Little man

“ So of the tender, weeping child is made the callous, heartless man; of the all-believing child, the sneering sceptic; of the beautiful and modest, the shameless and abandoned; and this is what the world does for the little one. ”

“ A good, kind little man, who seems earnest in the welfare of these wild little children that you see running about here—not the half of them know their parents—looks in now and then, acts as if he wasn't afraid of us, (that is a good deal, Madam) and the boys are beginning to take to him. ”

“ As he goes out the LITTLE MAN looks very wistfully after him. Screwing up his mouth and nose, he holds the BABY away from him and wavers; then rising, he puts it on the seat opposite and goes through the motions of letting down the window. ”

“ I stand and look through the pickets and watch the children run and shout—the little funny, mockingly dressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of a thousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through the generations in their little faces—"Will the Man come to me out of these?" ”

“ I once knew a little boy, a little child of three years old; one of those bright creatures whose fair loveliness seems more of heaven than of earth—even at a passing glimpse stirring our hearts, and filling them with purer and holier thought. ”

“ THE LITTLE BOY FOUND The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wandering light,
Began to cry, but God, ever nigh,
Appeared like his father, in white.
He kissed the child, and by the hand led,
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale,
Her little boy weeping sought.
LAUGHING SONG When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it ”

“ I, too, am very tired of being a little boy, and I long to go out into the world and be a man like my gran'pa or my father or my uncles. With nothing to look at but those distant hills and the river in the valley, my eyes are wearied ”

“ The Little Man stops singing and shifts the shawl higher, to protect the Baby's head from the draught.]
American [gravely] . This is the most sublime spectacle I have ever envisaged. There ought to be a record of this. [The Little Man looks at him, wondering.] We have here a most stimulating epitome of our marvelous advance toward universal brotherhood. You are typical, sir, of the sentiments of modern Christianity. You illustrate the deepest feelings in the heart of every man. [The Little Man rises with the Baby and a movement of approach.] ”

“ The good little boy, the hero of the infant literature in those days, stood, it must be acknowledged, the chance of being a very selfish man. His virtue consisted in being different from some other little boy, perhaps his brother; and his reward was having a fine coach to ride in, and being a King Pepin. Now-a-days, since the world has had a great moral earthquake that set it thinking, the little boy promises to be much more of a man; thinks of others, as well as works for himself; and looks for his reward to a character for good sense and beneficence. ”

“ But take them civilised or natural, those who love and observe little children no more expect to find that peculiar exquisite charm of the girl-child which I have endeavoured to describe in the boy, than they would expect the music of the wood-lark and the airy fairy grace and beauty of the grey wagtail in Philip Sparrow. And yet, incredible as it seems, that very quality of the miraculous little girl is sometimes found in the boy and, with it, strange to say, the boy's proper mind and spirit. ”

“ There are little eyes upon you, and they're watching night and day;
There are little ears that quickly take in every word you say;
There are little hands all eager to do everything you do,
And a little boy that's dreaming of the day he'll be like you. ”

“ My little boy was no longer a little boy, but some strange creature—I knew hot what—like to nothing I had ever seen or known; like no woman of the towns, and no savage of the plains, but better than both and different from either, inscrutable, sweet, yes, and very sad. ”

“ Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul ”

“ We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. ”

“ In Memory of a Child The angels guide him now, And watch his curly head, And lead him in their games, The little boy we led. He cannot come to harm, He knows more than we know, His light is brighter far Than daytime here below. His path leads on and on, Through pleasant lawns and flowers, His brown eyes open wide At grass more green than ours. With playmates like himself, The shining boy will sing, Exploring wondrous woods, Sweet with eternal spring. ”

“ An infant finds a place in the hearts of all people. The selfish and proud open their hearts to its silent influence. The aged, who are standing near the end of the journey of life, have the scenes of their younger days called up afresh by the child's artless ways, and in its company grow young again. The disconsolate seem to catch a fresh gleam of hope when they see the confiding ways of the little child, and take heart again. ”

“ I'd like to be a little boy now and then, just for a short time, to see once more how it would feel to run and shout and play and eat and laugh, the way I used to. But then I think I'd pretty soon want to be myself again, old as I am, because there are some grand things about old age that I think I'd miss if I had to be a little boy for good and all. ”

“ The little child hardly seems to love; indeed, his indifference to grown people, even to his own parents, is often amazing. He has the simple affection of a young animal, but how different his cool regard from the passionate flame of youth! ”

“ "Childhood is the time of man's greatest content," said Ak, following the youth's thoughts. "'Tis during these years of innocent pleasure that the little ones are most free from care." ”

“ The beautiful fancy of the “Little People,” even if you do not give it to him, he will very probably get for himself; they will lurk always just out of reach of his desiring curious eyes, amidst the grass and flowers and behind the wainscot and in the shadows of the bedroom. ”

“ THE LITTLE SPIRIT, OR BOY-MAN. AN ODJIBWA FAIRY TALE.
WRITTEN OUT FROM THE VERBAL NARRATIVE BY THE LATE
MRS. H.R. SCHOOLCRAFT.
There was once a little boy, remarkable for the smallness of his stature. He was living alone with his sister older than himself. They were orphans, they lived in a beautiful spot on the Lake shore; many large rocks were [Pg 128] scattered around their habitation. The boy never grew larger as he advanced in years. One day, in winter, he asked his sister to make him a ball to play with along shore on the clear ice. ”

