and one of the happiest.
Oh, help me to that!

"Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet and lovely
daughter, all remembrance of what I was before will have been wiped
out of me until I die. But _you_ will remember, and so will Leah,
and both will love me with such a love as no earthly parents have
ever felt for any child of theirs yet.

"Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but not lost, that
will so trustfully look up at you out of those gleeful innocent
eyes!

"How that soul has suffered both here and elsewhere you don't know,
and never will, till the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed;
and I am going to forget it myself for a few decades--sixty,
seventy, eighty years perhaps; such happy years, I hope--with you
for my father and Leah for my mother during some of them at
least--and sweet grandchildren of yours, I hope, for my sons and
daughters! Why, life to me now will be almost a holiday.

"Oh, train me up the way I should go! Bring me up to be healthy and
chaste and strong and brave--never to know a mean ambition or think
an ungenerous thought--never to yield to a base or unworthy
temptation.

"If I'm a boy--and I want to be a boy very much (although, perhaps,
a girl would be dearer to your heart)--don't let me be either a
soldier or a sailor, however much I may wish it as a Josselin or a
Rohan; don't bring me up to buy or sell like a Gibson, or deal in
law like a Bletchley.

"Bring me up to invent, or make something useful, if it's only
pickles or soap, but not to buy and sell them; bring me up to build
or heal or paint or write or make music--to help or teach or please.

"If I'm a girl, bring me up to be as much like Leah as you can, and
marry me to just such another as yourself, if you can find him.
Whether I'm a girl or a boy, call me Marty, that my name may rhyme
with yours.

"When my conscience re-embodies itself, I want it never to know
another pang of self-reproach. And when I'm grown up, if you think
it right to do so, tell me who and what I once was, that I may love
you both the more; tell me how fondly I loved you when I was a
bland and fleeting little animalcule, without a body, but making my
home in yours--so that when you die I may know how irrevocably bound
up together we must forever be, we three; and rejoic