The drawback of all Guides to Knowledge is
that one cannot have the editor at hand in order to
cross-examine him. This is particularly so in
the case of a Children’s Encyclopaedia,
for the child’s first question, “Why does
this do that?” is meant to have no more finality
than tossing-up at cricket or dealing the cards at
bridge. The child does not really want to know,
but it does want to keep up a friendly conversation,
or, if humourously inclined, to see how long you can
go on without getting annoyed. Not always, of
course; sometimes it really is interested; but in
most cases, I suspect, the question, “What makes
thunder?” is inspired by politeness or mischief.
The grown-up is bursting to explain, and ought to
be humoured; or else he obviously doesn’t know,
and ought to be shown up.
But these would not be my motives if the editor of
The Children’s Encyclopaedia took me
for a walk and allowed me to ask him questions.
The fact that light travels at so many hundred thousand
miles an hour does not interest me; I should accept
the information and then ask him my next question,
“How did they find out?” That is always
the intriguing part of the business. Who first
realized that light was not instantaneous? What
put him up to it? How did he measure its velocity?
The fact (to take another case) that a cricket chirps
by rubbing his knees together does not interest me;
I want to know why he chirps. Is it involuntary,
or is it done with the idea of pleasing? Why does
a bird sing? The editor is prepared to tell me
why a parrot is able to talk, but that is a much less
intriguing matter. Why does a bird sing?
I do not want an explanation of a thrush’s song
or a nightingale’s, but why does a silly bird
go on saying “chiff-chaff” all day long?
Is it, for instance, happiness or hiccups?
Possibly these things are explained in some other
volume than the one which fell to me. Possibly
they are inexplicable. We can dogmatize about
a star a billion miles away, but we cannot say with
certainty how an idea came to a man or a song to a
bird. Indeed, I think, perhaps, it would have
been wiser of me to have left the chiff-chaff out
of it altogether. I have an uneasy feeling that
all last year the chiff-chaff was asking himself why
I wrote every day. Was it involuntary, he wondered,
or was it done with the idea of pleasing?
A Man of Property
Yes, a gardener’s life is a disappointing one.
When it was announced that we were just too late for
everything this year, I decided to buy some ready-made
gardens and keep them about the house, until such time
as Nature was ready to co-operate. So now I have
three gardens. This enables me to wear that superior
look (which is so annoying for you) when you talk
about your one little garden in front of me. Then
you get off in disgust and shoot yourself, and they
bury you in what you proudly called your herbaceous
border, and people wonder next year why the delphiniums
are so luxuriant—but you are not there to
tell them.
