King James the First

A MERRY monarch two years and four months old.

If we could have stood by when the world was a-making,—could have sniffed the escaping gases, as they volatilized through the air, — could have seen and heard the swash of the waves, when the whole world was, so to speak, in hot water, — could have watched the fiery tumult gradually soothing itself into shapely, stately palms and ferns, coldblooded Pterodactyles, and gigantic, but gentle Megatheriums, till it was refined, at length, into sunshine and lilies and Robin Redbreasts,—we fancy we should have been intensely interested. But a human soul is a more mysterious thing than this round world. Its principles firmer than the hills, its passions more tumultuous than the sea, its purity resplendent as the light, its power too swift and subtile for human analysis, — what wonder in heaven above or earth beneath can rival this mystic, mighty mechanism ? Yet it is formed almost under our eyes. The voice of God, “ Let there be light," we do not hear ; the stir of matter thrilled into mind we do not see ; but the after-march goes on before our gaze. We have only to look, and, lo ! the mountains are slowly rising, the valleys scoop their levels, the sea heaves against its barriers, and the chaotic soul evolves itself from its nebulous, quivering light, from its plastic softness, into a world of repose, of use, of symmetry, and stability. This mysterious soul, when it first passed within our vision, was only not hidden within its mass of fleshly life, a seed of spirituality deep-sunk in a pulp of earthliness. Passing away from us in ripened perfection, we behold a being but little lower than the angels, heir of God and joint heir with Christ, crowned with glory and honor and immortality.

Come up, then, Jamie, my King, into the presence of the great congregation ! There are poets here, and philosophers, wise men of the East who can speak of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. But fear them not, little Jamie! you are of more value, even to science, than many fishes. Wise as these Magi are, yesterday they were such as you, and such they must become again or ever they shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Come up, little Jamie, into the hall of audience ! Blue eyes and broad brow, sunny curls, red lips, and dainty, sharp teeth, stout little arm, strong little hand, sturdy little figure, and most still and steadfast gaze: truly it is the face and form of a king,—sweetness in power, unconsciousness in royalty.

“Jamie, you are a little beauty! You are too handsome to live ! ”

“No!” says Jamie, vehemently, for the fiftieth time, stamping the royal foot and scowling the royal brows. “ Gamma say not too ha’some ! ”

“ But you are a young Apollo.”

“ No my ’Pollo ! ”

“ What are you, then ? ”

“ I goo e baw,” which is Jametic for good little boy.

This microcosm, like the macrocosm, may be divided into many departments. As the world is viewed geographically, geologically, historically, astronomically, so in this one little Jamie we have many Jamies. There is the Jamie philological. Jamie theological, Jamie psychological, Jamie emotional, Jamie social ; in fact, I can hardly think of any natural, moral, or mathematical science, on which a careful study of Jamie will not throw some light. Would you frame a theory of metaphysics ? Consult Reid, and Locke, and Hamilton warily, for they are men, subject to like mistakes as we are ; but observe Jamie with utmost confidence and the closest care, for he is the book of God, and will teach only truth, if your eye is single to perceive truth. Theologically, Jamie has points superior to both Andover and Princeton ; he is never in danger of teaching for doctrine the commandments of men ; nor have passion and prejudice in him any power to conceal, but, on the contrary, they illuminate truth. For the laws of language, mark how the noble tree of human speech springs in his soul from mustard-seed into fair and fruitful symmetry. In good sooth, one marvels that there should be so much error in the world with children born and growing up all over it. If Jamie were, like Jean Paul, the Only, I should expect philosophers to journey from remotest regions to sit at his feet and learn the ways of God to man. Every one who presumed to teach his fellows should be called upon to produce his diploma as a graduate of Jamie, or forfeit all confidence in his sagacity. But, with a baby in every other house, how is it that we continually fall out by the way? It must be that children are not advantageously used. We pet them, and drug them, and spoil them ; we trick them out in silks and fine array; we cross and thwart and irritate them ; we lay unholy hands upon them, but are seldom content to stand aside and see the salvation of the Lord.

