Child, I would cherish you, not for my own, but for yourself, helping you to grow, holding your dreams in the face of the World, helping you not to grow callous and cold to the unseen. I would not come too close and stifle you with anxious care, merely be by when life becomes too quiveringly real, to give an understanding smile, that you may build about your dreams No Higher wall than you may leap with ease and frequency. I would that life should always hurt you and you be unafraid of pain. Then having watched, unwatched, I would draw quietly aside, happy that you had grown to need me no more. —E. H. McCormack
