dear little people must be wanting in so many humanising
experiences of innocence and tenderness, as to be quite an unsafe
monstrosity among men. Therefore I set the assertion down,
whenever I happen to meet with it--which is sometimes, though not
often--as an idle word, originating possibly in the genteel languor
of the hour, and meaning about as much as that knowing social
lassitude, which has used up the cardinal virtues and quite found
out things in general, usually does mean. I suppose it may be
taken for granted that we, who come together in the name of
children and for the sake of children, acknowledge that we have an
interest in them; indeed, I have observed since I sit down here
that we are quite in a childlike state altogether, representing an
infant institution, and not even yet a grown-up company. A few
years are necessary to the increase of our strength and the
expansion of our figure; and then these tables, which now have a
few tucks in them, will be let out, and then this hall, which now
sits so easily upon us, will be too tight and small for us.
Nevertheless, it is likely that even we are not without our
experience now and then of spoilt children. I do not mean of our
own spoilt children, because nobody's own children ever were
spoilt, but I mean the disagreeable children of our particular
friends. We know by experience what it is to have them down after
dinner, and, across the rich perspective of a miscellaneous dessert
to see, as in a black dose darkly, the family doctor looming in the
distance. We know, I have no doubt we all know, what it is to
assist at those little maternal anecdotes and table entertainments
illustrated with imitations and descriptive dialogue which might
not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert
Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption
(cutaneous) of Master Alexander. We know what it is when those