Tug, tug, tug, one little foot wearisomely ranging itself beside the other, and two hands helping both : that is Jamie coming up stairs. Patter, patter, patter : that is Jamie trotting through the entry. He never walks. Rattle, clatter, shake: Jamie is opening the door. Now he marches in. Flushed with exertion, and exultant over his brilliant escapade from the odious surveillance below, he presents himself peering on tiptoe just over the arm of the big chair, and announces his errand, —

“ Come t’ see Baddy.”

“ Baddy does n’t want you.”

“ Baddy dot"

Then, in no wise daunted by his cool welcome, he works his way up into the big chair with much and indiscriminate pulling: if it is a sleeve, if it is a curtain, if it is a table-cloth whereon repose many pens, much ink and paper, and knick-knacks without number, nothing heeds he, but clutches desperately at anything which will help him mount, and so he comes grunting in, all tumbled and twisted, crowds down beside me, and screws himself round to face the table, poking his knees and feet into me with serene unconcern. Then, with a pleased smile lighting up his whole face, he devotes himself to literature. A small, brass-lined cavity in the frame of the writing-desk serves him for an inkstand. Into that he dips an old, worn-out pen with consequential air, and assiduously traces nothing on bits of paper. Of course I am reduced to a masterly inactivity, with him wriggling against my right arm, let alone the danger hanging over all my goods and chattels from this lawless little Vandal prowling among them. Shall 1 send him away? Yes, if I am an insensate clod, clean given over to stupidity and selfishness ; if I count substance nothing, and shadow all things ; if I am content to dwell with frivolities forever, and have for eternal mysteries nothing but neglect. For suppose I break in upon his short-lived delight, thrust him out grieved and disappointed, with his brave brow clouded, a mist in his blue eyes, and — that heart-rending sight — his dear little under-lip and chin all quivering and puckering. Well, I go back and write an epic poem. The printers mangle it; the critics fall foul of it; it is lost in going through the post-office ; it brings me ten letters, asking an autograph, on six of which I have to pay postage. There is vanity and vexation of spirit, besides eighteen cents out of pocket, and the children crying for bread. I let him stay. A little, innocent life, fearfully dependent on others for light, shines out with joyful radiance, wherein I rejoice. To-morrow he will have the measles, and the mumps, and the croup, and the whooping-cough, and scarlatina; and then come the alphabet, and Latin grammar, and politics, and his own boys getting into trouble : but to-day, when liis happiness is in my hands, I may secure it, and never can any one wrest from him the sunshine I may pour into his happy little heart. Oh ! the time comes so soon, and comes so often, that Love can only look with bitter sorrow upon the sorrow which it has no power to mitigate !

Language is unceremoniously resolved into its original elements by Jamie. He is constitutionally opposed to inflection, which, as he must be devoid of prejudice, may be considered indisputable proof of the native superiority of the English to other languages. He is careful to include in his sentences all the important words, but he has small respect for particles, and the disposition of his words waits entirely upon his moods. My usually does duty for I. “Want that Uncle Frank gave me hossey,” with a finger pointing to the mantel-piece, is just as flexible to his use as “Want the hossey that Uncle Frank gave me.” “ Where Baddy can be ? ” he murmurs softly to himself, while peering behind doors and sofas in playing hide-and-seek. Hens are cud-dah, a flagrant example of Onomatopœia. The cradle is a cay-go ; corn-balls are ballcorn ; and snow-bird, bird-snow ; and all his rosy nails are toe-nails. He has been drilled into meet response to “how d’ ye do ? ” but demonstrates the mechanical character of his reply by responding to any question that has the you and how sounds in it, as, “What do you think of that ? ” “ How did you do it ? ” “ How came you by this ? ” “ Pittee well.”

But his performances are not all mechanical, He has a stock of poetry and orations, of which he delivers himself at bedtime with a degree of resignation,— that being the only hour In which he can be reduced to sufficient quietude for recitation ; nor is that because he loves quiet more, but bed less. It is a very grievous misfortune, an unreasonable and arbitrary requisition, that breaks in upon his busy life, interrupts him in the midst of driving to mill on an inverted chair, hauling wood in a ditto footstool, and other important matters, and sweeps him off to darkness and silence. So, with night-gown on, and the odious bed imminent, he puts off the evil day by compounding with the authorities and giving a public entertainment, in consideration of a quarter of an hour’s delay. He takes large liberties with the text of his poems, but his rhetorical variations are of a nature that shows it is no vain repetition, but that he enters into the spirit of the poem. In one of his songs a person

what it was he was singing.

