Fifth Year
With the fifth year we enter upon a new phase of the diary. The father appears now to have finally abandoned the transparent pretence of a methodical record of progress, and he limits himself to a fuller account of a few selected incidents. Very noticeable is the introduction of something like prolonged dialogue between the child and one of his parents.
The boy continued to take a lively interest in objects and to note them with care. Here is an illustration of his attention to natural phenomena. He was walking out (end of fifth month) with his father on their favourite Heath towards sunset, when he asked: “What are these pretty things I see after looking at the sun? When I move my eyes they begin to move about.” The father said he might call them fairy suns. He then wanted to know whether they were real. He said: “When they seem to be on the path they disappear when I go up to them”. Later on he began to romance about the spectral discs that he saw after looking at a red sun, calling them fire balloons and saying that there was a fairy in each one of them.326
A quaint example of his attention to the form of objects, as well as of his odd childish mode of thought, comes out in a talk with his mother (end of seventh month). She had been reading to him from Alice in Wonderland, where the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of a mushroom would make her grow taller, and one side shorter, which set Alice wondering what the side of a mushroom could be. C. could not sympathise with Alice’s perplexity, and said to his mother: “Why, a mushroom is all ends and sides. Wherever you stand it’s an end or a side.” The father thinks he sees here a dim apprehension of the idea that a circle is formed by an infinite number of straight lines, but he is possibly reading too much into the boy’s thought.
His observation of colour continued. One day (end of seventh month) he was overheard by his father saying to himself (without any suggestion from another) that a particular colour “came next” to another. His father thereupon questioned him and elicited that orange came next to red. Asked ‘What else?’ he answered yellow. Dark brown came next to black, a lighter brown to red, purple next to blue, pink to red, and so forth. Asked what green came next to, he answered: “I don’t know”; from which it would appear that he had pretty clearly observed the affinities of colours.
He showed himself observant of people’s ways too. Here is a funny example of his attention to his sister’s habits of speech. One evening (end of sixth month) when his sister was out at a party he had a cracker which he wished to give her “as a surprise”. So he told his mother to put it under the table, and added: “When E. comes in, and after she says, ‘Well! how’ve you been getting on?’ then you must say: ‘Look under the table’”.
His memory, as the foregoing incident may show, was growing tenacious and exact. This exactitude showed itself in almost a pedantic fashion with respect to words. Here is a funny example (end of sixth month). He had a new story-book, The Princess Nobody, illustrated by R. Doyle. His mother had read it to him about four or five times during the three weeks he had possessed it. One Sunday evening his father read it to him as a treat. In one place the story runs: “One day when the king had been counting out his money all day,” which the father carelessly read as “counting out all his money”. The child at once pulled up and corrected his sire, saying, “No, papa, ’tis ‘counting out all the day his money’”. He had remembered the ideas and the words though not the precise order. The jealous regard of the child for the text of his sacred books in the face of would-be mutilators is one of those traits which, while perfectly childish, have a quaint old-fashioned look.
The dreamy worship of fairies passed into a new and even more blissful phase this year. Before the close of the third month C. was actually brought into contact with one of these dainty white-clad beings. The memorable occasion was a girl’s costume ball, to which he was taken as a spectator. Among the younger girls present was one dressed as a fairy, in short white gauze, golden crown, and the rest. C. was at first dazed by the magnificence of the assembly and shrank back shyly to his mother’s side; but after this white sylph had been pointed out to him as a fairy, and when she came up to him and spoke to him, he was transported with delight. Hitherto the fairy had never been nearer to him than on a circus stage: now he had one close to him and actually talked with her! He firmly believed in the supernatural character of this small person, and on his return home proceeded to tell cook with radiant face how he had seen a live fairy and spoken to her. He added that his sister had never spoken to one. This last might easily look like a touch of malicious ‘crowing’: yet the father appears to think that the boy meant only to deepen the mystery of the revelation by pointing out that it was without precedent.
The weaving of fairy legend now went on vigorously. Sometimes when out on a walk and observing a scene he would suddenly drop into his dream-mood and spin a pretty romance. This happened one Sunday in winter (beginning of seventh month), as he stood and watched the skaters on a pond. He said his fairies could skate, and he talked more particularly of his favourite Pinkbill, whom, he said, he now saw skating, though nobody else was privileged to see her, and who loved to skate at night on tiny pools which were quite big for her. “Delightful days (writes the father, who is rather apt to gush in these later chapters), when one holds a wondrous world of beauty in one’s own breast, safe from all prying eyes, to be whispered of perhaps to one’s dearest, but never to be shown.”
