of castles
in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the
staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a
mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something
of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with
applause:--"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing
every day." This downfall from his castles in the air, and her manner,
brought blushes to his cheek and flames to his eyes, which amused her
all the more; so she went on,--"Oh, don't be afraid! I will pay--two
ginger-cakes a lesson." So sensitive was the child's nature, this
innocent pleasantry wounded him with such pain, that he fell on the
carpet sobbing and with nerves all jangled. How the pangs poverty
attracts must have wrung him!--But let us not anticipate the course of
events.

As he advanced in life he outgrew his disease, and became a
chubby-cheeked boy, health's own picture. He was the favorite of the
neighborhood, his mother's pride, and the source of many a heartache to
her; for, as he grew towards manhood, his father insisted every day more
strenuously that he should learn some trade. His poor mother obstinately
opposed this scheme. Many were the boisterous quarrels on this subject
the boy witnessed, sobbing between his parents; for his father was a
rough, ill-bred mountaineer, who had reached Paris through the barrack
and the battle-field, neither of which tends to smooth the asperities of
character. The woman was tenacious; for what will not a mother's heart
brave? what will it not endure? Those natures which are gentle as water
are yet deep and changeless as the ocean. Of course the wife carried her
point. Who can resist a mother struggling for her son? The boy was
placed as copying-clerk in an attorney's office. All the world over, the
law is the highway to literature. The lad, however, was uneducated; he
wrote well, and this was enough to enable him to copy the law-papers of
the office, but he was ignorant of the first elements of grammar, and
his language, although far better than that of the lads of his class in
life, was shocking to polite ears. It could not well be otherwise, as
his only school was a petty public primary school, and he was but
fourteen years old when his father ordered him to begin to earn his
daily bread. But he was not only endowed with a literary instinct, he
had, too, that obstinate perseverance which would, as one of his friends
sa