This Jamie intensifies thus : —

When he reaches the place where

he invariably leaves Gill to take care of herself, and closes with the pathetic moral reflection, “ ’At too bad ! ” Little Jack Horner, having put in his thumb and picked out a plum, is made to declare definitely and redundantly,—

He persists in praying,—

Borne off to bed at last, in spite of every pretext for delay, tired Nature droops in his curling lashes, and gapes protractedly through his wide-dividing lips.

“ I seepy,” he cries, fighting off sleep with the bravery of a Major-General, — observing phenomena, in articulo somni, with the accuracy and enthusiasm of a naturalist, and reasoning from them with the skill of a born logician.

A second prolonged and hearty gape, and

“ I two seepics,” he cries, adding mathematics to his other accomplishments.

And that is the last of Jamie, till the early morning brings him trudging up stairs, all curled and shining, to “hear Baddy say ' Boo ! ’ ”

Total depravity, in Jamie’s presence, is a doctrine hard to be understood. Honestly speaking, he does not appear to have any more depravity than is good for him,—just enough to make him piquant, to give him a relish. He is healthy and hearty all day long. He eats no luncheon and takes no nap, is desperately hungry thrice a day and sleeps all night, going to bed at dark after a solitary stale supper of bread and butter, more especially bread ; and he is good and happy. Laying aside the revelations of the Bible and of Doctors of Divinity, I should say that his nature is honest, simple, healthful, pure, and good. He shows no love for wrong, no inclination towards evil rather than good. He is affectionate, just, generous, and truthful. He just lives on his sincere, loving, fun-loving, playful, yet earnest life, from day to day, a pure and perfect example, to my eye, of what God meant children to be. I cannot see how he should be very different from what he is, even if he were in heaven, or if Adam had never sinned. There is so fearful an amount of, and so decided a bent towards, wickedness in the world, that it seems as if nothing less than an inborn aptitude for wickedness can account for it; yet, in spite of all theories and probabilities, here is Jamie, right under my own eye, developing a far stronger tendency to love, kindness, sympathy, and all the innocent and benevolent qualities, than to their opposites. The wrong that he does do seems to be more from fun and frolic, from sheer exuberance of animal spirits and intensity of devotion to mirth, than anything else. He seems to be utterly devoid of malice, cruelty, revenge, or any evil motive. Even selfishness, which I take to be the fruitful mother of evil, is held in abeyance, is subordinate to other and nobler qualities. Candy is dearer to him than he knows how to express ; yet he scrupulously lays a piece on the mantel for an absent friend ; and though he has it in full view, and climbs up to it, and in the extremity of his longing has been known, I think, to chip off the least little bit with his sharp mouse-teeth, yet he endures to the end and delivers up the candy with an eagerness hardly surpassed by that with which he originally received it. Can self-denial go farther ?

