it is only a pebble breaking softly in upon the summer flow to toss a cool spray up into the white bosom of the lilies, or to bathe the bending violets upon the green and grateful bank.  It seems to them as if the whole strong tide is thrust fiercely and violently back, and hurled into a new channel, chasmed in the rough, rent granite.  It is impossible to calculate the waste of grief and pathos which this incapacity causes.  Fanny’s doll aforesaid is left too near the fire, and waxy tears roll down her ruddy cheeks, to the utter ruin of her pretty face and her gay frock; and anon poor Fanny breaks her little heart in moans and sobs and sore lamentation.  It is Rachel weeping for her children.  I went on a tramp one May morning to buy a tissue-paper wreath of flowers for a little girl to wear to a May-party, where all the other little girls were expected to appear similarly crowned.  After a long and weary search, I was forced to return without it.  Scarcely had I pulled the bell, when I heard the quick pattering of little feet in the entry.  Never in all my life shall I lose the memory of those wistful eyes that did not so much as look up to my face, but levelled themselves to my hand, and filmed with bitter disappointment to find it empty. I could see that the wreath was a very insignificant matter.  I knew that every little beggar in the street had garlanded herself with sixpenny roses, and I should have preferred that my darling should be content with her own silky brown hair; but my taste availed her nothing, and the iron entered into her soul.  Once a little boy, who could just stretch himself up as high as his papa’s knee, climbed surreptitiously into the store-closet and upset the milk-pitcher.  Terrified, he crept behind the flour-barrel, and there Nemesis found him, and he looked so charming and so guilty that two or three others were called to come and enjoy the sight.  But he, unhappy midget, did not know that he looked charming; he did not know that his guilty consciousness only made him the more interesting; he did not know that he seemed an epitome of humanity, a Liliputian miniature of the great world; and his large, blue, solemn eyes were filled with remorse.  As he stood there, silent, with his grave, utterly mournful face, he had robbed a bank, he had forged a note, he had committed a murder, he was guilty of treason.  All the horror of conscience, all the shame of discovery, all the unavailing regret of a detected, atrocious, but not utterly hardened pirate tore his poor little innocent heart.  Yet children are seeing their happiest days!

These people—­the aforesaid three-fourths of our acquaintance—­lay great stress on the fact that children are free from care, as if freedom from care were one of the beatitudes of Paradise; but I should like to know if freedom from care is any blessing to beings who don’t know what care is.  You who are careful and troubled about many things may dwell on it with great satisfaction, but