truth will out. She has a remarkable sweet, even disposition, and as to morals—well! I would like to see the child that would go ahead of her in morals. Why, we couldn't tempt her to touch a penny that didn't belong to her. And burglary, or arson, or rapine, why, nothin' would tempt her into it. She is a wonderful child.

And she is jest as truthful as the day is long, that is, what she calls truth. Everything is new to her and strange. The thoughts in her little brain jest wakin' up, and to a imaginative child the dreams and fancies that fill her little mind, the child's world within, must seem as strange as the new strange things of the world about her.

It is all a untried mystery to her, and it stands to reason that she can't separate things all to once and put the right names to 'em all. The gay romances of the child's fairy world within from the colder reasonin' of the world without. The child's world is purer than ourn, it is the only land of innocence and truth we know in this dreary life. And it seems as if we would let our souls listen to catch any whispers from that land, so sweet, so evanescent.

For there is the only perfect faith, unbounded, uncalculating, so soon to be displaced by doubt. The only