"I won't play," parsed by a psychologist,
means "I'll play when I'm ready." The adventurous spirit accepts what
offers regardless of consequences; he who hesitates and thinks is but
a Policeman who prevents adventure. Now everything offers itself to
children, because they rightly think that everything belongs to them.
Life is conditionless, if only people would let them accept it as it
is. "Don't think; accept!" expresses the law of their swift and fluid
being. They act on it. They take everything they can--get. But it is
the Policeman who adds the "get," changing the whole significance of
life with one ugly syllable.
Each of the children treasured an adventure of its very own; an
adventure-in-chief, that could not possibly have happened to anybody
else in the world. These three survivals in an age when education
considers childhood a disease to be cured as hurriedly as possible--
took their adventure the instant that it came, and each with a
complete assurance that it was unique. To no one else in the world
could such a thing have happened, least of all to the other two. Each
took it characteristically, according to his or her individual nature
--Judy, with a sense of Romance called deathless; Tim, with a taste for
Poetic Drama, a dash of the supernatural in it; and Maria, with a
magnificent inactivity that ruled the world by waiting for things to
happen, then claiming them as her own.
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