The Story of a Child

Among the present analytic studies of the minds of children, Margaret Deland's Story of a Child stands out in refreshing distinctness and simplicity. The author of this restful, earnest, bit of psychology has chosen-instinctively one feels-a line from the "Intimations of Immortality" for the theme The intense self-consciousness of childhood, its mysterious pains and delights, will always have absorbing interest for anyone who can say with Wordsworth : "The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benediction." Such a one will feel the thrill of kinship with Ellen in the child-dreams and fancies-"the subtle, epicurean delight of the artistic temperament"-in the worship of the "heathen idol," the long sunshiny afternoons of summer Sundays in the old garden and the night out-of-doors, which is the best of all. Ellen's playmate, Effie Temple, who is not portrayed with such loving insight, is only an ordinary small child-a very real one nevertheless. Real, too, are the "grown-ups" who form the background to the child-life-no smallest detail of these lives in Old Chester, Pa., is uninteresting. The sweet old-maiden love-story interwoven is like a whiff of lavender from a long-closed drawer. The book itself is not unlike one of those still nooks where Ellen "married the grass" in the Dale Garden with all the primness of its hollyhocks and the reminiscences of its mignonette. Comparing this child with another example of this phase of literature, Mrs. Burnett's elaborate "Small Person," in her "brief rose or heliotrope frocks." we feel that Ellen resembles her as little as a spray of this same mignonette does a frail, scentless orchid. -The Vassar Miscellany, Volumes 22-23 [1892]