A Child's Garden of Verses

In "A Child's Garden of Verses" all sorts of curious child's thoughts, quaint ideas and humor are jumbled in together and jostle one another on the pages bubbling over with mirth and sunny expression. Yet we can scarcely read a line without perceiving under all this the warmth and depth of heart of the man, Stevenson. If we call to mind what he says in one of his essays, that the true mark of the romancist is " to satisfy the nameless longings of the reader and to obey the ideal laws of the day dream," then the farther we read the more we are struck by his wealth of sympathy. But the more fully we feel his marvelous capacity for loving, the less we wonder at his choosing the children to lavish so much of it upon. And here we begin to sound more deeply the real meaning and purpose of the book. A man of his great heart needs comfort and sympathy, and to whom could he turn for more sincere and disinterested affection than to the children? With the child's quick discrimination between those who come to them selfishly and those who come to them bringing as well as asking love, we feel that they have opened their little hearts and arms to him as wide as they would go, and that they have walked together hand in hand as good comrades on an equal footing.