Page:Roads to Childhood (1920).pdf/125

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CHAPTER SIX

CHILDREN UNDER TEN AND THEIR BOOKS


And gardens, gardens, night and day,
Gardens and childhood all the way.

Alice Meynell.


“As wise as a child four years old.”


It was William Butler Yeats who quoted the old Irish proverb and suggested its hearing on the survival of poetry and fairy tales in Ireland. By happy chance the day was St. Patrick’s, and when Mr. Yeats had finished reading out of one of Lady Gregory’s books, we went back to our desk in the children’s room of the Pratt Institute Free Library, with songs of the poets who had dipped their pens deepest in the wisdom and faith, the beauty and fancy of childhood, thrilling our consciousness.

The room was filled with restless chil-

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