“The golden bridge between the world of childhood and the world of maturity is a sympathetic imagination.”

On the imaginative sympathy needed to understand and write for children · Prose remark (quoted in contemporary notice)

• Childhood
• Imagination
• Understanding

“Yes; a child has a civilising effect. I feel that I am less of a bear than I was. It is with some men as it is with the blackthorn; the little white flower comes out first, and then the whole gnarled faggot breaks into leaf.”

On how fatherhood softens and humanises a man · Letter (in The Invisible Playmate, 1894)

• Childhood
• Fatherhood
• Growth

“I never could understand why men should be so insanely set on their first-born being a boy. This of ours, I am glad to say, is a girl. I should have been pleased either way, but as a matter of fact I wanted a girl. I don’t know why, but somehow with a girl one feels that one has provided against the disillusionment, the discomfort, the homelessness of old age and of mental and physical decrepitude.”

Affectionate preference for a daughter as a safeguard against the loneliness of later life · Letter (published in The Invisible Playmate, 1894)

• Age
• Children
• Family