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Updated: May 10, 2025
There was a wise old heathen once, who said, "Maxima debetur pueris reverentia" The greatest reverence is due to children; that is, that grown people should never say or do anything wrong before children, lest they should set them a bad example. Cousin Cramchild says it means, "The greatest respectfulness is expected from little boys."
And if a water animal can continually change into a land animal, why should not a land animal sometimes change into a water animal? If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are water-babies, they must grow into water-men, ask him how he knows that they do not? and then, how he knows that they must, any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns grows into a perfect newt.
But some people, and I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence in their elders.
But poor Cousin Cramchild, to do him justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral mission, and being no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority why, it was a very great temptation for him.
The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very simple; and yet hardly any one has found it out. It was merely that the fairies took him. Some people think that there are no fairies. Cousin Cramchild tells little folks so in his Conversations. Well, perhaps there are none in Boston, U.S., where he was raised.
The old Greeks, heathens as they were, saw as much as that two thousand years ago; and I care very little for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees even less than they. And so forth, and so forth, till he is quite cross. And then tell him that if there are no water-babies, at least there ought to be; and that, at least, he cannot answer.
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