THE CHILD OF SUBSIDING TUMULT


There is a certain year that is winged, as it were, against the flight of
time; it does so move, and yet withstands time's movement. It is full of
pauses that are due to the energy of change, has bounds and rebounds, and
when it is most active then it is longest. It is not long with languor.
It has room for remoteness, and leisure for oblivion. It takes great
excursions against time, and travels so as to enlarge its hours. This
certain year is any one of the early years of fully conscious life, and
therefore it is of all the dates. The child of Tumult has been living
amply and changefully through such a year--his eighth. It is difficult
to believe that his is a year of the self-same date as that of the adult,
the men who do not breast their days.

For them is the inelastic, or but slightly elastic, movement of things.
Month matched with month shows a fairly equal length. Men and women
never travel far from yesterday; nor is their morrow in a distant light.
There is recognition and familiarity between their seasons. But the
Child of Tumult has infinite prospects in his year. Forgetfulness and
surprise set his east and his west at immeasurable distance. His Lethe
runs in the cheerful sun. You look on your own little adult year, and in
imagination enlarge it, because you know it to be the contemporary of
his. Even she who is quite old, if she have a vital fancy, may face a
strange and great extent of a few years of her life still to come--his
years, the years she is to live at his side.

Reason seems to be making good her rule in this little boy's life, not so