m. Yet as has been said,
he was a Parisian of the Parisians, quick to perceive the ludicrous,
ready to weep with the afflicted, and to laugh again with the happy.
His studies of children are among his best, on account of their
extreme naturalness, and are never uninteresting, despite the
simplicity of the incidents and observations on which they are
founded. In 'Le Cahier Bleu de Mlle. Cibot' he has used striking
colors to paint the petty afflictions that beset most lives; but lest
these pictures should leave an unpleasant impression, they are set off
by others of a happier sort, making a collection that constitutes a
most effective lesson in practical philosophy.

HOW THE BABY WAS SAVED

From 'The Seamstress's Story'

"Yes, Ma'm'selle Adele," said the seamstress, "the real happiness of
this world is not so unevenly distributed after all." Louise, as she
said this, took from the reserve in the bosom of her dress a lot of
pins, and applied them deftly to the trimming of a skirt which I was
holding for her.

"A sufficiently comfortable doctrine," I answered; "but it does seem
to me as if some people were born to live and to die unhappy."

"It is only folks who never find anybody to love enough; and I think
it's nobody's fault but their own."

"But my good Louise, wouldn't you have suffered much less last year,
when you came so near losing your boy, if you hadn't cared so much for
him?"

I was only drawing her on, you see; Louise's chat was the greatest
resource to me at that time.

"Why, Ma'm'selle Adele, you are surely joking. You'd as well tell me
to cut off my feet to save my shoes. You'll know one of these
days--and not so far off neither, maybe--how mighty easy and sensible
it would be not to love your children. They _are_ a worry, too; but oh
the delight of 'em! I'd like to have had anybody tell me not to love
my darling because it might grieve me, when he lay there in his
mother's lap, with blue lips, gasping for his breath, and well-nigh
dead, his face blackish, and his hands like this piece of wax. You
could see that everything was going against him; and with his great
big eyes he was staring in my face, until I felt as if the child was
tugging at my very heart-strings. I kept smiling at him, though,
through the tears that blinded me, hard as I tried to hide them. Oh!
such tears are bitter salt indeed, Ma'm'selle! And there was my poor
husband on his knees, making paper figures to amuse him, and