It seems to me that the reason of Jamie’s gentleness and cheerfulness and goodness is, that he is comfortable and happy. The animal is in fine condition, and the spirit is therefore well served ; consequently, both go on together with little friction. And I cannot but suspect that a great deal of human depravity comes from human misery. The destruction of the poor is his poverty. Little sickly, fretful, crying babies, heirs of worn nerves, fierce tempers, sad hearts, sordid tastes, half-tended or over-tended, fed on poison by the hand of love, nay, sucking poison from the breasts of love, trained to insubordination, abused by kindness, abused by cruelty, — that is the human nature from which largely we generalize, and no wonder the inference is total depravity. But human nature, distorted, defiled, degraded by centuries of misdealing, is scarcely human nature. Let us discover it before we define it. Let us remove accretions of long-standing moral and physical disease, before we pronounce sentence against the human nature. If it ever becomes an established and universally recognized principle, as fixed and unquestionable as the right and wrong of theft and murder, that it is a sin against God, a crime against the State, an outrage upon the helpless victim of their ignorance or wickedness, for an unhealthy man or woman to become the parent of a child, I think our creeds would presently undergo modification. Disease seems to me a more fertile source of evil than depravity ; at least it is a more tangible source. We must have a race of healthy children, before we know what are the true characteristics of the human race. A child suffering from scrofula gives but a feeble, even a false representation of the grace, beauty, and sweetness of childhood. Pain, sickness, lassitude, deformity, a suffering life, a lingering death, are among the woful fruits of this dire disease, and it is acknowledged to be hereditary. Is not, then, every person afflicted with any hereditary disease debarred as by a fiat of the Almighty from becoming a parent? Every principle of honor forbids it. The popular stolidity and blindness on these subjects are astonishing. A young woman whose sisters have all died of consumption, and who herself exhibits unmistakable consumptive tendencies, is married, lives to bear three children in quick succession, and dies of consumption. Her friends mourn her and the sad separation from her bereaved little ones, but console themselves with the reflection that these little ones have prolonged her life. But for her marriage, she would have died years before. Of the three children born of this remedial marriage, two die in early girlhood of consumption. One left, a puny infant, languishes into a puny maturity. Even as a remedy, what is this worth ? To die in her youth, to leave her suffering body in the dust and go quickly to God, with no responsibility beyond herself, or to pine through six years, enduring thrice, besides all her inherited debility, the pain and peril, the weariness and terror of child-bearing, to be at last torn violently and prematurely away from these beloved little ones, — which is the disease, and which the remedy ? And when we look farther on at the helpless little innocents, doomed to be the recipients of disease, early deprived of a mother’s care, for which there is no substitute, dragging a load of weakness and pain, and forced down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death before years shall have blunted the point of its terrors, or religion robbed them of their sting, — it is only not atrocious because so unwittingly wrought.

And bodily health is only one of the possessions which every child has a right to claim from its parents. Not merely health, but dispositions, traits, lie within human control far beyond the extent of common recognition. We say that character is formed at fourteen or sixteen, and that training should begin in infancy ; but sometimes it seems to me, that, when the child is born, the work is done. All the rest is supplementary and subordinate. Subsequent effort has, indeed, much effect, but it cannot change quality. It may modify, but it cannot make anew. After neglect or ignorance may blight fair promise, but no after wisdom can bring bloom for blight. There are many by-laws whose workings we do not understand ; but the great, general law is so plain, that waytaring folk, though fools, need not err therein. Every one sees the unbridled passions of the father or mother raging in the child. Gentleness is born of gentleness, insanity of insanity, truth of truth. Careful and prayerful training may mitigate the innate evil; but how much better that the young life should have sprung to light from seas of love and purity and peace ! Through God's mercy, the harsh temper, the miserly craving, the fretful discontent may be repressed and soothed ; but it is always up-hill work, and never in this world wholly successful. Why be utterly careless in forming, to make conscious life a toilsome and thankless task of reforming ? Since there is a time, and there comes no second, when the human being is under human control,—since the tiny infant, once born, is a separate individual, is for all its remaining existence an independent human being, why not bring power to bear where form is amenable to power ? Only let all the influences of that sovereign time be heavenly, — and whatever may be true of total depravity, Christ has made such a thing possible, — and there remains no longer the bitter toil of thwarting, but only the pleasant work of cultivating Nature.

It is idle, and worse than idle, to call in question the Providence of God for disaster caused solely by the improvidence of man. The origin of evil may be hidden in the unfathomable obscurity of a distant, undreamed-of past, beyond the scope of mortal vision ; but by far the greater part of the evil that we see — which is the only evil for which we are responsible—is the result of palpable violation of Divine laws. Humanity here is as powerful as Divinity. The age of miracles is past. God does not interfere to contravene His own laws. His part in man’s creation He long ago defined, and delegated all the rest to the souls that He had made. Man is as able as God to check the destructive tide. And it is mere shuffling and shirking and beating the wind, for a people to pray God to mitigate the ill which they continually and unhesitatingly perpetuate and multiply.

