satisfactory at
the time to get your own way, you may live to wish that you had taken
other folk's advice instead.

From that nursery I have taken flight to others. I sail by the
windows, and throw a searching eye through these bars which are, I
believe, placed there to keep top-heavy babies from tumbling out.
Sometimes I peer down the chimney. From the nook of a wall or the
hollow of a tree, I overlook the children's gardens and playgrounds. I
have an eye to several schools, and I fancy (though I may be wrong)
that I should look well seated on the top of an easel--just above the
black-board, with a piece of chalk in my feathery foot.

Not that I have any notion of playing schoolmaster, or even of
advising schoolmasters and parents how to make their children good and
wise. I am the Children's Owl--their very own--and all my good advice
is intended to help them to improve themselves.

It is wonderful how children _do_ sometimes improve! I knew a fine
little fellow, much made of by his family and friends, who used to be
so peevish about all the little ups and downs of life, and had such a
lamentable whine in his voice when he was thwarted in any trifle, that
if you had heard without seeing him, you'd have sworn that the most
miserable wretch in the world was bewailing the worst of catastrophes
with failing breath. And all the while there was not a handsomer,
healthier, better fed, better bred, better dressed, and more dearly
loved, little boy in all the parish. When you might have thought, by
the sound of it, that some starving skeleton of a creature was moaning
for a bit of bread, the young gentleman was only sobbing through the
soap and lifting his voice above the towels, because Nurse would wash
his fair and rosy cheeks. And when cries like those of one vanquished
in battle and begging and praying for his life, rang through the hall
and up the front stairs, it proved to be nothing worse than Master
Jack imploring his friends to "_please, please_," and "_do, do_," let
him stay out to run in a final "go as you please" race with the young
Browns (who dine a quarter of an hour later), instead of going in
promptly when the gong sounded for luncheon.

Now the other day I peeped into a bedroom of that little boy's home.
The sun was up, and so was Jack, but one of his numerous Aunts was
not. She was in bed with a headache, and to this her pale face, her
eyes shunning the light like my own, and her hair restlessly tossed