potato on a
clean handkerchief, and wound the whole around Toddie's arm as a
poultice. Then I demanded an explanation.

"I was only djust reatchin for a pieshe of bwed," sobbed Toddie, "an'
then the bad old tabo beginded to froe all its fings at me, an' tumble
down bang."

He undoubtedly told the truth as far as he knew it, but reaching over
tables is a bad habit in small boys, especially when their mothers
cling to old-fashioned heirlooms of tables, which have folding leaves;
so I banished Toddie to his room, supperless, to think of what he had
done. With Budge alone, I had a comfortable dinner off the salvage from
the wreck caused by Toddie, and then I went up-stairs to see if the
offender had repented. It was hard to tell, by sight, whether he had or
not, for his back was to me, as he flattened his nose against the
window, but I could see that my poultice was gone.

"Where is what uncle put on your arm, Toddie?" I asked.

"I ate it up," said the truthful youth.

"Did you eat the handkerchief, too?"

"No; I froed nashty old handkerchief out the window--don't want dirty
old handkerchiefs in my nice 'ittle room."

I was so glad that his burn had been slight that I forgave the insult
to my handkerchief and called up Budge, so that I might at once get
both boys into bed, and emerge from the bondage in which I had lived
all day long. But the task was no easy one. Of course my
brother-in-law, Tom Lawrence, knows better than any other man the
necessities of his own children, but no children of mine shall ever be
taught so many methods of imposing upon parental good nature. Their
program called for stories, songs, moral conversations, frolics, the
presentation of pennies, the dropping of the same, at long intervals,
into tin savings banks, followed by a deafening shaking-up of both
banks; then a prayer must be offered, and no conventional one would be
tolerated; then the boys performed their own devotions, after which I
was allowed to depart with an interchange of "God bless you's." As this
evening I left the room with their innocent benedictions sounding in my
ears, a sense of personal weakness, induced by the events of the day,
moved me to fervently respond "Amen!"

Mothers of American boys, accept from me a tribute of respect, which no
words can fitly express--of wonder greater than any of the great things
of the world ever inspired--of adoration as earnest and devout as the
Catholic pays to the Virgin. In a sin