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Show CHILDREN IN FICTION. Among male novelists Dickens takes the lead as a delineator of children. chil-dren. All kinds and conditions of them flock through his books. He depicted de-picted life as he saw it and wherever he looked there were children, there-fore there-fore children had a natural and in-tvitable in-tvitable place in his pages, says the Indianapolis Star. From the Fat Boy of Pickwick Papers to Tiny Tim the procession Is long and includes a notable list David Copperfleld, -. Oliver Twist, Little Nell, Florence -Doiabey and her brother, Poor Jo, the little Kenwigses, Toddles and many more. If they are not children exactly as readers of this day see them they are children as he saw them and he pictures them with a vividness that gives them a lasting place in the reader's mind. They Btand forth more clearly on "mem-Dry's "mem-Dry's wall" than the real personages Df history. Several of Thackeray's characters are introduced in their childhood, as Henry Esmond, Penden-nis Penden-nis and. Becky Sharp, and are brought along to maturity, but this is merely by way of accounting for their later peculiarities and the child portraits leave no special impression. Poe pever wrote of children. Hawthorne Sid, but of dream children rather than those of real life. Later male novelists novel-ists for the most part ignore the young of thier race. Henry James seldom realizes that children are on earth. There is "Maizie," to be sure, but Maizie is not a real child. Thomas Hardy is aware of them and intro- iuces Jude as a boy, but dwells light ly on this early life of his hero. |