d, grim and
ghastly, tears its way through our own flesh and blood? To be an uncle
is a different kind of thing. There you have nothing of the excitement
of responsibility to shake your judgment That's what makes us bachelor
uncles so much better judges of what's good for children and their
fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame us if our nephews
unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we give them
five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting thanked at
the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when they
have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear
people say, "See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with
Uncle Ned's birthday present!" or, "That boy's grown an inch round the
chest since you set him sparring!" Uncles never get stale. They don't
come every day like parents and plain pudding; they're a sort of holiday
relative with a plummy, Christmas flavor about them. Everybody
hasn't got them; they are not so rare as the meteoric showers, but as
occasional as a particularly fine day, and whenever they come to a house
they're in the nature of a pleasant surprise.

I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
longest among the children of my sister Lu.

Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune
amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the
mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of
Lovegrove, Cashdown & Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a
revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not
looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to
adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and
Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good
article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces
and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy,
who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in
point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of
this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling
at his book of sums.

"'A boy has 85 turnips and giv