Page:Roads to Childhood (1920).pdf/142
humor with some standard of imaginative conception, accuracy of drawing, and suitability of subject. We have long believed that humor should be given its due in the education of children. The solemnity of the process of education has made too easy the way that leads to the vulgarization of art and the prostitution of fancy. To the picture books, the cartoons, and the drawings—to which children under ten years old are exposed—no less surely than to imaginative writing, must we look for the development of that sound streak of humor which gets one behind “the Blue Door” at any age. Randolph Caldecott did not hang up the key to “the Blue Door” on the other side. He passed it on to Leslie Brooke of England, who still unlocks it for the children of America.