Still, I am of the opinion (and Judge Methuen indorses it) that
we need in this country of ours just that influence which the
fairy tale exerts. We are becoming too practical; the lust for
material gain is throttling every other consideration. Our babes
and sucklings are no longer regaled with the soothing tales of
giants, ogres, witches, and fairies; their hungry, receptive
minds are filled with stories about the pursuit and slaughter of
unoffending animals, of war and of murder, and of those
questionable practices whereby a hero is enriched and others are
impoverished. Before he is out of his swaddling-cloth the
modern youngster is convinced that the one noble purpose in life
is to get, get, get, and keep on getting of worldly material.
The fairy tale is tabooed because, as the sordid parent alleges,
it makes youth unpractical.

One consequence of this deplorable condition is, as I have
noticed (and as Judge Methuen has, too), that the human eye is
diminishing in size and fulness, and is losing its lustre. By as
much as you take the God-given grace of fancy from man, by so
much do you impoverish his eyes. The eye is so beautiful and
serves so very many noble purposes, and is, too, so ready in the
expression of tenderness, of pity, of love, of solicitude, of
compassion, of dignity, of every gentle mood and noble
inspiration, that in that metaphor which contemplates the eternal
vigilance of the Almighty we recognize the best poetic expression
of the highest human wisdom.

My nephew Timothy has three children, two boys and a girl. The
elder boy and the girl have small black eyes; they are as devoid