in thought. Its pleasing unity rests in the
fact that it is all a child's thoughts about the world. It is logical, a
real leading up of thought to natural climax. The child begins with
wonder and a sense of beauty around her. The world is great and wide
and wonderful and beautiful. She thinks of the sea she has read about
or seen and thinks of the wonderful water curling up in waves above the
shore. To her the world is the land with the wonderful growing grass
upon its broad breast, and this marks the end of her first thought--the
great world is beautifully dressed.

Next as she sits on the brow of the hill and gazes over the lowland the
breezes blow her hair about her face and her mind passes to the
wonderful air that as wind shakes the trees, ripples the water, whirls
the mills and sings through the trees on the tops of the hills.

Thought wanders on to the nodding wheat, the rivers, cliffs, and
islands, to the cities and the people everywhere for thousands of miles.
What is the effect of this vastness on the thought of a child? Can you
not realize for yourself any clear night that you may gaze at the
numberless stars in the arching skies? How small, how infinitely little
are we in all the great universe! Have we the imagination to grasp the
saving thought that comes so naturally into the clear mind of the child?
Though I am so small, so insignificant, I can think and love, but the
wonderful earth can not. A philosophy well worth keeping, is it not?

_Seven Times One_

(Volume II, page 119)

Jean Ingelow's poem has in it many things to interest a child, but there
may be some things that will be clearer for explanation.

Stanza 1. In England the daisy grows wild almost everywhere, a little,
low plant which produces its heads of white, pink-tipped flowers from a
rosette of leaves. In the United States we often see daisies in
cultivation but they are nowhere native. The child is at her seventh
birthday and has learned her multiplication table, the "sevens".
Nowadays in our schools the children do not have the drudgery of
committing the long tables to memory as their grand-parents did. Our
little friend thinks that as she has lived seven years that makes her
"seven times one are seven."

Stanza 2. One is so old at seven, so very old--why one can even write a
letter. But now with the birthday lessons learned she can think of other
things; for instance there are the lambs who play always, for they have
no lessons