swim, kick football, turn
somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate,
fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about
Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of
pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and
bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones,
turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off
hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on
wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight
evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his
own words, "blow for tub No. 11," or whatever it may be;--isn't that
a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he has not got anything the matter
with him that takes the taste of this world out? Now, when you put into
such a hot-blooded, hard-fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's hand a
sad-looking volume or pamphlet, with the portrait of a thin, white-faced
child, whose life is really as much a training for death as the last
month of a condemned criminal's existence, what does he find in common
between his own overflowing and exulting sense of vitality and the
experiences of the doomed offspring of invalid parents? The time comes
when we have learned to understand the music of sorrow, the beauty of
resigned suffering, the holy light that plays over the pillow of those
who die before their time, in humble hope and trust. But it is not
until he has worked his way through the period of honest hearty animal
existence, which every robust child should make the most of,--not until
he has learned the use of his various faculties, which is his first
duty,--that a boy of courage and animal vigor is in a proper state to
read these tearful records of premature decay. I have no doubt that
disgust is implanted in the minds of many healthy children by early
surfeits of pathological piety. I do verily believe that He who took
children in His arms and blessed them loved the healthiest and
most playful of them just as well as those who were richest in the
tuberculous virtues. I know what I am talking about, and there are more
parents in this country who will be willing to listen to what I say than
there are fools to pick a quarrel with me. In the sensibility and the
sanctity which often accompany premature decay I see one of the most
beautiful instances of the principle of compensation which marks the
Div