people do this, because to them, as they are now, big people, (to use the expressive phrase of childhood,) these sorrows would be light, if they should befall.  But though these sorrows may seem light to us now, and their causes small, it is only as water four feet in depth was shallow to the tall Mr. Smith.  The same water was very deep to the man whose stature was three feet and a half; and the peril was as great to him as could have been caused by eight feet depth of water to the man seven feet high.  The little cause of trouble was great to the little child.  The little heart was as full of grief and fear and bewilderment as it could hold.

Yes, I stand up against the common belief that childhood is our happiest time.  And whenever I hear grown-up people say that it is so, I think of Mr. Smith, and the water four feet deep.  I have always, in my heart, rebelled against that common delusion.  I recall, as if it were yesterday, a day which I have left behind me more than twenty years.  I see a large hall, the hall of a certain educational institution, which helped to make the present writer what he is.  It is the day of the distribution of the prizes.  The hall is crowded with little boys, and with the relations and friends of the little boys.  And the chief magistrate of that ancient town, in all the pomp of civic majesty, has distributed the prizes.  It is neither here nor there what honors were borne off by me; though I remember well that that day was the proudest that ever had come in my short life.  But I see the face and hear the voice of the kind-hearted old dignitary, who has now been for many years in his grave.  And I recall especially one sentence he said, as he made a few eloquent remarks at the close of the day’s proceedings.

“Ah, boys,” said he, “I can tell you this is the happiest time of all your life!”

“Little you know about the matter,” was my inward reply.

I knew that our worries, fears, and sorrows were just as great as those of any one else.

The sorrows of childhood and boyhood are not sorrows of that complicated and perplexing nature which sit heavy on the heart in after-years; but in relation to the little hearts that have to bear them, they are very overwhelming for the time.  As has been said, great and little are quite relative terms.  A weight which is not absolutely heavy is heavy to a weak person.  We think an industrious flea draws a vast weight, if it draw the eighth part of an ounce.  And I believe that the sorrows of childhood task the endurance of childhood as severely as those of manhood do the endurance of the man.  Yes, we look back now, and we smile at them, and at the anguish they occasioned, because they would be no great matter to us now.  Yet in all this we err just as Mr. Smith the tall man erred, in that discussion with the little man, Mr. Brown.  Those early sorrows were great things then.  Very bitter grief may be in a very little heart.  “The sports