The full enjoyment of this supernal world was during sleep. C. often spoke of his lovely dreams. One morning (middle of fourth month) when still in bed, he engaged his mother in the following talk: C. “Do you have beautiful dreams, mamma?” Mother. “No, dear, I don’t dream much.” C. “Oh, if you want to dream you must hide your head in the pillow and shut your eyes tight.” Mother. “Is dreaming as good as hearing stories?” C. “Oh, yes, I should think so. One gets to know about all sorts of things one didn’t know anything about before.” Dreams (writes the father) came to him like his fire-balloons by shutting his eyes tight, and perhaps his story-books were the real suns of which his dreams were the ‘after-images’.
As the use of the grown-up and high-bred vocable “one”—the first instance observed, by-the-bye,—suggests, C. was making rapid strides in the use of language. By the middle of the year, we are told, he could articulate all sounds including the initial y and th when he tried to do so. He gave to the a sound an unusual degree of broadness, a fact which lent to his speech a comical air of learned superiority. This was of course especially the case when, as still happened, he would slip into such solecisms as ‘I were’ and ‘Weren’t I?’ He would still use some quaint original expressions. It may interest the philologist to know that he quite spontaneously got into the way of using ‘spend’ for ‘cost,’ as in asking one day (beginning of third month), on seeing a frill in a shop window: ‘How much does this frill spend?’ and also of making ‘learn’ do duty for ‘teach,’ as when (end of tenth month) he asked his mother, pointing to a globe: “When are you going to learn me that ball?”
He continued quite seriously and with no thought of producing an effect to frame new words more or less after the analogy of those in use. Thus one day (middle of third month) he surprised his parents by bringing out the verb ‘fireworking’ in reference to the coming festivities of the fifth of November. Sometimes, too, he would amuse them by trotting out some ‘grown-up’ phrase which he generally used with clear insight, though now and again he would miss the precise shade of meaning. Thus it happened (about middle of fifth month) that he had been taking tea at the house of some girl friends, and on his return his mother questioned him about his doings, and in particular what his host had said to him. C. pondered for a moment and then said: “Oh! nothing surprising”.
This progress in the use of language indicated a higher power of mental abstraction. This was seen among other ways in the attainment of much clearer ideas about number. In the second month of the year he was able, we are told, to define the relations of the simpler numbers, saying that four was one less than five, and so on. That he had his own way of counting is evident from the following story, which dates from the middle of the same month. When walking with his mother on the Heath he found four crab apples. He observed to her: “How nice it would be, mamma, if I could find two more!” His mother replied: “Yes. How many would you have then, C.?” To this C. responded in his grave business-like tone: “Wait a minute,” then got down on his knees, put the four apples in a row, and then proceeded to the mysterious ceremony of counting. He began by saying ‘one, two’ to himself, then on reaching the “three” he pointed to the first of the row, using the apples to help him in adding the four last digits. He appears, says the father, to have imagined or ‘visualised’ the first two units, and then used the visible objects for the rest of the operation—not a bad way, one would say, of turning the apples to this simple arithmetical use.
That he visualised distinctly when counting is illustrated by another incident dating three weeks later. His mother, as was her wont, was seeing him into bed. Before climbing on to the bed he put on the coverlid a number of small toy treasures. When tucked up he opened up the following dialogue. C. “Put my toys in the drawer, mamma.” M. “I have done it, dear.” C. “How many were there?” M. ‘Three.’ C. “Oh no, there were four.” M. “Are you sure, dear? What were they?” C., after sitting up and pointing successively to imaginary objects on the coverlid: “One, two, three, four,—two dollies, a tin soldier, and a shell”.
His interest in physical phenomena continued to manifest itself in questionings. He would spring his problems in physics on his patient parents at the most unexpected moments. For instance, when sitting at table one day (end of first month) he observed quite suddenly, and in no discoverable connexion with what had been happening before: “There’s one thing I can’t imagine. How is it, papa, that when we put our hand into the water we don’t make a hole in it?” It would be curious to know how the father dealt with this hydrostatic problem.
The other inquiries recorded about this time have, oddly enough, to do with water. It looks as if water were dividing with number just now the activity of his brain. Thus he asked one day when staying at the sea-side (middle of second month): “How does all the water come into the world?” His mind was also greatly exercised about the hydrostatic puzzle of things sinking and swimming (floating).
