and giving the horses a cut.
"Not if _I_ can help it. The idea of having such a drive spoiled by the
clatter of SUCH a couple!"

Away went the horses, and up rose a piercing shriek and a terrible
roar. It seemed that both children must have been mortally hurt, and I
looked out hastily, only to see Budge and Toddie running after the
carriage, and crying pitifully. It was too pitiful,--I could not have
proceeded without them, even if they had been afflicted with small-pox.
The driver stopped of his own accord,--he seemed to know the children's
ways and their results,--and I helped Budge and Toddie in, meekly
hoping that the eye of Providence was upon me, and that so
self-sacrificing an act would be duly passed to my credit. As we
reached the hill-road, my kindness to my nephews seemed to assume,
greater proportions, for the view before me was inexpressibly
beautiful. The air was perfectly clear, and across two score towns I
saw the great metropolis itself, the silent city of Greenwood beyond
it, the bay, the narrows, the sound, the two silvery rivers lying
between me and the Palisades, and even, across and to the south of
Brooklyn, the ocean itself. Wonderful effects of light and shadow,
picturesque masses, composed of detached buildings so far distant that
they seemed huddled together; grim factories turned to beautiful
palaces by the dazzling reflection of sunlight from their window-panes;
great ships seeming in the distance to be toy-boats floating
idly;--with no sign of life perceptible, the whole scene recalled the
fairy stories, read in my youthful days, of enchanted cities, and the
illusion was greatly strengthened by the dragon-like shape of the roof
of New York's new post-office, lying in the center of everything, and
seeming to brood over all.

"Uncle Harry!"

Ah, that was what I expected!

"Uncle Harry!"

"Well, Budge?"

"I always think that looks like heaven."

"What does?"

"Why, all that,--from here over to that other sky way back there behind
everything, I mean. And I think THAT (here he pointed toward what
probably was a photographer's roof-light)--that place where it's so
shiny, is where God stays."

Bless the child! The scene had suggested only elfindom to ME, and yet I
prided myself on my quick sense of artistic effects.

"An' over there where that awful bright LITTLE speck is," continued
Budge, "that's where dear little brother Phillie is; whenever I look
over there, I see him putting h