“I sometimes think that it is no great thing after all to be human;” the Doctor continued, bowing his acknowledgments for my protecting his right to the floor.  “Mind is a great thing, but there is more of sorrow, anxiety, and care clustering about it, than these wild things we hear and see around us suffer through their instincts.  Reason, knowledge, wisdom, are great things.  To stand at the head of created matter, to be the noblest of all the works of God, the only created thing wearing the image, and stamped with the patent of Diety, are proud things to boast of.  But great and glorious and proud as they are, they have their balances of evil.  They bring with them no contentment, no repose, while they heap upon us boundless necessities and limitless wants.  We are hurried through life too rapidly for the enjoyment of the present, and the good we see in prospect is never attained.  When we were boys we longed to be men, with the strength and intellect of men; and now that we are men, with matured powers of body and mind, true to our organic restlessness and discontent, we look back with longing for the feelings and emotions of our boyhood.  What a glorious thing it would be if we could always be young—­not boys exactly, but at that stage of life when the physical powers are most active, and the heart most buoyant.  That, to my thinking, would be a better arrangement than to grow old, even if we live on until we stumble at last from mere infirmity into the grave, looking forward in discontent one half of our lives, and backward in equal discontent the other.”

“You remind me,” said Spalding, “of a little incident, simple in itself, but which, at the time, made a deep impression upon my mind, and which occurred but a few weeks ago.  Returning from my usual walk, one morning, my way lay through the Capitol Park.  The trees, covered with their young and fresh foliage, intertwined their arms lovingly above the gravelled walks, forming a beautiful arch above, through which the sun could scarcely look even in the splendor of his noon.  The birds sang merrily among the branches, and the odor of the leaves and grass as the dews exhaled, gave a freshness almost of the forest to the morning air.  On the walk before me were two beautiful children, a boy of six and a little girl of four.  They were merry and happy as the birds were, and with an arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still.  The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of affection in their eyes.  They were confiding, affectionate, loving little children, and my heart warmed towards them, as I saw them waltzing and dancing and skipping about under the green foliage of the trees. “‘Willy,’ said the little girl, as they sat down on the low railing of the grass plats, to breathe for a moment, and listen to the chirrup and songs of the birds in the boughs above them, ‘Willy, wouldn’t you like to be a little bird?’