eep them out."

"But their mothers like them," said Miss Muffet.

"Yes; they think that they are the nicest kind."

When she had time to look around her, Miss Muffet was surprised to see
how different the company was from that in the other parts of the
palace.

"They look as if something had been done to them," said Miss Muffet.
"Oh! now I know who they are! They must be Youths. I've always read
about Youths in the books mamma makes me read on Sunday afternoon, but I
didn't know that they were real. Some of them look almost like boys and
girls, only less so."

Sure enough, the room was full of Youths. They came out of the
Sunday-school books and the Fifth Readers and the Moral Tales and the
Libraries of Instructive Juvenile Literature. Some had never been out of
a book before, and found it impossible to talk in anything but the book
language. Some were evidently very good, and some were painful examples
of youthful wickedness, while others were chiefly interested in Natural
History.

"Youths," said the Little Old Woman, "are easier to understand than boys
and girls and other young folks. Youths have habits, and each one
practices only one at a time. When they do a naughty thing, they keep on
doing it regularly; that's the way you come to know which is which. It
doesn't matter what it is, whether Vanity or Procrastination or Not
Bringing in the Wood, they keep it up till they have been made to see
the folly of it, or are given over to their evil ways. Now children are
more changeable. When I lived in a Shoe, I was driven half out of my
wits, for I never could be thorough when I reproved them, they were
always naughty in a different way. I don't believe that any one could
have got any of my children into a book; they wouldn't keep still long
enough to have their characters taken."

Almost all the Youths were accompanied by their parents or guardians,
though some had private tutors. Two youthful persons from the eighteenth
century attracted a great deal of attention. They were Harry Sandford
and Tommy Merton. Harry was a great philosopher, and understood so
perfectly the principles of the Wedge and the Inclined Plane and the
Moral Law that it was hard to believe his friend, Mr. Barlow, who stated
that he was only six years old. Tommy, on the other hand, until his
sixth year had been quite worldly, and had held a number of erroneous
opinions. Under Harry's instruction, however, he had been much improved
and was now