extent of the sacrifice she is making for
her little children. That is what love is like. And the higher a
creature is in the scale of life the more love it has, until, in men
and women, the acme is reached and they not only give up their
comfort for each other, and especially for their children, but even
their lives themselves. With human beings one can tell how high a
given one is in the scale of humanity by the amount of love he has.
Some persons have very little, and they are nearer the animal plane:
some have a great deal, and the more they have, the less selfish they
are, the higher they have risen. For love is the real stamen that
fertilizes the world and makes it grow, and the more one has of it the
more life one gives to the universe."

Elsie felt very grave for some moments, thinking out this deep matter.
It was too complex for her to realize wholly, but she caught glimpses
of the immortal beauty of the ideas and she was awed by it. Suddenly
she threw her arms around her mother's neck and kissed her
passionately. It had occurred to her all at once how much her mother
loved her and how much she must have sacrificed for her sake during
all the years of her little life, and though she had no conception of
the full extent of the sacrifice she saw enough to make her feel like
crying for very love of that dear and sweet mamma. Her mother
understood her and taking her in her arms hugged her closely, sitting
in silence with her for a long time, both of them too full of love for
each other to speak. And so the lesson for the day ended.

VII

WHERE BABY GIRLS COME FROM

"Now, mumsey," cried Elsie the next day, running to her mother at the
hour set aside for their baby-talks, "I know what comes next--it's I,
isn't it?"

"Yes, darling, it's you. And it's I, too. Isn't that a beautiful
thought, that you and I held the same relation to each other that the
mother bird holds to the egg from which the birdies come! For once you
were a tiny, tiny egg inside mamma just as it was with the birds."

"Oh-h!" gasped Elsie, gazing at her mother in bewilderment. She could
not realize such an astounding thing at once.

"Yes, darling," Mrs. Edson went on, "every female human being has an
ovary, just as every female flower has, and just as every female bird
has; and, also like them, she has seeds or eggs in this ovary. And she
has a great many of them. They have been growing within her ever since
she was a baby, and when