is mamma. But we shall not feel any warmer
for saying so. We must wait till the fire burns better; and the time will
seem twice as long if we grumble."

"Oh, mamma! mamma! My steam-engine is all spoiled. It won't run. I hate
things that wind up!"

"But, my dear little boy, don't grumble so! What would you think if mamma
were to say, 'Oh, dear! oh, dear! My little boy's stockings are full of
holes. How I hate to mend stockings!' and, 'Oh, dear! oh, dear! My little
boy has upset my work-box! I hate little boys'?"

How they look steadily into your eyes for a minute,--the honest,
reasonable little souls!--when you say such things to them; and then run
off with a laugh, lifted up, for that time, by your fitly spoken words of
help.

Oh! if the world could only stop long enough for one generation of
mothers to be made all right, what a millennium could be begun in thirty
years!

"But, mamma, you are grumbling yourself at me because I grumbled!" says a
quick-witted darling not ten years old. Ah! never shall any weak spot in
our armor escape the keen eyes of these little ones.

"Yes, dear! And I shall grumble at you till I cure you of grumbling.
Grumblers are the only thing in this world that it is right to grumble
at."

"Boys Not Allowed."

It was a conspicuous signboard, at least four feet long, with large black
letters on a white ground: "Boys not allowed." I looked at it for some
moments in a sort of bewildered surprise: I did not quite comprehend the
meaning of the words. At last I understood it. I was waiting in a large
railway station, where many trains connect; and most of the passengers
from the train in which I was were eating dinner in a hotel near by. I was
entirely alone in the car, with the exception of one boy, who was perhaps
eleven years old. I made an involuntary ejaculation as I read the words on
the sign, and the boy looked around at me.

"Little boy," said I, solemnly, "do you see that sign?"

He turned his head, and, reading the ominous warning, nodded sullenly, but
said nothing.

"Boy, what does it mean?" said I. "Boys must be allowed to come into this
railway station. There are two now standing in the doorway directly under
the sign."

The latent sympathy in my tone touched his heart. He left his seat, and,
coming to mine, edged in past me; and, putting his head out of the window,
read the sentence aloud in a contemptuous tone. Then he offered me a
peanut, which I took; and he p