VOL, xvi. — NO. 9S. 45

The great mistake made by the believers in total depravity is in counting the blood of the covenant of little worth. We admit that in Adam all die ; but we are slow to believe that in Christ all can be made alive. We abuse the doctrine. We make it a sort of scapegoat for short-coming. But Christ has made Adamic depravity of no account. He came not alone to pardon sin, but to save people from sinning. Father-love, mother - love, and Christ-love are so mighty that together they can defy Satan, and, in his despite, the soul shall be born into the kingdom of heaven without first passing through the kingdom of hell. And in this way only, I think, will the kingdom of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

“Now, Jamie, having set the world right,— you and I, for which the world will be deeply grateful,—let us see what you are about, for you have been suspiciously still lately. What doing, Jamie ? ”

“ Hay-puh ! ” says Jamie, very red, eager, and absorbed, with no intermission of labor.

“ Making hasty pudding ! Oh, yes ! I know what that means. Only taking all the chips and shavings out of the wood-box in the closet and carrying them half across the room by the eminently safe conveyance of his two fat hands, and emptying them into my box of paper, and stirring, all together with a curling-stick. That’s nothing. Keep on, Jamie, and amuse yourself; but let us hear your geography lesson.

“Where are you going one of these days ? ” •

“ Min-nee-so-toh."

“ Where is Minnesota ? ”

Jamie gives a jerk with his arm to the west. He evidently thinks Minnesota is just beyond the hill.

“ Where is papa going to buy his horses ? ”

“ Ill-noy.”

“ And where does Aunt Sarah live ? ”

“ Cog-go.”

“ What river are you going to sail up to get to Minnesota?”

“ Miss-iss-ipp-ee.”

“ That’s a good little boy ! He knows ever so much ; and here is a peppermint. Open his mouth and shut his eyes, and pop! it goes.”

There is, however, a pretty picture on the other side, that Jamie thrusts his iconoclastic fists through quite as unconcernedly ; and that is the dignity of human nature. The human being can be trained into a dignified person : that no one denies. Looking at some honored and honorable man bearing himself loftily through every crisis, and wearing his grandeur with an imperial grace, one may be pardoned for the mistake, but it is none the less a mistake, of reckoning the acquirement of an individual as the endowment of the race. Behold human nature unclothed upon with the arts and graces of the schools, if you would discover, not its possibilities, but its attributes. The helplessness of infancy appeals to all that is chivalric and Christian in our hearts ; but to dignity it is preeminently a stranger. A charming and popular writer — on the whole, I am not sure that it was not my own self — once affirmed that a baby is a beast, and gave great offence thereby; yet it seems to me that no unprejudiced person can observe an infant of tender weeks sprawling and squirming in the bath-tub, and not confess that it looks more like a little pink frog than anything else. And here is Jamie, not only weeks, but months and years old, setting his young affections on candy and dinner, and eating in general, with an appalling intensity. It is humiliating to see how easily he is moved by an appeal to his appetite. I blush for my race, remembering the sparkle of his eyes over a dainty dish, and the abandonment of his devotion to it, — the enthusiasm with which his feet spring, and his voice rings through the house, to announce the fact, “ Dinnah mo’ weh-wy ! dinnah mo’ weh-wy !” To the naked eye, he appears to think as much of eating as a cat or a chicken or a dog. Reasons and rights he is slow to comprehend ; but his conscience is always open to conviction, and his will pliable to a higher law, when a stick of candy is in the case. His bread-andbutter is to him what science was to Newton ; and he has been known to reply abstractedly to a question put to him in the height of his enjoyment, “ Don’ talk t’ me now ! ” This is not dignity, surely. Is it total depravity? What is it that makes his feet so swift to do mischief? He sweeps the floor with the table-brush, comes stumbling over the carpet almost chin-deep in a pair of muddy rubber boots, catches up the bird's seed-cup and darts away, spilling it at every step ; and the louder I call, the faster he runs, half frightened, half roguish, till an unmistakable sharpness pierces him, makes him throw down cup and seed together, and fling himself full length on the floor, his little heart all broken. Indeed, he can bear anything but displeasure. He tumbles down twenty times a day, over the crickets, off the chairs, under the table, head first, head last, bump, bump, bump, and never a tear sheds he, though his stern self-control is sometimes quite pitilul to see. But a little slap on his cheek, which is his standing punishment, — not a blow, but a tiny tap that must derive all its efficacy from its moral force, — oh, it stabs him to the heart! He has no power to bear up against it, and goes away by himself, and cries bitterly, sonorously, and towards the last,

