Italianos!--the birds shall be the music-masters of
my tiny dame. Moonrise, and sunset, and the autumnal woods shall teach
her tint and tone. The flowers are older than the school-botanies;--
she shall give them pet names at her own sweet will. We will not go
to big folios to find out the big Latin names of the butterflies;
but be sure, pet, they and you shall be better acquainted. And
long before you have acquired that most profitless of all arts,
the art of reading, we will go very deeply into ancient English
literature. There is the story of the enterprising mouse, who,
at one o'clock precisely, ran down the clock to the cabalistic tune
of "Dickory, dickory, dock." There are the bold bowl-mariners of
Gotham. There is "the man of our town," who was unwise enough to
destroy the organs of sight by jumping into a bramble-bush, and who
came triumphantly out of the experiment, and "scratched them in again,"
by boldly jumping into another bush,--the oldest discoverer on
record of the doctrine that _similia similibus curantur_. There are
Jack and Gill, who, not living in the days of the Cochituate, went
up the hill for water, and who, in descending, met with cerebral
injuries. There are the dietetic difficulties of Mr. and Mrs. Sprat,
with the happy solution of a problem at one time threatening the
domestic peace of this amiable pair. Be sure, little woman, we will
find merry morsels in the silly-wise book! And there will be other
silly-wise books. Cinderella shall again lose her slipper, and marry
the prince; the wolf shall again eat little Red Ridinghood; and the
small eyes grow big at the adventures of Sinbad, the gallant tar.
Will not this be better, Don Bob, than pistil and stamen and radicle?
--than wearing out BBB lead pencils in drawing tumble-down castles,
rickety cottages, and dumpling-shaped trees?--than acquiring a
language which has no literature fit for a girl to read?--than
mistressing the absurd modern piano music?--than taking diplomas
from institutes, which most certainly do not express all that young
women learn in those venerable seats of learning? We will not put
stays upon our pet until we are obliged to do so. Birdie shall abide
in the paternal nest, and sing the old home-songs, and walk in the
old home-ways, until she has a nice new nest of her own.

Do I dote, Don Bob? Is there a smirk, a villanous, unfeeling,
disagreeable, cynical sneer, lurking under your confounded moustache?
I know you of old, y