roubles and
pains would be gone.

But the slim little girl never voiced any of these foolish thoughts; she
knew better. She choked back her tears and leaning over her sewing tried
hard to be "good."

"She is so stupid that she never listens to what one reads to her," said
her mother one day.

One of that family still lives. I saw him not long ago and talked with him
face to face concerning some of the things here written--Doctor James
Martineau, ninety-two years old.

The others are all dead now--all are gone. In the cemetery at Norwich is
a plain, slate slab, "To the Memory of Elizabeth Martineau, Mother of
Harriet Martineau." * * * And so she sleeps, remembered for what? As the
mother of a stupid little girl who tried hard to be good, but didn't
succeed very well, and who did not listen when they read aloud.

* * * * *

It seems sometimes that there is no such thing as a New Year--it is only
the old year come back. These folks about us--have they not lived before?
Surely they are the same creatures that have peopled earth in the days
agone; they are busy about the same things, they chase after the same
trifles, they commit the same mistakes, and blunder as men have always
blundered.

Only last week, a teacher in one of the primary schools of Chicago
reported to her principal that a certain little boy in her room was so
hopelessly dull and perverse that she despaired of teaching him anything.
The child would sit with open mouth and look at her as she would talk to
the class, and five minutes afterward he could not or would not repeat
three words of what had been said. She had scolded him, made him stand on
the floor, kept him in after school, and even whipped him--but all in
vain. The principal looked into the case, scratched his head, stroked his
whiskers, coughed, and decided that the public-school funds should not be
wasted in trying to "teach imbeciles," and so reported to the parents. He
advised them to send the boy to a Home for the Feeble-Minded, sending the
message by an older brother. So the parents took the child to the Home and
asked that he be admitted. The Matron took the little boy on her lap,
talked to him, read to him, showed him pictures and said to the astonished
parents, "This child has fully as much intelligence as any of your other
children, perhaps more--but he is deaf!"

Harriet Martineau from her twelfth year was very deaf, and she was also
devoid of the