nd independence which they have missed the
opportunity of securing in homes of their own. The loss of this one thing
alone is a bitterer drop in the loneliness of many an unmarried woman than
parents, especially fathers, are apt even to dream,--food and clothes and
lodgings are so exalted in unthinking estimates. To be without them would
be distressingly inconvenient, no doubt; but one can have luxurious
provision of both and remain very wretched. Even the body itself cannot
thrive if it has no more than these three pottage messes! Freedom to come,
go, speak, work, play,--in short, to be one's self,--is to the body more
than meat and gold, and to the soul the whole of life.

Just so far as any parent interferes with this freedom of adult children,
even in the little things of a single day or a single hour, just so far it
is tyranny, and the children are wronged. But just so far as parents
help, strengthen, and bestow this freedom on their children, just so far
it is justice and kindness, and their relation is cemented into a supreme
and unalterable friendship, whose blessedness and whose comfort no words
can measure.

The Ready-to-Halts.

Mr. Ready-to-Halt must have been the most exasperating pilgrim that Great
Heart ever dragged over the road to the Celestial City. Mr. Feeble Mind
was bad enough; but genuine weakness and organic incapacity appeal all the
while to charity and sympathy. If people really cannot walk, they must be
carried. Everybody sees that; and all strong people are, or ought to be,
ready to lift babies and cripples. There are plenty of such in every
parish. The Feeble Minds are unfortunately predisposed to intermarry; and
our schools are overrun with the little Masters and Misses Feeble Mind.
But, heavy as they are (and they are apt to be fat), they are precious and
pleasant friends and neighbors in comparison with the Ready-to-Halts.

The Ready-to-Halts are never ready for any thing else. They can walk as
well as anybody else, if they only would; but they are never quite sure on
which road they would better go. Great Hearts have to go back, and go
back, to look them up. They are found standing still, helpless and
bewildered, on all sorts of absurd side-paths, which lead nowhere; and
they never will confess, either, that they need help. They always think
they are doing what they call "making up their mind." But, whichever way
they make it, they wish they had made it the other; so they unmak