Part 15

The oddities of childhood are rarely understood completely, even in these days of ingenious educational devices. The child lives and moves and has his being in his own world. He may emerge at moments, he may seem to understand or be understood by the great confederation of blundering adults: but he must go back as soon as possible to the realm of his real allegiance, where fact and fancy, dreams, doubts and discoveries are so cunningly intermingled.

Why do we forget our own childhood, and turn deaf ears and unseeing eyes to the sounds and sights that once we should have comprehended so easily? The world of flame, the glory of color, the music in the winds and the darkness, the actuality of romance, the strange limits and restrictions of knowledge! Can you remember when the earth stretched twelve miles out, beyond doubt, and perhaps a little further? Or the immense significance of double figures when the tenth birthday painted a huge 10 across the entire sky, but nobody else particularly noticed the phenomenon? Or the fantastic associations of certain names from time to time, so that to live in Champagne would have seemed a comic-opera infliction, and a Duke of Burgundy was as Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque as a Marquess of Claret, or an Earl of Whisky, or Baron Beer?

Yet we have long had Sir Loin, and scarcely remember the cause of that famous knighting; and now we have our copper kings, beef barons, pork princes, and what not. Perhaps we are not so remote from the whimsicalities of childhood as we have imagined, after all.

_Jaded Appetites_

A recent advertisement of a well-known New York restaurant announced: “Whether it is in luncheon, dinner or supper, you will find in our menu of delicious cold specialties, ready for your selection at our buffet in the main dining room, creations to tempt the most jaded of appetites.”

It is comforting to know that the grossly overfed man or woman need not starve. When the appetite fails through constant indulgence, it can be tempted to new excesses by these “delicious cold specialties,” and so enough nourishment may be secured to preserve life.

It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to see the forlorn victim of piggishness sadly regarding a menu that can no longer entice him to abuse his stomach. Let him now take heart and visit the restaurant that has learnt how to “tempt the most jaded of appetites.”

It is a noble work that this restaurant is doing; one well worthy of our civilization.

But who will tempt the unjaded appetites of the slum-dwellers?

Transcriber’s Note:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.

Spelling changes:

‘conciousness’ to ‘consciousness’ …class-consciousness… ‘prmitive’ to ‘primitive’ …primitive profession of murder…

The two lines omitted from the quoted poem by Giovannitti read:

And from its bloody pedestal The last god, Terror, shall be hurled.