There are hardly any examples of a reasoning process this year. One of these, however, is perhaps characteristic enough to deserve reproduction. One day (middle of fourth month) when his mind was running on the great problems of counting, his sister happened to speak about a large number of chestnuts (over 200). This excited C.’s imagination, and he exclaimed: “Why, even Goliath couldn’t count them”. The idea that mere bulk should measure intellectual capacity was delicious, and C.’s remark was no doubt received with a peal of laughter to which the bewildered little inquirer into the mysteries of things must by this time have been getting hardened. And yet, writes the apologetic father, C.’s reasoning was not so utterly silly as it looks, for in his daily measurement of his own faculties with those of others what had impressed him most deeply was that knowledge is the prerogative of big folk.
With respect to C.’s emotional development during this year, I am pleased to be able to record a diminution in the outbursts of angry passion. There seems to have been no more biting, and altogether he was growing less homicidal and more human. It is only to be expected that the father should set down these paroxysms of rage to temporary physical conditions.
Among feelings which were still strong and frequently manifested was fear. He had no fear of the dark, and did not in the least mind being left alone when put to bed. But he was weakly timid in relation to other things, e.g., the tepid morning bath, from which he shrank as from a horror. His bravery was as yet an infinitesimal quantity, as we may see from the following anecdote. His mother was one day (end of fourth month) talking to him about the self-denying bravery of captains of ships when shipwrecked. She asked him whether he would not like to be brave too, adding for his encouragement that many timid little boys like him had grown up to be brave men. Upon this I regret to say that C. asked sceptically, “Do they?” and then added, with a little impatient wriggle of his body, “I am going to be a painter, and painters don’t need to be brave”. The mother pursued the subject saying: “But if when you are big we all go to sea and get shipwrecked, wouldn’t you wish mamma and E. to get into the boat before you?” C. managed to parry even this home-drive, answering: “Oh, yes, but I should get in the very minute after you”.
A noticeable change occurred during this period in what the Germans call “self-feeling”. A consciousness of growing power gave a certain feeling of dignity and even of superiority which often betrayed itself in his words and actions. Although, so far as I can gather, a pretty boy, and a good deal admired for his golden hair, he does not seem to have set much store by his good looks. One day (towards end of sixth month) a grown-up cousin remarked at table that he had had his hair cut: whereupon ensued this talk. Mother (to cousin). “It looks better now that it is cut.” C. “Oh, no, it was prettier before.” Cousin. “Oh, you think you’ve got pretty hair.” C. (unhesitatingly). “Oh, yes.” Cousin. “Who told you your hair was pretty?” C. “Mamma.” “All this,” writes the father, “was said very quietly, and without the least appearance of vanity. He might have been talking about the hair of another person, or of a head in one of his pictures. His interest here seemed to be much more in correcting his mother and bringing her into consistency with former statements than in laying claim to prettiness.”
On the other hand, the child does certainly appear to have plumed himself a good deal on his intellectual possessions. It is to be noted that about this time he grew unpleasantly assertive and controversial. He would even sometimes stick to his own view of things when contradicted by his parents. He prided himself more particularly on being “sensible,” as he called it. His eagerness to be thought so may be illustrated by the following incident. He and his mother had been reading a story in which a little girl speaks of her mother as the best mother in the world. Whereupon in a weak moment his mother asked him, “Do you think your mother the best in the world, dear?” To this C. replied, “Well, I think you are good, but not the best in the world. That would not be sensible, would it, mamma?” We are not told how this Cordelia-like moderation was received.
To many people, mothers especially, there might well seem to be a touch of the prig in this exact weighing of words when it was a question only of the exaggeration of love. I regret to say that about this same time a tendency to priggishness did certainly show itself in a critical air of superiority towards girls of his own age. When about four years eight months he was sent to stay for a few days at the house of a lady friend where there was a girl about his own age, who seems to have been a lively mischievous young person, delighting in ‘drawing’ her grave boy comrade. On his return home he entertained his mother by expressing his feeling respecting his new companion. He said: “I don’t like E.’s looks. She looks naughty. Her cheeks look naughty” (and he puffed out his own cheeks by way of illustration). He added: “She looks naughty about here,” pointing to his forehead just above the eyes. He then proceeded to describe the measures he had taken for correcting her naughtiness.
