's 'bout as big as me, and the other--the other's
on'y jest begun.'

A wee little boy, who had a great habit of saying he was frightened at
everything, was one day walking with me in the garden, and clung to me
suddenly, saying, 'I'se frightened of that sing,' and, looking down, I
saw a caterpillar near his foot.

'Oh, no,' said I, reassuringly and somewhat reprovingly, 'Georgie's not
frightened at _such a little thing_!' Five minutes after, we were
sitting on the doorsteps, and, wearing a low-necked dress, I felt on my
shoulder some stirring creature; it was a caterpillar, and, with the
inevitable privileged feminine screech on such occasions, I dashed it
off; then, turning, I met the usually grave gray eyes kindling with
mischievous triumph: '_Aunty's_ frightened of a little sing,' says
Georgie, with triumphant emphasis on the 'Aunty.'

Another little rogue, a black-eyed 'possible president' of course, when
between two and three years, was opening and shutting a door, amusing
himself as he watched the sunshine come and go on the walls of the
sitting room, streaming through the lattice of a porch beyond.
Presently, while holding the door open, a cloud floated over the sun.
'Aunty, aunty,' cried he, as surprised as he was earnest, 'somebody's
shutting door up in the sky.'

I was amused, not long ago, at a passage in the letter of an eldest
daughter, eight years old, to her absent father: the womanly dignity of
her station and the child's sense of justice quite stifled any tendency
to sympathetic remarks. 'Johnny,' she wrote, 'has not been very bad,
neither can I say he has been very good; he ran away from nurse twice,
and once from mamma, who of course did with him _as he deserved_.'

A correspondent of mine in the army (a whilom contributor of yours, by
the way) writes me this:

'After the Corinthian 'skedadle' (the demi-savans (I don't mean
Napoleon's in Egypt, but the provinvial editors--in some cases it
amounts to the same thing) having proved the word to be Greek, I suppose
it is slang no longer), the Tenth Illinois regiment (Dick Wolcott, you
know) camped a few miles to the northward, near the woods; and hasty but
shady structures were soon reared in front of the officers' tents; but
one morning there arose a great wind, and the 'arboresque' screens
became rapidly as _non est_ as Jonah's gourd. A group of uniforms stood
watching the flying branches. 'Boys,' said Captain M., gravely, as
somewhat ruefully his