The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January,
1863, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863
A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics

Author: Various

Release Date: May 21, 2004 [EBook #12412]

Language: English

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF

LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XI.--JANUARY, 1863.--NO. LXIII.

HAPPIEST DAYS.

Long ago, when you were a little boy or a little girl,--perhaps not so
very long ago, either,--were you never interrupted in your play by being
called in to have your face washed, your hair combed, and your soiled
apron exchanged for a clean one, preparatory to an introduction to Mrs.
Smith, or Dr. Jones, or Aunt Judkins, your mother's early friend? And
after being ushered in to that august presence, and made to face a
battery of questions which were either above or below your capacity, and
which you consequently despised as trash or resented as insult, did you
not, as you were gleefully vanishing, hear a soft sigh breathed out upon
the air,--"Dear child, he is seeing his happiest days"? In the concrete,
it was Mrs. Smith or Dr. Jones speaking of you. But going back to
general principles, it was Commonplacedom expressing its opinion of
childhood.

There never was a greater piece of absurdity in the world. I thought so
when I was a child, and now I know it; and I desire here to brand it as
at once a platitude and a falsehood. How ever the idea gained currency
that childhood is the happiest period of life, I cannot conceive. How
ever, once started, it kept afloat is equally incomprehensible. I should
have supposed that the experience of every sane person would have given
the lie to it. I should have supposed that every soul, as it burst into
flower, would have hurled off the vile imputation. I can only account
for it by recurring to Lady Mary Wortley Montague's statistics, and
concluding that the fools _ar