e
rest of it. She dwelt upon the inhumanity of the brothers; their cruelty
toward their helpless young brother; and the unbrotherly treachery which
they practised upon him; for she hoped to teach the child a lesson in
gentle pity and mercifulness which she would remember. Apparently, her
desire was accomplished, for the tears came into Susy's eyes and she was
deeply moved. Then she said:

"Poor little kid!"

A child's frank envy of the privileges and distinctions of its elders is
often a delicately flattering attention and the reverse of unwelcome,
but sometimes the envy is not placed where the beneficiary is expecting
it to be placed. Once, when Susy was seven, she sat breathlessly
absorbed in watching a guest of ours adorn herself for a ball. The lady
was charmed by this homage; this mute and gentle admiration; and was
happy in it. And when her pretty labors were finished, and she stood at
last perfect, unimprovable, clothed like Solomon in all his glory, she
paused, confident and expectant, to receive from Susy's tongue the
tribute that was burning in her eyes. Susy drew an envious little sigh
and said:

"I wish _I_ could have crooked teeth and spectacles!"

Once, when Susy was six months along in her eighth year, she did
something one day in the presence of company, which subjected her to
criticism and reproof. Afterward, when she was alone with her mother, as
was her custom she reflected a little while over the matter. Then she
set up what I think--and what the shade of Burns would think--was a
quite good philosophical defence.

"Well, mamma, you know I didn't see myself, and so I couldn't know how
it looked."

In homes where the near friends and visitors are mainly literary
people--lawyers, judges, professors and clergymen--the children's ears
become early familiarized with wide vocabularies. It is natural for them
to pick up any words that fall in their way; it is natural for them to
pick up big and little ones indiscriminately; it is natural for them to
use without fear any word that comes to their net, no matter how
formidable it may be as to size. As a result, their talk is a curious
and funny musketry clatter of little words, interrupted at intervals by
the heavy artillery crash of a word of such imposing sound and size that
it seems to shake the ground and rattle the windows. Sometimes the child
gets a wrong idea of a word which it has picked up by chance, and
attaches to it a meaning which impairs i