ome
small assistance from her parents, lived comfortably and as happily as
one has a right to in this vale of tears. Her baby boy had grown strong
and well: by the time he was two years old he was quite the equal of
most babies--and his mother thought, beyond them.

It is quite often stoutly declared by callow folks that mother-love is
the strongest and most enduring love in the world, but the wise waste no
words on such an idle proposition. Mother-love retires into the shadow
when the other kind appears.

When the Reverend Barnabas Smith began, unconsciously, to make eyes at
the Widow Newton over his prayer-book, the good old dames whose business
it is to look after these things, and perform them vicariously, made
prophecies on the way home from church as to how soon the wedding would
occur.

People go to church to watch and pray, but a man I know says that women
go to church to watch. Young clergymen fall an easy prey to designing
widows, he avers. I can discover no proof, however, that the Widow
Newton made any original designs; she was below the young clergyman in
social standing, and when the good man began to pay special attentions
to her baby boy she never imagined that the sundry pats and caresses
were meant for her.

Little Isaac Newton was just three years old when the wedding occurred,
and was not troubled about it. The bride went to live with her husband
at the rectory, a mile away, and the little boy in dresses, with long
yellow curls, was taken to the home of his grandmother. The Reverend
Barnabas Smith didn't like babies as well as he had at first thought.
Grandparents are inclined to be lax in their discipline. And anyway it
is no particular difference if they are: a scarcity of discipline is
better than too much. More boys have been ruined by the rod than saved
by it--love is a good substitute for a cat-'o-nine-tails.

There were several children born to the Reverend Barnabas Smith and his
wife, and all were disciplined for their own good. Isaac, a few miles
away, snuggled in the arms of his old grandmother when he was bad and
went scot-free.

Many years after, Sir Isaac Newton, in an address on education at
Cambridge, playfully referred to the fact that in his boyhood he did not
have to prevaricate to escape punishment, his grandmother being always
willing to lie for him. His grandmother was his first teacher and his
best friend as long as she lived.

When he was twelve years old he was sent t