“One day,” he said, “when she was naughty, I told her about dynamite men, and she was naughty after that. And then I told her about the dynamite men being put in prison, and she was naughty even then.” On this his mother interposed: “Why ever did you talk about dynamite men, dear?” C. “Because I thought it would make her better. Perhaps if I could have told her what sort of a place a prison was that would have made her better. But I didn’t know.” Then after a pause: “What do they put people in prison for, mamma?”
M. “For stealing, hurting other people, and telling stories.”
C. (abruptly). “Oh, E. tells a lot of stories.”
M. “Oh no, E. doesn’t tell stories.”
C. “Yes, she does. When I say yes she says no, and I know that I am right.”
He talked of this same experience of feminine frailty to others, remarking to one of his lady friends that E. had not said a sensible thing all the week he was staying with her. He also attacked his father on the subject, and after illustrating her odd way of contradicting others, he observed: “She’s are never as sensible as he’s, I suppose, are they, papa? especially if a boy is older”.
The father asked him if he had shown his displeasure to his girl playmate, to which he replied: “I didn’t show my angriness;” and after a pause: “I’d better not show how angry I can be, I’m too strong and too big, ain’t I?” As a matter of fact he had once, at least, been so ungallant as to strike his companion on her nose with one of his toys, selecting this objective for his attack apparently for no other reason than that it was already disfigured by a scratch. He wound up this disquisition on E.’s shortcomings by an attempt at a magnanimous allowance for her weakness: “I b’lieve she tries not to say these things because she knows they will tease me, but I think she can’t help it;” and he repeated this as if to emphasise the point.
Even our much-biassed chronicler is obliged to own that all this is a lamentable exhibition of boyish swagger, and particularly out of place in one born in these enlightened days, when, as we all know, ‘she’s’ are as good as ‘he’s,’ if not a great deal better. The only palliation of the unpleasant picture of coxcombry which he offers is the information that a year or too later C.’s views about girls were profoundly modified when he found himself in a school where a girl of his own age could beat him at certain things of the mind.
The growing vigour of his self-consciousness was shown in other ways too. He was much hurt by anything which seemed to him an invasion of his liberty. About the end of the sixth month, we read, he had got into ‘finicking’ ways of taking his food. Thus he conceived a strong dislike for the ‘cream’ on his boiled milk. If anybody attempted to cross him in these faddish ways he would be greatly offended. It looks as if he were at this time getting a keen sense of private rights, any interference with which he regarded as an offence.
The story about what he would do if his family were ship-wrecked suggests that self-sacrifice was as yet not a strong element in the boy’s moral constitution. Egoism, it might well seem, was still the foundation of his character. This egoism would peep out now and again in his talk. One day (middle of eighth month) when the family was lodging in a cottage his mother had reason to scold him for walking on the flower-beds in the cottage garden. Whereupon he answered: “It isn’t your garden, it’s Mr. G.’s”. To this the mother observed: “I know, dear, but I have to be all the more particular because it is not mine”; which observation drew forth the following: “I should think Mr. G. would be all the more particular because it is his”. It was evident, writes the father, from this somewhat cynical observation that caring for things and resenting any injury to them seemed to C. to devolve on the owner and on nobody else.
He himself certainly did repel any encroachment on his rights. Here is an amusing illustration. One day (the end of seventh month) he was playing on the Heath under the eye of his mother. He had put on one of the seats a lot of grass and sand as fodder for his wooden horse. While he went away for a minute a strange nurse and children arrived, making a perfectly legitimate use of the bench by seating themselves on it, and in order to get room brushing away the precious result of his foraging expedition. On coming back and seeing what had happened he turned to his mother and swelling with indignation exclaimed loudly: “What do you mean by it, letting these children move away my things?” Of course this was intended to intimidate the real culprits, the children. Finding that they were not abashed at this, but on the contrary were looking at one another with a look of high-bred astonishment, he turned to them and shouted: “What do you mean by it?” This outburst, observes the father, showed a preternatural heat of indignation, for in general he was very distant and reserved towards strange children.
Yet C. was very far from being wholly absorbed in himself and his own interests. It cannot be said indeed that self monopolised the intensest of his feelings, for he felt just as strongly for others too. There was, we are told, a marked development of sympathy during this year. His sister was now away from home at school, and the absence seems to have drawn out kindly feeling. So that when, on one occasion (middle of seventh month), his father and aunt were going to visit her, and to take her to the Crystal Palace, though he wanted dreadfully to go himself, he made a great effort, and in answer to his father’s question, what message he had for his sister, answered a little tremulously, “Give her my love,” and then, waxing more valiant, added, “I hope she will enjoy herself at Crystal Palace”.