“ No wonder that your son comes into the room with a confused expression of uncomfortable pain on every feature, when he does not in the least know whether he will be recognized as a gentleman, or overlooked as a little boy. ”

“ These things are great to little man; ”

“ As much variety of character and countenance may be found among them, as exists in their elders, while the picture is so much the more pleasing, as the lines are always softened by something of the freshness of childhood. This sweet-faced little girl, that bright-eyed boy, this laughing, merry young rogue, yonder timid, gentle child, this playful, kitten-like creature, that frank and manly lad, will each in turn attract attention ”

“ Certain looks and tones and gestures mould a child's nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak to her or take her up. ”

“ You'd think, to see us carrying on about that little tad,
That, like as not, that baby was the first we'd ever had;
But, sakes alive! he isn't, yet we people make a fuss
As if the only baby in the world had come to us! ”

“ Nay, little Child-heart, you have never need To fear us,—we are weaker far than you— Tis we who should be fearful—we indeed Should hide us, too, as darkly as you do,— Safe, as yourself, withdrawn, Hearing the World roar on Too willful, woful, awful for the Child-heart! ”

“ This child, per contra, having never had a sensation of illness, or of pain, save honest hunger, has seemed to be a happy little boy almost from the first, alert or thoughtful, shouting or cooing, laughing and crowing, especially after his meals and movements, studying the world of things about him by the hour, keenly appreciative of colors and of music, and preferring some sorts to others, his face crossed by vivid changes of expression, wonder, merriment, surprise, reverie—all as perfect at six months as ordinarily seen at three years. ”

“ Some of them are munching fruit, others playing hide-and-seek among the crowds, while many a tiny baby is nodding itself to sleep on its mother’s back or crying with all its might for a little attention. ”

“ But all the wishing in the world is not a bit of use;
That Little Boy this very day he stands in his own shoes;
That Little Boy is still but little Master What-do-you-call,
As much as if that Little Boy had never wished at all!{200}
He eats his bread and butter, and he likes it very much ”

“ One little handful of a thing had a fine baby boy, nearly as big as herself, and she looked so fragile and pale, and pretty and lonely, and had such an appealing light in her big shadowed brown eyes, and such a pathetic droop at the corners of her sweet little mouth, that you longed to take her in your manly arms―baby and all―and comfort her. ”

“ How the little boy cries because he cannot spin his top like the older brothers! He learns to spin it, and is delighted with its snoring hum; learning skill by that, he by and by goes on to higher acts of boyish life. ”

“ Never, to the last day of his life, one may fancy, would Graham forget the little scene before him, which, indeed, always returned to his memory with an impression as vivid as that made upon him now—the overturned table, the scattered cards, Madelon in her white frock, her pale scared face, her wavy hair, her great brown eyes illuminated by the candle she still held, the terrified Legros, the ghastly look of the dying man—he saw it all at a glance, as he entered the room he had left so dim and silent but half an hour ago. ”

“ A real pretty boy, he looked something like you, Gay, only smaller, asked me for a match. I knew what he wanted by the way he said it."
"You mean you've known about ..."
"Sure ... honey ... When I was fourteen some old man went down on me." ”

“ When our little boy wakes, he always beckons and cries to come into our room. He draws the curtains himself with his little dimpled hand; he laughs, he crows, he dances in the nurse’s arms, he shows his teeth, he blows like the bellows, pretends to snuff candles, and then, having shown off all his accomplishments, calls for his playthings. ”

“ The contrast between the future Graham looked forward to, full of hopes and ambitions, and this past whose history he could guess at, and whose results he contemplated, forced itself upon him, and an immense compassion filled the young man's heart at the sight of this wasted life, of this wayward mind, lighted up with the sudden, passionate gleams of tenderness for his child, the one pure affection perhaps that survived to witness to what had been—a great compassion, an honest, wondering pity for this man who had thus recklessly squandered his share of the common birth right. ”

“ A child's soul is such a small thing, and the world and the systems of worlds, and the infinite stretches of illimitable space, are so wide for a child's soul to wander in, that, sane as we may be, stolid as we may try to be, we think in imagery, and the figure of little feet setting off on the far track to the end of things, hunting God, wrings our heart-strings and makes our throats grip and our eyelids quiver. ”

“ Doubtless I had looked at him often enough before that, and had my own childish thoughts about him; but this was the time when I got my fixed, compact idea of him, and the first look of him which I felt could never be forgotten. I saw him, as it were, by a flash of lightning, sudden and complete. A child begins by seeing bits of everything; it knows in part—here a little, there a little; it makes up its wholes out of its own littles, and is long of reaching the fulness of a whole; and in this we are children all our lives in much. ”

“ It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year—new-comers to this planet—who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us. ”

“ Little boys, when they are about half grown up, sometimes do just as Tip-Top did. They are in a great hurry to get away from home into the great world; and then temptation comes, with bright eyes and smooth velvet paws, and promises them fun; and they go to bad places; they get to smoking, and then to drinking; and, finally, the bad habit gets them in its teeth and claws, and plays with them as a cat does with a mouse. ”