to Nat'--or 'I'll tell Nat.' One day somebody shouted, 'Take it before the
king--let's call him King Nat.' But it almost made Nat cry. He exclaimed,
'Oh, boys, please don't ever say that again;' and they never did. He had a
great deal more influence over them than any teacher. He could make them
do anything. Sometimes the teachers themselves used to come to him
privately and tell him of things they did not like, which the boys were
getting into the way of doing, and ask him to try to stop them. If Nat had
not been a saint, as I said before, all this would have spoiled him; but
he never thought of its being any special power in him. He used to think
it was only because the boys were so kind-hearted that they could not bear
to refuse any request which a poor cripple made.

"When I think how happy those days were and how fast the darkest days of
our lives were drawing near, it makes me shrink from happiness almost as
much as from grief. It seems only grief's forerunner. On the evening of my
sixteenth birthday, we were all having a very merry time in papa's study,
popping corn over the open fire. We had wheeled Nat near the fire, and
tied the corn-popper on a broom-handle, so that he could shake the popper
himself; and I never saw him laugh so heartily at anything. Papa laughed
too, quite loud, which was a thing that did not happen many times a year.
It was the last time we heard the full sound of dear papa's voice. Late
that night he was called out to see a poor man, one of the factory
operatives, who was dying. It was a terrible snow-storm, and papa had been
so heated over the fire and in playing with us that he took a severe cold.
The next morning he could not speak aloud. The doctor said it was an acute
bronchitis and would pass off; but it did not, and in a very few weeks it
was clear that he was dying of consumption. Probably the cold only
developed a disease which had been long there.

"I can't tell you about the last months of papa's life. I think I shall
never be able to speak of them. We saw much worse days afterward, but none
that seemed to me so hard to bear; even when I thought Nat and I would
have to go to the almshouse it was not so hard. The love which most
children divide between father and mother I concentrated on my father. I
loved him with an adoration akin to that which a woman feels for her
husband, and with the utmost of filial love added. Nat loved him almost as
much. The most touching thing I ever