And his words
have good sense in them, have they not? Make that good sense yours,
then. Make a play-hour each day for yourself and wife and children. I
say children, for I assume, of course, that when you are making a new
home you are making a _home_ indeed.
Very well. The absence of children is either unfortunate or immoral. A
purposely childless marriage is no marriage at all; it is merely an
arrangement. Robert Louis Stevenson calls it "a friendship recognized
by the police." A house undisturbed and unglorified by the wailings
and laughter of little ones is not a home--it is a habitation.
There is in children a certain immortality for you. Most of us believe
in life after death; and that belief is a priceless possession of
every human being who has it. But even the man who has not this faith
beholds his own immortality in his children. "Why of course I am
immortal," said a scientist who believed that death ends all. "Of
course I am immortal," said he, "there goes my reincarnation"; and he
pointed to his little son, glorious with the promise of an exhaustless
vitality.
There is no doubt at all that association with infancy and youth puts
back the clock of time for each of us.
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