g to impose upon
this sacred feeling.

Perhaps one of the prettiest of Bunner's "Airs from Arcady" is that
entitled, "In School Hours," in which he thus describes the woe of the
thirteen-year-old girl when she receives the cruel letter from the boy
of her admiration. The poet tells us this sorrow "were tragic at
thirty," and asks, "Why is it trivial at thirteen!"

"Trivial! what shall eclipse
The pain of our childish woes?
The rose-bud pales its lips
When a very small zephyr blows.
You smile, O Dian bland,
If Endymion's glance is cold:
But Despair seems close at hand
To that hapless thirteen-year old!"

CHAPTER XXI.

OUR YOUNG PERSON.

I well remember a girl's tearful appeal to me when she was stigmatized
and reproved for her "giddy youth!" "It is not my fault that I was
born young! And I am not responsible for the fact that I entered upon
existence seventeen, instead of seventy, years ago. At all events, it
was not a sin even if I was guilty of such a folly!"

Perhaps we older people are too prone to forget that youth is not a
sin to be condemned, or even a folly to be sneered at. "Wad some power
the giftie gie us" to remember that we were not always cool-headed,
clear-seeing and middle-aged! Trouble and responsibility come so soon
to all, that we err in forcing young heads to bow, and strong
shoulders to bend, beneath a load which should not be laid upon them
for many years. As we advance in age, our weaknesses and temptations
change, and no longer take the form of heedlessness, intolerance,
extravagance, and most trying of all to the critical and dignified
observer,--freshness.

We may describe this last-named quality somewhat after the fashion of
the little boy who defined salt as "What makes potatoes taste bad
when they don't put any on 'em!"

So "freshness" is that which makes youth delightful by its absence.

Unfortunately, it is almost inseparable from this period, and while
there are girls, and even boys, in whom the offending quality is
nearly, if not entirely, lacking, they are almost as the red herring
of the wood, and the strawberry of the sea, in nursery rhyme.

Freshness takes many and varied forms, the most common being that of
self-conceit and the desire to appear original and eccentric in
feelings, moods, likes and dislikes. Like the fellows of the club of
which Bertie, in "The Henrietta," was an illustrious member, the
average boy winks, nods, l