ther they are to be treated as children or as adults, suppose we make a
rule that children are always to be treated, in point of courtesy, as if
they were adults? Then this awkward age--this period of transition from an
atmosphere of, to say the least, negative rudeness to one of gracious
politeness--disappears. There cannot be a crisis of readjustment of social
relations: there is no possibility of such a feeling; it would be hard to
explain to a young person what it meant. Now and then we see a young man
or young woman who has never known it. They are usually only children, and
are commonly spoken of as wonders. I know such a boy to-day. At seventeen
he measures six feet in height; he has the feet and the hands of a still
larger man; and he comes of a blood which had far more strength than
grace. But his manner is, and always has been, sweet, gentle,
composed,--the very ideal of grave, tender, frank young manhood. People
say, "How strange! He never seemed to have any awkward age at all." It
would have been stranger if he had. Neither his father nor his mother ever
departed for an instant, in their relations with him, from the laws of
courtesy and kindliness of demeanor which governed their relations with
others.

He knew but one atmosphere, and that a genial one, from his babyhood up;
and in and of this atmosphere has grown up a sweet, strong, pure soul, for
which the quiet, self-possessed manner is but the fitting garb.

This is part of the kingdom that cometh unobserved. In this kingdom we are
all to be kings and priests, if we choose; and all its ways are
pleasantness. But we are not ready for it till we have become peaceable
and easy to be entreated, and have learned to understand why it was that
one day, when Jesus called his disciples together, he set a little child
in their midst.

A Day with a Courteous Mother.

During the whole of one of last summer's hottest days I had the good
fortune to be seated in a railway car near a mother and four children,
whose relations with each other were so beautiful that the pleasure of
watching them was quite enough to make one forget the discomforts of the
journey.

It was plain that they were poor; their clothes were coarse and old, and
had been made by inexperienced hands. The mother's bonnet alone would have
been enough to have condemned the whole party on any of the world's
thoroughfares. I remembered afterward, with shame, that I myself had
smiled at the f