the same sky, and the same
earth; the same soul of things is here as before,--that soul that
still makes me gay, or sad, or troubled: only _he_ is no more! He was
heedless enough, but he was not wicked; and in justice to him I must
declare that he has not left me a single harsh memory. He was an
innocent child that I have lost. It is natural that I should regret
him; it is natural that I should see him in thought, and delight in
recalling him to memory....

Nothing is of more value for giving a child a knowledge of the great
social machine than the life of the streets. He should see in the
morning the milkwomen, the water carriers, the charcoal men; he should
look in the shop windows of the grocer, the pork vender, and the
wine-seller; he should watch the regiments pass, with the music of the
band. In short, he should suck in the air of the streets, that he may
learn that the law of labor is Divine, and that each man has his work
to do in the world....

Oh! ye sordid old Jews of the Rue Cherche-Midi, and you my masters,
simple sellers of old books on the quays, what gratitude do I owe you!
More and better than university professors, have you contributed to my
intellectual life! You displayed before my ravished eyes the
mysterious forms of the life of the past, and every sort of monument
of precious human thought. In ferreting among your shelves, in
contemplating your dusty display laden with the pathetic relics of our
fathers and their noble thoughts, I have been penetrated with the most
wholesome of philosophies. In studying the worm-eaten volumes, the
rusty iron-work, the worn carvings of your stock, I experienced, child
as I was, a profound realization of the fluent, changing nature of
things and the nothingness of all, and I have been always since
inclined to sadness, to gentleness, and pity.

The open-air school taught me, as you see, great lessons; but the home
school was more profitable still. The family repast, so charming when
the glasses are clear, the cloth white, and the faces tranquil,--the
dinner of each day with its familiar talk,--gives to the child the
taste for the humble and holy things of life, the love of loving. He
eats day by day that blessed bread which the spiritual Father broke
and gave to the pilgrims in the inn at Emmaus, and says, like them,
"My heart is warmed within me." Ah! how good a school is the school of
home!...

The little fellow of whom I spoke but just now to you, with a symp