To attend to and heal his bodily ailments occupied me entirely at first, and finally, finding him ill cared for, I made him a little pallet on my sofa and kept him with me by night and day.  Surely such devotion as he manifested in return for my scant kindness to him few mothers have received from their offspring.  To sit silently at my feet while I talked to him, or do my bidding, seemed his chief pleasures, as they might not, could not have been, had he been strong, and active, and more soundly constituted.  As it was, no more loyal creature existed, nor did the Creator ever enshrine deeper affections or quicker perceptions in any childish frame.  Weird, and wise, and witty as Aesop was this child, like him deformed; and to draw out his quaint remarks, read him fresh from his Maker’s hand—­this warped, and tiny, imperfect volume of humanity—­was to me an ever-new puzzle and delight.  Severity he had been used to of late, I saw plainly.  He shrank with winking eyes from an uplifted hand, even if the gesture were one of mere amazement, or affection, and sat patiently, like a little well-trained dog, when he saw food placed before me, until invited to partake thereof.  His manner was wistful and deprecating even to pathos, and I longed for one burst of passion, one evidence of self-will, to prove to myself that I, like others he had been recently thrown with, was not the meanest of all created creatures—­a baby’s despot!

Oh, better than this the cap and bells, and infant tyranny forever, and the wildest freaks of baby folly.  He suffered silently, as I have seen no other child do, uncomplainingly even, and at such times would sink into moods of the blackest gloom, like those of an old, gouty subject.  Hypochondria, baby as he was, seemed already to have fixed his fangs upon him.  He had days of profound melancholy, when nothing provoked a smile, and others of bitter, silent fretting, inconceivably distressing; again there were periods of the wildest joy, only restrained by that reticence which had become habitual, from positive boisterousness.

All this I could have compelled into subservience, of course, by substituting fear for affection.  It is not a difficult matter for the strong and cunning to cow and crush the spirit of a little child; no great achievement, after all, nor proof of power, though many boast of it as such.  Strength and hardness of heart are all one requires for this external victory; but human souls are not to be so governed (God be praised for this!), and love and respect are not to be compelled.

It is the error of all errors to suppose that, because a child has a sickly frame or imperfect animal organization, it is just or profitable to give it over to its own devices, and consign it to indolence and ignorance.  Alas! the vacancy that begets fretfulness, and crude, capricious desires, the confusion of images that arises from partial understanding, are far more wearing to the nerves of an intelligent infant than the small