I suspect, rather ostentatiously. Then he spoils it all by coming out radiant, and boasting that he has “ make tear," as if that were an unparalleled feat. If you attempt to chide him, he puts up his plump hand with a repelling gesture, turns away his head in disgust, and ejaculates vehemently, “ Don’ talk t’ me ! ” After all, however, I do not perceive that he is any more sensitive to reproof than an intelligent and petted dog.

His logical faculty develops itself somewhat capriciously, but is very prompt. He seldom fails to give you a reason, though it is often of the Wordsworthian type,—

“Don’ talk t’ me ! I little Min-nee-sotoh boy ! ” — as if that were an amnesty proclamation. You invite him to stay with you, and let Papa go to Minnesota without him. He shakes his head dubiously, and protests, with solemn earnestness, “ Mus’ go Min-nee-so-toh ca'y my fork,” which, to the world-incrusted mind, seems but an inadequate pretext. I want him to write me a letter when he is gone away ; but, after a thoughtful pause, he decides that he cannot, “ ’cause I got no pen.” If he is not in a mood to repeat the Verse you ask for, he finds full excuse in the unblushing declaration, “ I bashful.” He casts shadows on the wall with his wreathing, awkward little fingers, and is perfectly satisfied that they are rabbits, though the mature eye discerns no resemblance to any member of the vertebrate family. He gazes curiously to see me laugh at something I am reading, — “ What ’at ? my want to see,” — and climbs up to survey the page with wistful eyes ; but it is “ a’ a muddle ” to him. He greets me exultantly after absence, because I have “come home pay coot with Jamie ” ; and there is another secret out: that it is of no use to be sentimental with a child. He loves you in proportion as you are available. His papa and mamma fondly imagine they are dearer to him than any one else, and it would be cruel to disturb that belief; but it would be the height of folly to count yourself amiable because Jamie plants himself firmly against the door, and pleads piteously, “ Don’ go in e parly wite ! ” He wants you to “pay coot” with him, — that is all. It your breakfast shawl is lying on a chair, it would not be sagacious to attribute an affectionate unselfishness to him in begging leave to “ go give Baddy shawl t' keep Baddy back warm.” It is only his greediness to enter forbidden ground. Sentiment and sensibility have small lodgement in his soul.

But when Jamie is duly forewarned, he is forearmed. Legally admitted into the parlor to see visitors, he sits on the sofa by his mother’s side, silent, upright, prim, his little legs stuck straight out before him in two stiff lines, presenting a full front view of his soles. By the way, I wonder how long grown persons would sit still, if they were obliged to assume this position. But Jamie maintains himself heroically, his active soul subdued to silence, till Nature avenges herself, not merely with a palpable, but a portentous yawn. “You may force me to this unnatural quiet,” she seems to say; “ but if you expect to prevent me from testifying that I think it intolerably stupid, you have reckoned without your host.”

And here Jamie comes out strongly in favor of democracy, universal suffrage, political equality, the Union and the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the rights of man. Uncontaminated by conventional rules, he recognizes the human being apart from his worldly state. He is as silent and abashed in the presence ot the day-laborer, coarsely clad and rough of speech and manners, as in that of the accomplished man of the world, or the daintiest silken-robed lady. With simple gravity, and never a thought ot wrong, he begs the poet, “ Pease, Missa Poet, tie up my shoe.” He stands in awe before the dignity of the human soul ; but dress and rank and reputation receive no homage from him. He is reverent, but to no false gods. The world finds room for kingdoms and empires and oligarchies ; but undoubtedly man is born a democrat.

