or a child to be happy in, so they filled the
imagination of this child with these horrors of hell. I said, and I
say again, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will
make the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, oh,
weird musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the
vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of
the organ keys; blow bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch the
skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering on the
vine-clad hills; but know, your sweetest strains are discords all,
compared with childhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes
with light and every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou
art the blessed boundary-line between the beasts and man, and every
wayward wave of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, laughter,
divine daughter of joy, make dimples enough in the cheeks of the world
to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.

I am opposed to any religion that makes them melancholy, that makes
children sad, and that fills the human heart with shadow.

Give a child a chance. When I was a boy we always went to bed when we
were not sleepy, and we always got up when we were sleepy. Let a child
commence at which end of the day they please, that is their business;
they know more about it than all the doctors in the world. The voice
of nature when a man is free, is the voice of right, but when his
passions have been damned up by custom, the moment that is withdrawn,
he rushes to some excess. Let him be free from the first. Let your
children grow in the free air and they will fill your house with
perfume. Do not create a child to be a post set in an orthodox row;
raise investigators and thinkers, not disciples and followers;
cultivate reason, not faith; cultivate investigation, not superstition;
and if you have any doubt yourself about a thing being so, tell them
about it; don't tell them the world was made in six days--if you think
six days means six good whiles, tell them six good whiles. If you have
any doubts about anybody being in a furnace and not being burnt, or
even getting uncomfortably warm, tell them so--be honest about it. If
you look upon the jaw-bone of a donkey as not a good weapon, say so.
Give a child a chance. If you think a man never went to sea in a fish,
tell them so, it won't make them any worse. Be honest--that is all;
don't cram their heads