"Come to Sissy," illustration, Country Life, October 1904

In addition to stately homes, hunting and horses, children seem to be another picturesque element of country life regularly represented in the pages of this appropriately named and important periodical from the era under consideration. 

Reading the contributions submitted by devoted readers to the magazine's editors from a modern viewpoint, which is to say from the vast distance of our present and, as it were, more sophisticated perspective, 1904 can seem like a simpler and less complicated time.  Or something else, perhaps.



"Connemara Children" Country Life, December 1904

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I like the part about the full quiver.  And also the consumption of patience and the casuistic diplomacy, of course.  I remember some casuistic diplomacy employed upon me in my youth.  There was also the promise of a six-pack of Bud. 

By the way, thank you, my dear Gentle Reader, for your kind words of encouragement.  My friend Tom says all his students are podcasting these days, becoming amateur journalists and critics; apparently what I am rather timidly attempting here is all the rage among the young.  His eleven year old son has even made a number of live-action and animated films which he's posted on YouTube.  They're good, too.

Hence the logical turning of one's attention to the subject of children.  I even find myself thinking of the refrain to an old David Bowie song. 

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He told me, "Let the children use it
Let the children use it,
Let all the children boogie."