or calamitously amiss as the ignorance and customs of our
relation to children. The child will change in a day. The child is ready
for the beauty and the mystery of mercy. The prison-house must not be
closed to sensitiveness and intuition. If that can be prevented the
problem of animal welfare is solved, and in the end we will find that
much more has been done for our children than for the animals. So often
again we set out to discover the passage to India and reach the shores
of a New World.

14

CHILDREN CHANGE

The first of the young men to come to Stonestudy followed an attraction
which has never been quite definite to me. He was strongly educated,
having studied art and life at Columbia and other places. His chief
interest at first appeared to be in the oriental philosophy which he
alleged to have found in my work. After that he intimated that he
aspired to write. The second young man came from Dakota, also a
college-bred. A teacher there wrote to me about him. I looked at some of
his work, and I found in it potentialities of illimitable promise. I was
not so excited as I would have been had I not met this discovery in
other cases from the generation behind us. Their fleets are upon every
sea.

The need of a living was somehow arranged, I worked with the two a while
in the evening on short manuscript matters. In fact, the dollar-end has
not pinched so far; and they help a while in the garden in the
afternoons, designating the period, Track, as they named the little
class after mid-day, Chapel. At first, I was in doubt as to whether they
really belonged to the class. It was primarily designed for the younger
minds--and I was unwilling to change that.

You would think it rather difficult--I know I did--to bring the work in
one class for ages ranging from eleven to twice that. I said to the
young men:

"Of course it is _their_ hour. I don't want to bore you, but come if you
like. Be free to discontinue, if what you get isn't worth the time. As
for me--the young ones come first, and I am not yet ready for two
classes."

They smiled. About a week later, they came in a half-hour late. It
happened we had been having an exceptionally good hour.

"I would rather have you not come, if you cannot come on time," I said.

They sat down without any explanation. It was long afterward that I
heard they had been busy about a trunk; that their delay had been
unavoidable in getting it through customs, a barbarous