Dear Maddam.—­You complane of Lafayette’s never getting to school till eleven o’clock.  It is not my affare as Hildegarde has full charge of him and I never intefear, but I would sujjest that if you beleeve in him he will do better.  Your unbeleef sapps his will powers. you have only reprooved him for being late. why not incurrage him say by paying him 5 cents a morning for a wile to get amung his little maits on the stroak of nine? “declare for good and good will work for you” is one of our sayings.  I have not time to treet Lafayette myself my busness being so engroassing but if you would take a few minites each night and deny Fear along the 5 avanues you could heel him.  Say there is no Time in the infinnit over and over before you go to sleep.  This will lift fear off of Lafayette, fear of being late and he will get there in time.

     Yours for Good,
     MRS. POWERS,
     Mental Heeler.

Oh, what a naughty, ignorant, amusing, hypocritical, pathetic world it is!  I tuck the note in my pocket to brighten the day for Helen, and we pass on.

As we progress we gather into our train Levi, Jacob, David, Moses, Elias, and the other prophets and patriarchs who belong to our band.  We hasten the steps of the infant Garibaldi, who is devouring refuse fruit from his mother’s store, and stop finally to pluck a small Dennis Kearney from the coal-hod, where he has been put for safe-keeping.  The day has really begun, and with its first service the hands grow willing and the heart is filled with sunshine.

As the boys at my side prattle together of the “percession” and the “sojers” they saw yesterday, I wish longingly that I could be transported with my tiny hosts to the sunny, quiet country on this clear, lovely morning.

[Illustration:  “THE BOYS AT MY SIDE PRATTLE TOGETHER.”]

I think of my own joyous childhood, spent in the sweet companionship of fishes, brooks, and butterflies, birds, crickets, grasshoppers, whispering trees and fragrant wild flowers, and the thousand and one playfellows of Nature which the good God has placed within reach of the happy country children.  I think of the shining eyes of my little Lucys and Bridgets and Rachels could I turn them loose in a field of golden buttercups and daisies, with sweet wild strawberries hidden at their roots; of the merry glee of my dear boisterous little prophets and patriots, if I could set them catching tadpoles in a clear wayside pool, or hunting hens’ nests in the alder bushes behind the barn, or pulling yellow cow lilies in the pond, or wading for cat-o’-nine-tails, with their ragged little trousers tucked above their knees.  And oh! hardest of all to bear, I think of our poor little invalids, so young to struggle with languor and pain!  Just to imagine the joy of my poor, lame boys and my weary, pale, and peevish children, so different from the bright-eyed, apple-cheeked darlings of well-to-do parents,—­mere babies, who, from morning till night, seldom or never know what it is to cuddle down warmly into the natural rest of a mother’s loving bosom!