Is there only one Jamie here ? Can one little urchin about as high as the table so fill a house with mirth and mischief, so daguerrotype himself in every corner, possess, while claiming nothing, so large a share of the household interest ? For he somehow bubbles up everywhere. Not a mischance or a misplacement but can pretty surely be brought home to him. Is a glass broken ? Jamie broke it. Is a door open that ought to be shut ? Jamie opened it. Or shut that ought to be open ? Jamie shut it. Is there a mighty crash in the entry? It is Jamie dropping the crowbar through the side-lights. I he “ Atlantic ” has been missing all the morning.

“Jamie,” — a last, random resort, after fruitless search, — “where is the ‘ Atlantic Monthly ’ ? ”

“In daw.”

“In the drawer? No, it is not in the drawer. You don’t know anything about it.”

Not quite so fast. Jamie knows the “Atlantic Monthly” as well as you; and if you will open the drawer for him, he will rapidly scatter its contents till he comes to the missing “ Monthly," safe under the shawls where he deposited it.

If you are hanging your room with ground-pine, he lays hold of every stray twig, and tucks it into every crack he can reach. Will you have some corn out of the barrel ? It is Jamie for balancing himself on the edge, and reaching down into the depths after it, till little more than his heels are visible. If, in a sudden exuberance, you make a “ cheese,” — not culinary, but 'whirligig, — round go his little bobtail petticoats in fatuous imitation. You walk the floor awhile, lost in day dreaming, to find this little monkey trotting behind you with droll gravity, his hands clasped behind his head, like yours ; and he breaks in upon your most serious meditations with, “ Baddy get down on floor, want wide on Baddy back,” as nonchalantly as if he were asking you to pass the salt. All that he says, all that he does, has its peculiar charm. Not that he is in the least a remarkable child.

Otherwise what will befall this sketch ?

I do not expect anything will ever come of him. In a few years he will be just like everybody else ; but now he is the peculiar gift of Heaven. Men and women walk and talk all day long, and nobody minds them ; while this little ignoramus seldom opens his lips but you think nothing was ever so winsomely spoken. I suspect it is only his complete simplicity and sincerity. What he says and what he does are the direct, unmistakable effusions of his nature. All comes straight from the secret place where his soul abideth. Even his subterfuges are open as the day. You know that you are looking upon virgin Nature. Just as it flashed from its source, you see the unadulterated spirit. If grown-up persons would or could be as frank as he, — if they had no more misgivings, concealments, self-distrust, self - thought than he, — they would doubtless be as interesting. Every separate human being is a separate phenomenon and mystery; and if he could only be unthinkingly himself, as Jamie is, that self would be as much more captivating as it is become great and subtle by growth and experience. But we — fashion, habit, society, training, all the culture of life, mix a sort of paste, and we gradually become coated with it, and it hardens upon us ; so it comes to pass by-and-by that we see our associates no longer, but only the casing in which they walk about ; and as one is a good deal like another, we are not deeply fascinated. Sometimes a Thor’s hammer breaks this flinty rock in pieces. Sometimes a fervid sun melts it, and you are let in to where the vigilant soul keeps watch and ward. Sometimes, alas ! the hardening process seems to have struck in, and you find nothing but petrifaction all the way through.

Perhaps, after all, it is just as well ; for, if our neighbors won upon us unawares as Jamie does, when should we ever find time to do anything? On the whole, it is a great deal better as it is, until the world has learned to love its neighbor as itself. For the present, it would not be safe to go abroad with the Soul exposed. You fetch me a blow with your bludgeon, and I mind it not at all through my coat-of-mail ; but if it had fallen on my heart, it would have wounded me to death. Nay, if you did but know where the sutures are, how you would stab and stab, dear fellowman and brother, not to say Christian ! No, we are not to be trusted with each other yet, — I with you. nor you with me; so we will keep our armor on awhile, please Heaven.

