uickly and then withdraws. This is
the first intelligible jest of jesting man.

An infant never meets your eyes; he evidently does not remark the
features of faces near him. Whether because of the greater
conspicuousness of dark hair or dark hat, or for some like reason, he
addresses his looks, his laughs, and apparently his criticism, to the
heads, not the faces, of his friends. These are the ways of all infants,
various in character, parentage, race, and colour; they do the same
things. There are turns in a kitten's play--arched leapings and sidelong
jumps, graceful rearings and grotesque dances--which the sacred kittens
of Egypt used in their time. But not more alike are these repetitions
than the impulses of all young children learning to laugh.

In regard to the child of a somewhat later growth, we are told much of
his effect upon the world; not much of the effect of the world upon him.
Yet he is compelled to endure the reflex results, at least, of all that
pleases, distresses, or oppresses the world. That he should be obliged
to suffer the moods of men is a more important thing than that men should
be amused by his moods. If he is saddened, that is certainly much more
than that his elders should be gladdened. It is doubtless hardly
possible that children should go altogether free of human affairs. They
might, in mere justice, be spared the burden they bear ignorantly and
simply when it is laid upon them, of such events and ill fortunes as may
trouble our peace; but they cannot easily be spared the hearing of a
disturbed voice or the sight of an altered face. Alas! they are made to
feel money-matters, and even this is not the worst. There are
unconfessed worldliness, piques, and rivalries, of which they do not know
the names, but which change the faces where they look for smiles. To
such alterations children are sensitive even when they seem least
accessible to the commands, the warnings, the threats, or the counsels of
elders. Of all these they may be gaily independent, and yet may droop
when their defied tyrants are dejected.

For though the natural spirit of children is happy, the happiness is a
mere impulse and is easily disconcerted. They are gay without knowing
any very sufficient reason for being so, and when sadness is, as it were,
proposed to them, things fall away from under their feet, they are
helpless and find no stay. For this reason the merriest of all children
are those, much pitied