and to paste them into the extemporized scrap-book.  Then I left them, recalling something from Newman Hall’s address on “The Dignity of Labor.”  Why hadn’t I thought before of showing my nephews some way of occupying their mind and hands?  Who could blame the helpless little things for following every prompting of their unguided minds?  Had I not a hundred times been told, when sent to the wood-pile or the weediest part of the garden in my youthful days, that

    “Satan finds some mischief still
    For idle hands to do?”

“Never again would I blame children for being mischievous when their minds were neglected.

I spent a peaceful, pleasant hour over my novel, when I felt that a fresh cigar would be acceptable.  Going up-stairs in search of one I found that Budge had filled the bathtub with water, and was sailing boats, that is, hair-brushes.  Even this seemed too mild an offense to call for a rebuke, so I passed on without disturbing him, and went to my own room.  I heard Toddie’s voice, and having heard from my sister that Toddie’s conversations with himself were worth listening to, I paused outside the door.  I heard Toddie softly murmur:—­

“Zere, pitty yady, ’tay zere.  Now, ’ittle boy, I put you wif your mudder, tause mudders likes zere ‘ittle boys wif zem.  An’ you sall have ’ittle sister tudder side of you,—­zere.  Now, ’ittle boy’s an’ ’ittle girl’s mudder, don’t you feel happy?—­isn’t I awfoo good to give you your ’ittle tsilderns?  You ought to say, ’Fank you, Toddie,—­you’se a nice, fweet ‘ittle djentleman.’”

I peered cautiously—­then I entered the room hastily.  I didn’t say anything for a moment, for it was impossible to do justice, impromptu, to the subject.  Toddie had a progressive mind—­if pictorial ornamentation was good for old books, why should not similar ornamentation be extended to objects more likely to be seen?  Such may not have been Toddie’s line of thought, but his recent operations warranted such a supposition.  He had cut out a number of pictures, and pasted them upon the wall of my room—­my sister’s darling room, with its walls tinted exquisitely in pink.  As a member of a hanging committee, Toddie would hardly have satisfied taller people, but he had arranged the pictures quite regularly, at about the height of his own eyes, had favored no one artist more than another, and had hung indiscriminately figure pieces, landscapes, and genre pictures.  The temporary break of wall-line, occasioned by the door communicating with his own room, he had overcome by closing the door and carrying a line of pictures across its lower panels.  Occasionally, a picture fell off the wall, but the mucilage remained faithful, and glistened with its fervor of devotion.  And yet so untouched was I by this artistic display, that when I found strength to shout “Toddie!” it was in a tone which caused this industrious amateur decorator to start violently, and drop his mucilage-bottle, open end first, upon the carpet.