The Repeal of Reticence
he thinks it is the kind of information that children are eagerly seeking. "What is this topic," he asks, "that all these little ones are questioning over, mulling over, fidgeting over, imagining over, worrying over? Ask your own memories."
I do ask my memory in vain for the answer Dr. Keyes anticipates. A child's life is so full, and everything that enters it seems of supreme importance. I fidgeted over my hair, which would not curl. I worried over my examples, which never came out right. I mulled (though unacquainted with the word) over every piece of sewing put into my incapable fingers, which could not be trained to hold a needle. I imagined I was stolen by brigands, and became—by virtue of beauty and intelligence—spouse of a patriotic outlaw in a frontierless land. I asked artless questions which brought me into discredit with my teachers, as, for example, who "massacred" St. Bar-
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