re so torn and strained by thoughtless task-masters, that it
seems scarcely a regrettable thing when the circus caravan halts awhile
on its route to make a small grave by the wayside.

I never witness a performance of child-acrobats, or the exhibition of
any forced talent, physical or mental, on the part of children, without
protesting, at least in my own mind, against the blindness and cruelty
of their parents or guardians, or whoever has care of them.

I saw at the theatre, the other night, two tiny girls--mere babies they
were--doing such feats upon a bar of wood suspended from the ceiling as
made my blood run cold. They were twin sisters, these mites, with that
old young look on their faces which all such unfortunates have. I hardly
dared glance at them, up there in the air, hanging by their feet from
the swinging bar, twisting their fragile spines and distorting their
poor little bodies, when they ought to have been nestled in soft
blankets in a cosey chamber, with the angels that guard the sleep of
little children hovering above them. I hope that the father of those two
babies will read and ponder this page, on which I record not alone my
individual protest, but the protest of hundreds of men and women who
took no pleasure in that performance, but witnessed it with a pang of
pity.

There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dumb Animals. There
ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Little Children;
and a certain influential gentleman, who does some things well and other
things very badly, ought to attend to it. The name of this gentleman is
Public Opinion.{1}

1 This sketch was written in 1874. The author claims for it
no other merit than that of having been among the earliest
appeals for the formation of such a Society as now exists--
the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children.

But to my story.

One September morning, about five years and a half ago, there wandered
to my fireside, hand in hand, two small personages who requested in a
foreign language, which I understood at once, to be taken in and fed and
clothed and sent to school and loved and tenderly cared for. Very modest
of them--was it not?--in view of the fact that I had never seen either
of them before. To all intents and purposes they were perfect strangers
to _me_. What was my surprise when it turned out (just as if it were in
a fairy legend) that these were my own sons