The Soul of a Child eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 293 pages of information about The Soul of a Child.

The Soul of a Child eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 293 pages of information about The Soul of a Child.

So he began to ask questions, and one of the first things he learned, to his great astonishment, was that he had not always lived in the same place—­that he had been born, whatever that meant, in another and unmistakably more desirable part of the city.

“But why did we come here,” he asked, trying instinctively to keep his voice from sounding regretful or petulant.

“Because the bank owns this house,” his mother replied.  “And because papa acts as landlord for it, and we don’t have to pay any rent here.”

Out of this confusing answer he retained a single idea:  the bank.  It was in the home air, so to speak.  Evidently his father was closely connected with it, and this was good for the whole family.  For a little while the boy imagined that his father was the bank.  Later he began to think of it as some sort of superlatively powerful being that, alone in the whole world, ranked above his father even.  Still later—­much later—­he began to suspect a relationship between the bank and his father resembling that between his father and himself.  And he read out of his father’s words and miens a sense of dissatisfaction not unlike the one he felt when he was forced to do what he did not want, or prevented from doing what he wanted.

This was his fourth fundamental realization:  of powers beyond those directly represented within the home; powers of compelling importance that might, or might not, be kindly; powers before which all and everything within his own narrow world had to bow down in helpless submission.  In the end this one undoubtedly became the most significant of all his early realizations.  It tended gradually to lessen his awe of parental authority so that, at a very early age, he developed the courage to shape his own life and opinions regardless of his immediate surroundings.  At the same time, strange as it may seem, it inspired him with a general respect for established authority from which he could never quite free himself.

II

“Why don’t I remember when we came here,” Keith asked his mother one day after she had let out the startling fact of his being born elsewhere.

“Because it happened before you began to remember things,” she said a little warily.

As frequently was the case, her reply puzzled him more than the fact it was meant to explain, and so he asked no more questions that time.

On the whole, he lived completely in the present, and rather on the edge nearest the future, so that a teacher later said of him that he was in constant danger of “falling off forward.”  Highstrung and restless, sitting still did not come naturally until he had learned to read books all by himself, and he could hardly be called introspective.  While prone to futile regrets, largely under the influence of his mother’s morbid attitude, he gave little attention as a rule to what was past and gone.

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Project Gutenberg
The Soul of a Child from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.