to announce the perception; so the moment would go by, and the game be
lost. Not even amateur conjuring does so baffle the slow turning of a
child's mind as does a little intricacy of grammar.




THE FIELDS


The pride of rustic life is the child's form of caste-feeling. The
country child is the aristocrat; he has _des relations suivies_ with
game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. He has a
perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or a suburb. No
essayist has so much feeling against terraces and villas.

As for imitation country--the further suburb--it is worse than town; it
is a place to walk in; and the tedium of a walk to a child's mind is
hardly measurable by a man, who walks voluntarily, with his affairs to
think about, and his eyes released, by age, from the custom of perpetual
observation. The child, compelled to walk, is the only unresting
observer of the asphalt, the pavement, the garden gates and railings, and
the tedious people. He is bored as he will never be bored when a man.

He is at his best where, under the welcome stress and pressure of
abundant crops, he is admitted to the labours of men and women, neither
in mere play nor in the earnest of the hop-field for the sake of his
little gains. On the steep farm lands of the Canton de Vaud, where maize
and grapes are carried in the _botte_, so usually are children expected
in the field that _bottes_ are made to the shape of a back and arms of