Quotes from Angelo Patri, 1924

Think of the pleasure of taking down your well-thumbed Treasure Island. You meant only to read just a little but you got to the place where Black Bill comes tapping down the highway, each tap striking terror deeper into the heart of the trembling boy in the doorway and you were lost in the story with a child hanging over your shoulder breathlessly waiting the next word. A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled when it comes to sharing the books of your boyhood with your lad.

Now and again some anxious, troubled soul fears that fairy tales will harm the children. Children need fairy tales because they are the purest product of the highest kind of imagination. The lovely thing about them is exactly that they are so far removed from the actual world and so close to that better, fairer one where children dwell.

Fathers who share their children's growing time cannot grow old, cannot grow paunchy and stodgy and stiff even if they wished to, and who wishes to? Let another wear the dignity of the pompous front but not a boy's father. He doesn't have to. He wears the aura of young life.

[F]atherhood means... self-suppression and patient understanding and intelligent toleration. A little questioning, a little experimenting, a bit of experience and the growth goes forward. One of the recompenses of fatherhood is the absurd pride and gentle humility that grows out of the process. The fledgling has beaten you at your own game and while you squirm a warm glow fills your heart and a delighted grin spreads from brow to chin, from ear to ear.

One of the choice bits of fathering is telling fairy tales in the heel of the evening when the tireless legs have begun to drag a little and the running tongue pauses a bit in its outpouring. Here is fun and sly gleaning of lore and guide posts to pleasant roads and a hint of fine taste. A good story cries out to be told and the art of listening needs to be cultivated as much as the greatly desired gift of telling.