Some months later (end of ninth month), he proved himself considerate for his father, whose repugnance to noises has already been alluded to. A man had come to repair a window and his father had been forced to stop his work and to go out. On his return C. met him in the garden and asked him loudly, evidently so that the man might hear, “Does that man disturb you, papa?” He had previously talked to his mother in an indignant way about the noises which disturbed his father. About a fortnight after this, on hearing some children make an uproar in the passage, he asked indignantly, “What are those children about, making papa not do his work?” “He was at this time,” writes the father, “transferring some of that chivalrous protection which he first bestowed on animals to his own kith and kin. He became to me just at this time something of a guardian angel.”
His compassion for the lower creation had meanwhile by no means lessened. Here is a story which shows how the killing of animals by human hands still tortured his young heart. One day (towards end of fourth month) he was looking at his beloved picture-book of animals. Apropos of a picture of some seals he began a talk with his mother in the usual way by asking her a question.
C. “What are seals killed for, mamma?”
M. “For the sake of their skins and oil.”
C. (turning to a picture of a stag). “Why do they kill the stags? They don’t want their skins, do they?”
M. “No, they kill them because they like to chase them.”
C. “Why don’t policemen stop them?”
M. “They can’t do that, because people are allowed to kill them.”
C. (loudly and passionately). “Allowed, allowed? People are not allowed to take other people and kill them.”
M. “People think there is a difference between killing men and killing animals.”
C. was not to be pacified this way. He looked woe-begone and said to his mother piteously, “You don’t understand me”. He added that he would tell his friend the Heath-keeper about these things.
The father observes on this: “There was something almost heart-breaking in that cry ‘You don’t understand me’. How can we, with minds blinded by our conventional habits and prejudices, hope to catch the subtle and divine light which is reflected from the untarnished mirror of a child’s mind?” Somehow, the father’s sentimental comments seem less out of place here. But already the boy’s wrestlings of spirit with the dreadful ‘must,’ which turns men into killers, were proving too much for his young strength. He was learning, sullenly enough, to adjust his eye to the inevitable realities. This accommodation of thought to stern necessity was illustrated by an incident which occurred at the end of the fourth month. He had had some leaden soldiers given him at Christmas. Some time after this he had been observed to break off their guns. His mother now asked him why he had broken them off. He replied: “Oh! that was when I didn’t know what soldiers were for, when I thought they were just naughty men who liked to kill people”. On his mother then asking him what he now thought soldiers were for, he explained: “Oh! when some people want to do harm to some other people, then those other people must send their soldiers to fight them, to stop them from doing harm”.
One moral quality had, it seems, always been distinctly marked in C., viz., a scrupulous regard for truth. His father believes the child had never knowingly made a false statement, save playfully, when throwing for a moment the reins on the neck of fancy and allowing it to come dangerously near the confines of truth. This scrupulosity the father connects, reasonably enough, with certain intellectual qualities, as close observation and accurate description of what was observed. Sometimes this scrupulous veracity would display itself in a quaint form. One morning (end of tenth month) C. was obstinate and would not say his lesson to his mother, so that she had to threaten him with forfeiture of his toys till the lesson was got through. On this C. said rebelliously: “Very well, I won’t say them”. His mother then talked to him about his naughtiness. He grew very unhappy, and said sobbing and looking the very picture of misery: “It’s a good deal worse to break my promise than not to say my lesson”.
Another incident of about the same date throws a curious light on the quality of his moral feeling at this period. He had been out one afternoon in the garden with a girl companion of about his own age, and the two little imps between them had managed to strip that unpretending garden of its spring glory, to wit, about twenty buds of peonies. The sacrilege betrayed itself in C.’s red-dyed fingers. A condign chastisement was administered by the mother, and the culprit was sent to bed immediately after tea in the hope that solitude might bring reflexion and remorse. In order to ensure so desirable a result the mother before leaving him in bed enlarged on the heinousness of the offence. At last he began to get downright miserable, and the mother, expectant of a confession of guilt, overheard him say to himself: “I’m so sorry I picked the flowers. I didn’t have half enough tea.” The next day, referring to his mischievous act, his mother happened to say: “You were not sorry for it at the time”. Whereupon he burst out in a contemptuous tone: “Eh! you didn’t suppose I was sorry at the time? I liked doing it.” “Shocking enough, no doubt,” writes the father on this in his characteristic manner, “yet may we not see in this defiant avowal of enjoyment in wrong-doing the germ of a true remorse, which in its essence is the resolute confronting of the lower by the higher self?”
