The Poetry of Learning

To forget the passage of time you must live in the open air, in a warm climate, with as few clothes as possible upon you. You must collect and cook your own food. Then, after a while, if you have no special ties to bind you to civilisation, Nature will begin to do for you what she does for the savage. You will recognise that it is possible to be happy without books or newspapers, letters or bills. You will recognise the part sleep plays in Nature.

After a month on the island you might have seen Dick at one moment full of life and activity, helping Mr Button to dig up a taro root or what-not, the next curled up to sleep like a dog. Emmeline the same.

Profound and prolonged lapses into sleep; sudden awakenings into a world of pure air and dazzling light, the gaiety of colour all round.

Nature had indeed opened her doors to these children.

One might have fancied her in an experimental mood, saying: "Let me put these buds of civilisation back into my nursery and see what they will become--how they will blossom, and what will be the end of it all."

Just as Emmeline had brought away her treasured box from the Northumberland, Dick had conveyed with him a small linen bag that chinked when shaken. It contained marbles. Small olive-green marbles and middle-sized ones of various colours; glass marbles with splendid coloured cores; and one large old grandfather marble too big to be played with, but none the less to be worshipped--a god marble.