We people the
window boxes with elves and pixies and the dark corners with Red
Indians and bears. The commonplace world about us is not truly
commonplace, since our fancy, still fresh from eternity, can transform
three dusty shrubs into an enchanted forest, and an automobile into
the most deliciously formidable of the Dragon Family. A bit later, our
pretending is done more cautiously. We do not confess our shy flights
of imagination: we take a prosaic outward pose, and try not to
advertise the fact that our geese wear (to our eyes) swans' plumage,
and that our individual roles are (to our own view) always those of
heroes and heroines. No one of us but mentally sees himself or herself
doing something which is as impracticable as cloud-riding. No one of
us but dreams of the impossible and in a shamefaced, almost
clandestine, fashion pictures it and lingers over it. All
make-believe, you see, only we hate to admit it! The different thing
about Greenwich is that there they do admit it, quite a number of
them. They accept the pretending, play-acting spirit as a perfectly
natural--no, as an inevitable--part of life, and, with a certain
whimsical seriousness, not unlike that of real children, they provide
for it.
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