The Young that Grows

My childhood started very hard for me betrayed and bejoined, I had many bad behavior's of which I need mention only three. I was moody, irresolute, and hatefully reserved. Fate had already placed me the eldest by three years of a large family. Add to the eminence thus attained intentions which varied from hour to hour, a will so little in accordance with desire that I had rather give up a cherished plan than fight for it, and a secretive faculty equalled only by the magpie, and you will not wonder when I affirm that I lived alone in a household of a dozen friendly persons. As a set-off and consolation to myself I had very strongly the power of impersonation I could be within my own little entity a dozen different people in a day, and live a life thronged with these companions or rivals; and yet this set me more solitary than ever, for I could never appear in anyone of my characters to anybody else. But alone and apart, what world's I inhabited! Worlds of fact and worlds of fiction. At nine years old I knew Nelson's ardour and Wellesley's phlegm; I had Napoleon's egotism,Galahad's purity, Lancelot's passion, Tristram's melancholy. I reasoned like Socrates and made Phaedo weep; I persuaded like saint Paul and saw the throng on Mars' Hill sway to my words. I was by turned on Juan and Don Quixote, Tom Jones and Mr. All worthy, Hamlet and his uncle, young Shandy and his. You will gather that I was a reader. I was, and the people of my books stepped out of their pages and inhabited me. Or, to change the figure, I found in every book an open door, and went in and dwelt in its world. Thus I lived a thronged and busy life, a secret life, full of terror, triumph, wonder, frantic enterprise, a noble and gallant figure among my peers, while to my parents, brothers and sisters I was an incalculable, fitful creature,often lethargic and often in the sulks. They saw me mooning in idleness and were revolted; or I walked dully the way I was bid and they despaired of my parts. I could not explain myself to them, still less justify, having that miserable veil of reserve close over my mouth, like a yashmak. To my father I could not speak, to my mother I did not; the others, being my juniors all, hardly existed. Who is to declare the motives of a child's mind? What was the nature of this reticence? Was it that my real habit was reverie? Was it, as I suspect, that constitutional timidity made me diffident? I was a coward, I am very sure, for I was always highly imaginative. Was it,finally, that I was dimly conscious of matters which I despaired of putting clearly? Who can say? And who can tell me now whether I was cursed or blessed? Certainly, if it had been possible to any person my senior to share with me my daily adventures, I might have conquered the cowardice from which I suffered such terrible reverses. But it was not. I was the eldest of a large family, and apparently the easiest to deal with of any of it. I was what they call a tractable child, being,in fact, too little interested in the world as it was to resent any duties cast upon me. It was not so with the others. They werehigh-spirited little creatures, as often in mischief as not, and demanded much more pains then I ever did. What they demanded they got,what I did not demand I got not: "Lo, here is alle! What shold I mores eye?" How it was that, taking no interest in my actual surroundings, I became aware of unusual things behind them I cannot understand. It is very difficult to differentiate between what I imagined and what I actually perceived. It was a favourite string of my poor father's plaintive lyre that I had no eyes. He was a great walker, a poet, and a student of nature. Every Friday of his life he took me and my brother for a long tramp over the country, the intense spiritual fatigue of which exercise I should never be able to describe. I have a sinking of the heart, even now, when I recall our setting out.Intolerable labour! I saw nothing and said nothing. I did nothing but plug one dull foot after the other. I felt like some chained slave going to the hulks, and can well imagine that my companions must have been very much aware of it. My brother, whose nature was much happier than mine, who dreamed much less and observed much more, was the life of these woeful excursions. Without him I don't think that my father could have endured them. At any rate, he never did. I amazed,irritated, and confounded him at most times, but in nothing more than my apathy to what enchanted him. The birds, the flowers, the trees,the waters did not exist for me in my youth. The world for me was uninhabited, a great empty cage. People passed us, or stood at their doorways watching us, but I never saw them. If by chance I described somebody coming whom it would be necessary to salute, or to whom I might have to speak, I turned aside to avoid them. I was not only shy to a fault, as a diffident child must be, but the world of sense either did not exist for me or was thrust upon me to my discomfort. And yet all the while, as I moved or sat, I was surrounded by a stream of being, of infinite constituents, aware of them to this extent that I could converse with them without sight or speech. I knew they were there, I knew them singing, whispering, screaming. They filled my understanding not my senses. I did not see them but I felt them. I knew not what they said or sang, but had always the general sense of their thronging neighbourhood. And me when i shall be enlightened at a later day to perceive them. I am thankful to remember and record for my own comfort that that day came not too late for my enchantment to overtake his and proceed in company. I think it justifies me in that observing so little what I did observe with my bodily eyes must almost certainly have been observable.