But you climbed these steeps like squirrels
That leap from bough to bough,
Nor cared for cloud or tempest,

Nor minded the deep, soft snow.

Blithe of heart and of footstep

You merrily took the road;
Life yet had brought no shadows,
Care yet had heaped no load.
And safe beneath lowly roof-trees
You said your prayers at night,
And glad as the birds in the orchard
Rose up with the morning light.

Gone is the fair young teacher;
The scholars come no more
With shout and song to greet her
As once, at the swinging door.
There are gray-haired men and women
Who belonged to that childish band,
With troops of their own around them
In this sunny mountain land.

The old school stands deserted
Alone on the hill by itself,
Much like an outworn chapel
That clings to a rocky shelf.
And the sentinel pines around it

In solemn beauty keep

Their watch from the flush of the dawning Till the grand hills fall asleep.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Spoiled Child.

HAT is a spoiled child, and who is to blame for his condition? The first question is easily answered, for few of us are so fortunate as never to have met poor little specimens of a most disagreeable and unpopular genus. The spoiled child cries and whines and sulks and storms when it cannot have its own way. It is stubborn, greedy and selfish, or it is saucy, disobedient and rude. All its sweet juvenile beauty, its pretty winsomeness of babyhood are clouded over and obscured because it has been spoiled, that is to say, because it has been both untrained and mistrained. The pity of it is the greater, that the thing is wholly unnecessary. Coming to its parents a wee bud of humanity, with every trait in embryo, the baby is theirs to make or to mar, to do with absolutely as they will, and it is one of those blunders which are very near being crimes, which causes them to spoil it, either by foolish and weak over-petting and indulgence, or by equally foolish and cruel severity.

Let one word be said, which cannot be contradicted. spoiled by too much love.

but laziness spoils children.

No child is ever

Not love but folly, not love but cowardice, not love

But you, dear anxious mother, you, fond proud father, spoilers though you are, cannot always be held responsible for the unhappy results in your particular cases. Society, as you have seen it, has helped along. American children have been too much reared in public, too early forced, as plants are forced in a hot-bed. Their lives are not sufficiently simple.

We hear mothers asking babies of two-and-a-half or three years, whether they will have this or that dish? As if choice of food should ever be made by such a tiny creature. We ask a mother why her nursery brood are not in bed and asleep early in the evening, and she smilingly replies, "I wanted them to go at six o'clock, but they wouldn't go!" As if they should have been so much as consulted! You hear mamma and papa glibly repeating the clever speeches of Florence, aged four, and Claude, aged six, while the two cherebs stand by, eagerly drinking in and enjoying the surprise and applause which gratify their vanity. As if a child could escape self-consciousness, whose ears heard these pleased and proud comments on his own precocity!

Children should be children, not little ladies and gentlemen, not little puppets to be displayed on a stage, and not premature men and women. From infancy they should be taught obedience by gentle and loving, but consistent and patient authority. Harsh punishments and loud scolding and fretful nagging are as bad for children, and as unnecessary as are inane and silly yielding to their little whims. I knew a baby of two years who had been so spoiled that he made life a burden for his doting father and mother. One morning these two grown up idiots

refused to remain in But once there, the

his crib. He had elected to pass the night in their big bed. diminutive despot determined to occupy that vantage-ground by himself, and so his mother took the sofa and his father took the floor, and thus the trio wore away the hours between midnight and the dawn of day. Was there ever anything so absurd as this performance of a spoiled child and his complacent slaves?

A child is none the happier for being thus ruined in temper and behavior. Children enjoy a tranquil atmosphere. They thrive best where they are under a

loving rule; restraint gently exercised is pleasant to them, and they are entitled to it as a privilege of their period in life. In the nursery and the early schooldays they need few rules. To mind when spoken to, to come when called and to tell the truth are rules enough. They do not spoil themselves. They are not to

blame for being either prigs or rebels. The work lies at the door of their mistaken parents.

Now if you have been a sinner in this regard, don't, I beg of you, turn suddenly around and exchange your limitless indulgence for a contrasting and far more to be avoided severity. On the whole, children are not injured by a little wholesome neglect.

A Fellow's Mother.

"A fellow's mother," said Will the wise,
With his rosy cheeks and his merry eyes,
'Knows what to do if a fellow gets hurt
By a thump or a bruise, or a fall in the dirt.

"A fellow's mother has bags and strings,
Rags and buttons, and lots of things;
No matter how busy she is, she'll stop
To see how well you can spin your top.

"She does not care-not much I mean-
If a fellow's face is not always clean;
And if your trousers are torn at the knee,
She can put in a patch that you'd never see.

"A fellow's mother is never mad,
And only sorry, if you're bad;

And I'll tell you this: if you're only true,
She'll always forgive you, whate'er you do.

"I'm sure of this," said Will the wise,
With a manly look in his laughing eyes;
"I'll mind my mother, quick, every day-
A fellow's a baby that won't obey."

-From Little Knights and Ladies.