The second, the subjective need of the child, is that one which "The Lady of the Lake" met in the instance I mentioned before, in addition to its meeting his first need for a story. It made him feel how much he liked his camp on the lake, -- which means that it satisfied his youthful egotistic need to find his own feelings, inner experiences, thoughts, actually expressed. The boy likes to hear about prowess in battle, heroism, strength, chivalry, -- all the manly virtues, admirations, ideals, which are beginning to dawn in his boy's consciousness. The girl likes to hear about romance, love, even death. They both, if they are nature lovers, like poetic interpretations of nature. Now poetry -- lyric poetry especially -- is the record and expression of just these things. And the better the expression, the better for the boy or girl. Their own conceptions of the sentiments they feel are vague and rudimentary; the things they read express those sentiments fully, and their vague feelings spring, full-armed, into life. How vitally important is it, then, that what they read shall be the highest, the truest expression of the highest and truest feeling! Isn't it better for a girl to get her ideas of romance and of love from "Evelyn Hope," from "Sonnets from the Portuguese," from Tennyson, Shakespeare, and Keats, than from cheap sentimental novels? I do not believe that the reading of good love-poetry will hurt a girl in the least. She will read something about love, -- why not let her read the best, in both fiction and poetry?
How many lives can you live?
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