o his; but nothing did any good. Nature was too much
for him; he could not at that minute force himself to be quiet. Presently
she said, in a perfectly easy and natural tone, "Oh, Charley, come here a
minute; I want to tell you something." No one at the table supposed that
it had any thing to do with his bad behavior. She did not intend that they
should. As she whispered to him, I alone saw his cheek flush, and that he
looked quickly and imploringly into her face; I alone saw that tears were
almost in her eyes. But she shook her head, and he went back to his seat
with a manful but very red little face. In a few moments he laid down his
knife and fork, and said, "Mamma, will you please to excuse me?"
"Certainly, my dear," said she. Nobody but I understood it, or observed
that the little fellow had to run very fast to get out of the room without
crying. Afterward she told me that she never sent a child away from the
table in any other way. "But what would you do," said I, "if he were to
refuse to ask to be excused?" Then the tears stood full in her eyes. "Do
you think he could," she replied, "when he sees that I am only trying to
save him from pain?" In the evening, Charley sat in my lap, and was very
sober. At last he whispered to me, "I'll tell you an awful secret, if you
won't tell. Did you think I had done my dinner this afternoon when I got
excused? Well, I hadn't. Mamma made me, because I acted so. That's the way
she always does. But I haven't had to have it done to me before for ever
so long,--not since I was a little fellow" (he was eight now); "and I
don't believe I ever shall again till I'm a man." Then he added,
reflectively, "Mary brought me all the rest of my dinner upstairs; but I
wouldn't touch it, only a little bit of the ice-cream. I don't think I
deserved any at all; do you?"

I shall never, so long as I live, forget a lesson of this sort which my
own mother once gave me. I was not more than seven years old; but I had a
great susceptibility to color and shape in clothes, and an insatiable
admiration for all people who came finely dressed. One day, my mother said
to me, "Now I will play 'house' with you." Who does not remember when to
"play house" was their chief of plays? And to whose later thought has it
not occurred that in this mimic little show lay bound up the whole of
life? My mother was the liveliest of playmates, she took the worst doll,
the broken tea-set, the shabby furniture, and the least conve