s really a wonderful child."

"Upon my word," said Mr. Squills, thoughtfully, "there's a great deal
of truth in what you say. Little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child; so is
Frank Stepington--and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for
you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles
his pretty little microscope."

"Heaven forbid!" said my father. "And now let me proceed. These
thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills?--last till the boy
goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into
thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has been
at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no more
with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a very
ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr. Squills?"

"Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant? You
never seem to--"

"Hush!" interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother's
anxious face, he said soothingly: "Be comforted; this is wisely
ordained, and it is for the best."

"It must be the fault of the school," said my mother, shaking her head.

"It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any
one of these wonderful children--wonderful as you thought Sisty
himself--stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger,
and its body thinner and thinner--eh, Mr. Squills?--till the mind take
all nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make
sickly the mind. You see that noble oak from the window. If the Chinese
had brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years
old, and at a hundred, you would have set it in a flowerpot on your
table, no bigger than it was at five,--a curiosity for its maturity at
one age; a show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for
talent is school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and
then let the child, if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its
slow way up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it will at least
be a man; and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its
life,--an oak in a pill-box."

At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my
cheek, vigor in my limbs, all childhood at my heart. "Oh, mamma, I have
got up the kite--so high Come and see. Do come, papa!"

"Certainly," said my father; "only don't cry so loud,--kites make no
noise in rising; yet