And as I think of Jamie frisking through the happy, merry days, I see how sad, unnatural, and wicked a thing it is, that mothers must so often miss the sunshine that ought to come to them through their little ones. We speak of losing children, when they die ; but many a mother loses her children, though they play upon her threshold every day. She loses them, because she has no leisure to bask, and loiter, and live in them. She is so occupied in providing for their wants, that she has no time to sun herself in their grace. She snatches from them sweetness enough to keep herself alive, but she does not expand and mellow and ripen in their warmth for all the world. And the hours go by, and the days go by, evening and morning, seedtime and harvest, and the little frocks are outgrown, and the little socks outworn, and the little baby — oh! there is no little baby any more, but a boy with the crust formed already on his soul.

I marvel what becomes of these small people in heaven. They cannot stay as they are, for then heaven would be a poorer place than earth, where all but idiots increase in wisdom and stature. And if they keep growing, — why, it seems but a sorry exchange, to give up your tender, tiny, clinging infant, that is still almost a part of your own life, and receive in return a full-grown angel a great deal wiser and stronger than you. Perhaps it is only a just punishment for our guilty ignorance and selfishness in treating the little things so harshly, that they die away from us in sheer self-defence. And how good is the All-Father thus to declare for His little ones,when the strife waxes too hot, and the odds too heavy against them ! We can maltreat them, but only to a certain limit. Beyond that, the lovely, stern angel of Death steps in, and bears them softly away to perpetual peace. I read our vital statistics, — so many thousands under five years of age dying each year; and I rejoice in every one. If their chances were fair for purity and happiness, the earth is too beautiful to slip so quickly from their hold; but, with sin and suffering, twin beasts of prey, lying in wait to devour, oh ! thrice and four times happy are they who escape swiftly from the struggle in which they are all too sure to fail. So many, at least, are safe within the fold.

And thus, too, it seems providential, that the sin of pagan nations should take the form of infanticide. It is Satanic work, but God overrules it for good. Evil defeats itself, and hatred crowds the lists of love. From misery and wickedness, from stifled cities, overfull, from pagan lands, steeped centuries long in vice and crime, from East and West and North and South, over all the world, the innocent souls go up, — little lily-buds, swelling white and pure from earthly slime to bloom in heavenly splendor.

Jamie, Jamie, do you see birdie has put his head under his wing and gone to sleep? What does that mean? It means “ Good night, Jamie.” Now come, let us have “ Cr-e-e-p, cr-e-e-p, cr-e-e-p ! ” And two fingers go slowly, measuring Jamie from toe to neck, and Jamie cringes and squirms and finally screams outright, and almost flings himself upon the floor; but, as soon as his spasm is over, begs again, “ Say, “ K-e-e-p, k-e-e-p, k-e-e-p !’ ” and would keep it going longer than I have time to wait.

In this very passion for reiteration may be found a sufficient answer to those uneasy persons who are perpetually attempting to bring new singingbooks into our churches, on pretext that people are tired of the old tunes. You never hear from Jamie’s pure taste any clamor for new songs or stories. Whenever he climbs up into your lap to be amused, he is sure to ask for the story of “ Kitty in Ga’et Window,” though he knows it as Boston people know oratorio music, and detects and condemns the slightest departure from the text. And when you have gone through the drama, with all its motions and mewings, he wants nothing so much as “ Kitty in Ga’et Window ’gen.” Let us keep the old tunes. It is but a factitious need that would change them.

Gentle and friendly reader, I pray your pardon for this childish record. Some things I say of set purpose for your good, and the more you do not like them, the more I know they are the very things you need ; and I shall continue to deal them out to you from time to time, as you are able to bear them. But this broken, rambling childtalk— with “a few practical reflections, arising naturally from my subject,” as the preachers say — was penned only for your pleasure — and mine ; and if you do not like it, I shall be very sorry, and wish I had never written it. For we might have gone away by ourselves and enjoyed it all alone ; — could we not, Jamie, you and I together? Oh, no, no ! Never again ! Never, never again ! for the mountains that rise and the prairies that roll between us. Ah ! well, Jamie, I shall not cry about it. If you had stayed here, it would have been but a little while before you would have grown up into a big boy, and then a young fellow, and then a man, and been of no account. So what does it signify ? Good night, little Jamie ! good night, darling ! Do I hear a sleepy echo, as of old, wavering out of the West, " Goo-i-dah-ing" ?

gail Hamliton