His mind was still occupied about the mysteries of God, death, and heaven. Following the example of his sister he would occasionally on going to bed quite spontaneously say his prayers. One evening at the end of the eleventh month, having knelt down and muttered over some words, he asked his mother whether she had heard him. She said no, and he remarked that he had not wished her to hear. On her asking why not, he rejoined: “If anybody hears what I say perhaps God won’t listen to me,” which seems to suggest that talking to God was to him something particularly confidential, what he himself once described as telling another a “private secret”.327
When his mother asked him what he had been praying for he said it was for a fine day on his birthday. He thought much of God as the maker of things, and wondered. One day (middle of tenth month) he asked how God made us and “put flesh on us,” and made “what is inside us”. He then proceeded to invent a little theory of creation. “I s’pose he made stone men and iron men first, and then made real men.” “This myth,” writes the father, “might readily suggest that the child had been hearing about the stone and the iron age, and about sculptors first modelling their statues in another material. It seems probable, however, that it was invented by a purely childish thought as a way of clearing up the mystery of the living thinking man.” There is subsequent evidence that his theory did not fully satisfy him. In the eleventh month he continued to ask how God made things, and wanted to know whether ‘preachers’ could resolve his difficulty. (His sister appears about this time to have had the common childish awe for the clergy.) On learning from his mother that even these well-informed persons might not be able to satisfy all his questions, he observed: “Well, anyhow, if we go to heaven when we die we shall know,” and added after a pause, “and if we don’t it doesn’t much matter”. “From this,” writes the father, “it seems fully clear that the child was beginning to adjust his mind to the fact of mystery, to the existence of an impenetrable region of the unknown.”
C.’s deepest interest just now in religious matters grew out of the feelings awakened by the thought of death. In the early part of the year he plied his mother with questions about death and burial. He was manifestly troubled about the prospect of being put under ground. One night (end of third month) when his mother was seeing him to bed, he said: “Don’t put earth on my face when I am buried”. The touch of the bed-clothes on his face had no doubt suggested the stifling effect of the earth. About the same date he remarked in his characteristic abrupt manner, after musing for some time: “Mamma, perhaps the weather will be very, very fine, much finer than we have ever seen, when we are not there”. The mother was not unnaturally puzzled by this dark utterance and asked him what he meant. He replied: “I mean when we are buried, and then we shall be very sorry”. “Who can tell,” writes the father, “what this fancy of lying under the ground, yet catching the whispering of the most delicious of summer breezes, and the far-off touch of the gladdest of sunbeams, and the faint scent of the sweetest of flowers, may have meant for the wee dreamy sensitive creature?”
The following dialogue between C. and his mother at the beginning of the fourth month may further illustrate his feeling about this subject.
C. “Why must people die, mamma?”
M. “They get worn out, and so can’t live always, just as the flowers and leaves fade and die.”
C. “Well, but why can’t they come to life again just like the flowers?”
M. “The same flowers don’t come to life again, dear.”
C. “Well, the little seed out of the flower drops into the earth and springs up again into a flower. Why can’t people do like that?”
M. “Most people get very tired and want to sleep for ever.”
C. “Oh! I shan’t want to sleep for ever, and when I am buried I shall try to wake up again; and there won’t be any earth on my eyes, will there, mamma?”
The difficulty of coupling the fact of burial with after-existence in heaven then began to trouble him. One day (middle of eighth month) he and his mother were passing a churchyard. He looked intently at the gravestones and asked: “Mamma, it’s only the naughty people who are buried, isn’t it?” Being asked why he thought so he continued: “Because auntie said all the good people went to heaven”. On his mother telling him that all people are buried he said: “Oh, then heaven must be under the ground, or they couldn’t get there”. Another way by which he tried to surmount the difficulty was by supposing that God would have to come up through the ground to take us to heaven. He clung tenaciously to the idea of heaven as an escape from the horror of death. That the hope of heaven was the core of his religious belief is seen in the following little talk between him and his mother and sister one evening at the end of the first month.
C. “Does God ever die?”
E. (the sister). “No, dear, and when we die God will take us to live with him in heaven.”
C. (to mother). “Will he, mamma?”
M. “I hope so, dear.”
C. “Well, what is God good for if he won’t take us to heaven when we die?”328