Thoreau evidently knew how to console a child, no less than how to make friends with a squirrel. But his fondness for children is no more an argument for his sociability, than his fondness for birds or squirrels. As a rule it will be found, I think, that a predilection for children is most marked in men generally reserved and inaccessible. Lewis Carroll, for instance, to take a famous recent example, was the reverse of a sociable man. Shy, reserved, even cold in ordinary converse, he would expand immediately when in the company of children. Certainly he understood them much better than he did their elders. Like Thoreau, moreover, Lewis Carroll was a lover of animals. Social adaptability was not a characteristic of Thackeray, his moroseness and reserve frequently alienating people; yet no one was more devoted to children, or a more delightful friend to them. So far from being an argument in favour of its possessor’s sociability, it seems to be a tolerable argument against it. It is not hard to understand why. When analysed this fondness for children is much the same in quality as the fondness for animals. A man is drawn towards children because there is something fresh, unsophisticated, and elemental about them. It has no reference to their moral qualities, though the æsthetic element plays a share. Thoreau knew how to comfort little Edward Emerson just as he knew how to cheer the squirrel that sought a refuge in his waistcoat. This fondness, however, must not be confused with the paternal instinct. A man may desire to have children, realize that desire, interest himself in their welfare, and yet not be really fond of them. As children they may not attract him, but he regards them as possibilities for perpetuating the family and for enhancing its prestige. A good deal of nonsense is talked about the purity and innocence of childhood. Children are consequently brought up in a morbidly sentimental atmosphere that makes of them too quickly little prigs or little hypocrites. I do not believe, however, that any man or woman who is genuinely fond of children is moved by this artificial point of view. The innocence and purity of children is a middle-class convention. None but the unreal sentimentalist really believes in it. What attracts us most in children is naturalness and simplicity. We note in them the frank predominance of the instinctive life, and they charm us in many ways just as young animals do. Lewis Carroll’s biographer speaks of “his intense admiration for the white innocence and uncontaminated spirituality of childhood.” If this be true then it shows that the Rev. C. L. Dodgson had a great deal to learn about children, who are, or should be, healthy little pagans. But though his liking for them may not have been free of the sentimental taint, there is abundant proof that other less debatable qualities in childhood appealed to him with much greater force.