e to bask, and loiter, and live in them. She is
so occupied in providing for their wants, that she has no time to sun
herself in their grace. She snatches from them sweetness enough to keep
herself alive, but she does not expand and mellow and ripen in their
warmth for all the world. And the hours go by, and the days go by,
evening and morning, seed-time and harvest, and the little frocks are
outgrown, and the little socks outworn, and the little baby--oh! there
is no little baby any more, but a boy with the crust formed already on
his soul.

I marvel what becomes of these small people in heaven. They cannot stay
as they are, for then heaven would be a poorer place than earth, where
all but idiots increase in wisdom and stature. And if they keep
growing,--why, it seems but a sorry exchange, to give up your tender,
tiny, clinging infant, that is still almost a part of your own life, and
receive in return a full-grown angel a great deal wiser and stronger
than you. Perhaps it is only a just punishment for our guilty ignorance
and selfishness in treating the little things so harshly, that they die
away from us in sheer self-defence. And how good is the All-Father thus
to declare for His little ones, when the strife waxes too hot, and the
odds too heavy against them! We can maltreat them, but only to a
certain limit. Beyond that, the lovely, stern angel of Death steps in,
and bears them softly away to perpetual peace. I read our vital
statistics,--so many thousands under five years of age dying each year;
and I rejoice in every one. If their chances were fair for purity and
happiness, the earth is too beautiful to slip so quickly from their
hold; but, with sin and suffering, twin beasts of prey, lying in wait to
devour, oh! thrice and four times happy are they who escape swiftly from
the struggle in which they are all too sure to fail. So many, at least,
are safe within the fold.

And thus, too, it seems providential, that the sin of pagan nations
should take the form of infanticide. It is Satanic work, but God
overrules it for good. Evil defeats itself, and hatred crowds the lists
of love. From misery and wickedness, from stifled cities, over-full,
from pagan lands, steeped centuries long in vice and crime, from East
and West and North and South, over all the world, the innocent souls go
up,--little lily-buds, swelling white and pure from earthly slime to
bloom in heavenly splendor.

Jamie, Jamie, do you see birdie has