Their capacity for
projecting themselves into the realm of romance and fantasy is
remarkable. A joyous life is romping in their blood. They delight in
music, and motion, and colour, and very often they betray a startling
beauty of face and form under their filth and rags.
But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all away. They
disappear. One never sees them again, or anything that suggests them.
You may look for them in vain amongst the generation of grown-ups. Here
you will find stunted forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds.
Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are
gone. Sometimes, however, you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but
twisted and deformed out of all womanhood, bloated and drunken, lift her
draggled skirts and execute a few grotesque and lumbering steps upon the
pavement. It is a hint that she was once one of those children who
danced to the organ-grinder. Those grotesque and lumbering steps are all
that is left of the promise of childhood. In the befogged recesses of
her brain has arisen a fleeting memory that she was once a girl. The
crowd closes in. Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with
all the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no more than parody
with her body.
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