what compensations there were for children in those days when story books were few, and good people's thoughts restrictive and austere."

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“Well, husband," said Mrs. Oldham, “ though one should be glad the prejudice against fiction as such no longer prevails, yet it seems to me children are nowadays exposed to very great perils of another sort, against which there are not so many kindly providences and protections. You would not like our children to have free range through the fictitious literature of the age?"

"By no means, my dear-certainly not while their taste and principles were unformed. Even if there were no bad books to be avoided, I should be sorry to have them lose the proper cultivating effect of works of true creative genius, by forgetting that half is bigger than the whole,' as old Hesiod says.

"Phil, my dear, may be safely left to himself. He never reads for mere story. His good taste is as unerring as instinct; I have been surprised to notice how it leads him to avoid every thing that is not either of the choicest quality, or else for some reason necessary to be read by every man of liberal culture.

"But as to Lilly and Fred, they devour books

for the mere pleasurable excitement of story, adventure, or incident. We must look well after them, not only to keep them from books that are bad, but from too many that are good."

The curious reader, impatient to know more about the Doctor, may think this chapter and the last one, a great breach of good faith and of the promise made two chapters before.

But, in the first place, let him consider the reservation with which the promise was made. Then let him read the next chapter, and he will see that he is indebted to these for the information he will find in that. For it led the Doctor on to speak of himself, and what he said gave me something to relate of his personal life before I knew him.

CHAPTER X.

GLIMPSES BIOGRAPHICAL AND AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL WITH OBSERVATIONS INTERSPERSED THAT ARE WORTH A CHAPTER IN THEM. SELVES.

"THERE can be no greater blessing," continued the Doctor, after musing for a while, "than to be born in the light and air of a cheerful, loving home. It not only ensures a happy childhood-if there be health and a good constitution-but it almost makes sure a virtuous and happy manhood, and a fresh young heart in old age. heart in old age. I think it every parent's duty to try to make their children's childhood full of love and of childhood's proper joyousness; and I never see children destitute of them through the poverty, faulty tempers, or wrong notions of their parents, without a heartache. Not that all the appliances which wealth can buy are necessary to the free and happy unfolding of childhood in body, mind, or heart-quite otherwise, God

be thanked; but children must at least have love inside the house, and fresh air and good play and some good companionship outside-otherwise young life runs the greatest danger in the world of withering or growing stunted, or sour and wrong, or at best prematurely old and turned inward on itself.

"My childhood was healthy and happy-a free and joyous beginning of life, with plenty of love and good books inside the house, and plenty of fresh air and good play outside, with boys and dogs, and ponies and kites, and hoops and footballs, and skates and sleds. All these blessings, I thank God" -said the Doctor, reverently looking upward“were mine in abundance."

I saw the Doctor's thoughts were going back over the past; so I ventured an inquiry about his father, thinking he might be in a communicative mood. He was so, and went on.

"My father (for whom our oldest boy, Philip, is named) came to this country from England near the beginning of the present century, and settled in the city of Boston, where he devoted himself first to the study, and afterwards to the practice of the law. After a few years he married a Boston woman, the daughter of a distinguished member of the bar, as admirable for her domestic virtues as

for the charms of her person and mind. Following his English tastes, he fixed his home in a pleasant villa at Brookline, a little way out of town, but near enough for convenient access to his office. There I was born, in the last year of the administration of Thomas Jefferson,

"I consider my father to have been one of the happiest and most fortunate of men. He thought so himself. He had his own notions of the conditions of a happy life; and they were all combined in his case. He had, first, uniform good healththe sort of good health and the spirits attending it, which result from a good constitution and good habits, particularly abundant exercise in the open air, mostly on horseback, in which sort of exercise he took great pleasure. Then again, he had something to do which he liked to do: he liked his profession-for the play of his faculties it demanded and gave scope to, and for the connection into which it brought him with the eminent men of his own degree. He was in the next place, free from ambition, avarice and envy-and blest with a competence that left him without a care. And finally, to crown all, his life was rounded with love: he was married to the woman he lovod, fitly mated with one who was to him a most true and loving