rds or squirrels.
As a rule it will be found, I think, that a predilection for children is
most marked in men generally reserved and inaccessible. Lewis Carroll,
for instance, to take a famous recent example, was the reverse of a
sociable man. Shy, reserved, even cold in ordinary converse, he would
expand immediately when in the company of children. Certainly he
understood them much better than he did their elders. Like Thoreau,
moreover, Lewis Carroll was a lover of animals.

Social adaptability was not a characteristic of Thackeray, his moroseness
and reserve frequently alienating people; yet no one was more devoted to
children, or a more delightful friend to them.

So far from being an argument in favour of its possessor's sociability,
it seems to be a tolerable argument against it. It is not hard to
understand why. When analysed this fondness for children is much the
same in quality as the fondness for animals. A man is drawn towards
children because there is something fresh, unsophisticated, and elemental
about them. It has no reference to their moral qualities, though the
aesthetic element plays a share. Thoreau knew how to comfort little
Edward Emerson just as he knew how to cheer the squirrel that sought a
refuge in his waistcoat. This fondness, however, must not be confused
with the paternal instinct. A man may desire to have children, realize
that desire, interest himself in their welfare, and yet not be really
fond of them. As children they may not attract him, but he regards them
as possibilities for perpetuating the family and for enhancing its
prestige.

A good deal of nonsense is talked about the purity and innocence of
childhood. Children are consequently brought up in a morbidly
sentimental atmosphere that makes of them too quickly little prigs or
little hypocrites. I do not believe, however, that any man or woman who
is genuinely fond of children is moved by this artificial point of view.
The innocence and purity of children is a middle-class convention. None
but the unreal sentimentalist really believes in it. What attracts us
most in children is naturalness and simplicity. We note in them the
frank predominance of the instinctive life, and they charm us in many
ways just as young animals do.

Lewis Carroll's biographer speaks of "his intense admiration for the
white innocence and uncontaminated spirituality of childhood."

If this be true then it shows that the Rev. C. L. Dodgso