give a wonderfully graphic description of the life the little boy too
often led.

In the last verse he was a giant who saw before him all 'the pleasant
land of counterpane,' and in the very word 'pleasant' the temperament of
the child shows itself. How many children would have found anything
'pleasant' in the enforced days of lie-a-bed quietness, and would have
made no murmurs over the hard fate which forbade to them the active joys
of other boys and girls?

But this small lad had a sweet temper and an unselfish, contented
disposition, and so he bore the burden of his bad health as bravely in
those days as he did in after years, and made for himself plays and
pleasures with his nimble brain while his weary body was often tired and
restless in that bed whereof he had so much. His mother used to
describe, with the same graphic touch that gives life to all her son
wrote, the bright games the little fellow invented for himself when he
was well enough to be up and about, and tell how, in a corner of the
room, he made for himself a wonder-world all his own, in which heroes
and heroines of romance loved and fought and walked and talked at the
bidding of the wizard in frock and pinafore.

It was not all indoor life happily, and if there were many bad days
there were some good and glad ones also, when he was well and allowed to
be out and at play in the world of outdoor life he always loved so
dearly.

Two quaint pictures of the child as he was in those days have been
supplied by his aunt, Miss Balfour. One of them is from a note-book of
his mother's, in which she had jotted down a few things that had been
said or written of him. The first interesting description is that given
by a very dear old friend of the family, and is an exceedingly early
one, for it was written in October 1853, when Louis was barely three,
and the family had just settled in Inverleith Terrace.

'One day,' she says, 'I called and missed you, and found Cummie' (the
valued nurse) 'and Louis just starting for town, so we walked up
together by Canonmills, keeping the middle of the road all the way.'

Louis, she continues, was dressed in a navy blue pelisse trimmed with
fur, a beaver hat, a fur ruff, and white gloves. A very quaint little
figure he must have been with the thin delicate face and the wonderfully
bright eyes, so luminous and far-seeing even then!

The tiny mite repeated hymns all the way, 'emphasising so prettily,' the
friend goes on to sa