'When we have had a difficult day, I go home and sit down in my cosy
corner in the twilight, the time and place where I always repeat my
credo, which is this:-
'It is the children of this year, of every new year, who are to bring
the full dawn, that dawn that has been growing since first the world
began. It is not only that children re-create the world year by
year, decade by decade, by making over human nature; by transforming
trivial, thoughtless men and women into serious, earnest ones; by
waking in arid natures slumbering seeds of generosity, self-
sacrifice, and helpfulness. It is not alone in this way that
children are bringing the dawn of the perfect day. It is the
children (bless them! how naughty they were to-day!) who are going to
do all we have left undone, all we have failed to do, all we might
have done had we been wise enough, all we have been too weak and
stupid to do.
'Among the thousands of tiny things growing up all over the land,
some of them under my very wing--watched and tended, unwatched and
untended, loved, unloved, protected from danger, thrust into
temptation, among them somewhere is the child who will write a great
poem that will live for ever and ever, kindling every generation to a
loftier ideal.
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