sense
of the irrevocable which was almost an every-day experience of her
small soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done,
that it was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and
think more about her hair than ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds
with passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences,
but what would have happened if they had not been done, with all
the detail and exaggerated circumstance of an active imagination.
Tom never did the same sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a
wonderful instinctive discernment of what would turn to his
advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened, that though he was
much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his mother hardly ever
called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of that sort, he
espoused it, and stood by it: he "didn't mind." If he broke the
lash of his father's gigwhip by lashing the gate, he couldn't help
it,–the whip shouldn't have got caught in the hinge. If Tom
Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of
gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Tom Tulliver,
was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn't
going to be sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the
glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and
endure the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and
Lucy, and Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father and
her uncles, would laugh at her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of
course every one else would; and if she had only let her hair
alone, she could have sat with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot
pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? She sat as
helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the
slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to
weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead
loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to
Maggie–perhaps it was even more bitter–than what we are fond of
calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. "Ah, my
child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by," is the
consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our
childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been
grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny
bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother
or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the
poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the
remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those
keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such
traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture
of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at
the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the
reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the
experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory
of
what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked
when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate
penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it
was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his
school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch
the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the
holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from
idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from
defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to
let him have a tailed coat that "half," although every other boy of
his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that
early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely
perspectiveless conception of life, that gave the bitterness its
intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.
"Miss Maggie, you're to come down this minute," said Kezia,
entering the room hurriedly. "Lawks! what have you
of the irrevocable which was almost an every-day experience of her
small soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done,
that it was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and
think more about her hair than ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds
with passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences,
but what would have happened if they had not been done, with all
the detail and exaggerated circumstance of an active imagination.
Tom never did the same sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a
wonderful instinctive discernment of what would turn to his
advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened, that though he was
much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his mother hardly ever
called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of that sort, he
espoused it, and stood by it: he "didn't mind." If he broke the
lash of his father's gigwhip by lashing the gate, he couldn't help
it,–the whip shouldn't have got caught in the hinge. If Tom
Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of
gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Tom Tulliver,
was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn't
going to be sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the
glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and
endure the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and
Lucy, and Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father and
her uncles, would laugh at her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of
course every one else would; and if she had only let her hair
alone, she could have sat with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot
pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? She sat as
helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the
slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to
weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead
loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to
Maggie–perhaps it was even more bitter–than what we are fond of
calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. "Ah, my
child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by," is the
consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our
childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been
grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny
bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother
or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the
poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the
remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those
keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such
traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture
of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at
the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the
reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the
experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory
of
what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked
when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate
penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it
was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his
school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch
the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the
holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from
idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from
defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to
let him have a tailed coat that "half," although every other boy of
his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that
early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely
perspectiveless conception of life, that gave the bitterness its
intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.
"Miss Maggie, you're to come down this minute," said Kezia,
entering the room hurriedly. "Lawks! what have you
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