ouses
of all the world, there is none so gloriously treasured in the memories
of man and woman as those wherein their children have come to birth.

I have had many fine things happen to me: Friends have borne me high on
kindly shoulders; out of the depths of their generous hearts they have
given me honors which I have not deserved; I have more than once come
home proud in the possession of some new joy, or of some task
accomplished; but I have never known, and never shall know, a thrill of
happiness to equal that which followed good old Doctor Gordon's brief
announcement: "It's a Boy!"

"It's a Boy!" All that day and the next I fairly shouted it to friends
and strangers. To Marjorie's sweetness, and to the radiant loveliness of
the little baby which was ours for so brief a time, had been added the
strength and roguishness of a boy.

The next five years saw the walls of our home change in character.
Finger marks and hammer marks began to appear. When Bud had reached the
stage where he could walk, calamity began to follow in his trail. Once
he tugged at a table cover and the open bottle of ink fell upon the rug.
There was a great splotch of ink forever to be visible to all who
entered that living-room! Yet even that black stain became in time a
part of us. We grew even to boast of it. We pointed it out to new
acquaintances as the place where Bud spilled the ink. It was an evidence
of his health and his natural tendencies. It proved to all the world
that in Bud we had a real boy; an honest-to-goodness boy who could spill
ink--and _would_, if you didn't keep a close watch on him.

Then came the toy period of our development. The once tidy house became
a place where angels would have feared to tread in the dark. Building
blocks and trains of cars and fire engines and a rocking horse were
everywhere, to trip the feet of the unwary. Mother scolded about it, at
times; and I fear I myself have muttered harsh things when, late at
night, I have entered the house only to stumble against the tin sides of
an express wagon.

But I have come to see that toys in a house are its real adornments.
There is no pleasanter sight within the front door of any man's castle
than the strewn and disordered evidences that children there abide. The
house seems unfurnished without them.

This chaos still exists in our house to-day. Mother says I encourage it.
Perhaps I do. I know that I dread the coming day when the home shall
become neat and o