und, luncheon carried to picnics,
three-year-olds that cry led out of meeting, butterflies and birds' nests
and birch-bark got, the horse taken round to the stable, borrowed things
sent home,--and all with no charge for time?

Dear, patient, busy Boy! Shall we not sometimes answer his questions? Give
him a comfortable seat? Wait and not reprove him till after the company
has gone? Let him wear his best jacket, and buy him half as many neckties
as his sister has? Give him some honey, even if there is not enough to go
round? Listen tolerantly to his little bragging, and help him "do" his
sums?

With a sudden shrill scream the engine slipped off on a side-track, and
the cars glided into the great, grim city-station, looking all the grimmer
for its twinkling lights. The masses of people who were waiting and the
masses of people who had come surged toward each other like two great
waves, and mingled in a moment. I caught sight of my poor little friend,
Boy, following his father, struggling along in the crowd, carrying two
heavy carpet-bags, a strapped bundle, and two umbrellas, and being sharply
told to "Keep up close there."

"Ha!" said I, savagely, to myself, "doing porters' work is not one of the
things which 'boys' are 'not allowed.'"

Half an Hour in a Railway Station.

It was one of those bleak and rainy days which mark the coming of spring
on New England sea-shores. The rain felt and looked as if it might at any
minute become hail or snow; the air pricked like needles when it blew
against flesh. Yet the huge railway station was as full of people as ever.
One could see no difference between this dreariest of days and the
sunniest, so far as the crowd was concerned, except that fewer of the
people wore fine clothes; perhaps, also, that their faces looked a little
more sombre and weary than usual.

There is no place in the world where human nature shows to such sad
disadvantage as in waiting-rooms at railway stations, especially in the
"Ladies' Room." In the "Gentlemen's Room" there is less of that ghastly,
apathetic silence which seems only explainable as an interval between two
terrible catastrophes. Shall we go so far as to confess that even the
unsightly spittoons, and the uncleanly and loquacious fellowship resulting
from their common use, seem here, for the moment, redeemed from a little
of their abominableness,--simply because almost any action is better than
utter inaction, and any thing which mak