! When I say they came hand
in hand, it is to advise you that these two boys were twins, like that
pair of tiny girls I just mentioned.

These young gentlemen are at present known as Charley and Talbot, in the
household, and to a very limited circle of acquaintances outside; but as
Charley has declared his intention to become a circus-rider, and Talbot,
who has not so soaring an ambition, has resolved to be a policeman, it
is likely the world will hear of them before long. In the mean time, and
with a view to the severe duties of the professions selected, they are
learning the alphabet, Charley vaulting over the hard letters with an
agility which promises well for his career as circus-rider, and Talbot
collaring the slippery S's and pursuing the suspicious X Y Z's with the
promptness and boldness of a night-watchman.

Now it is my pleasure not only to feed and clothe Masters Charley and
Talbot as if they were young princes or dukes, but to look to it that
they do not wear out their ingenious minds by too much study. So I
occasionally take them to a puppet-show or a musical entertainment, and
always in holiday time to see a pantomime. This last is their especial
delight. It is a fine thing to behold the business-like air with which
they climb into their seats in the parquet, and the gravity with which
they immediately begin to read the play-bill upside down. Then, between
the acts, the solemnity with which they extract the juice from an
orange, through a hole made with a lead-pencil, is also a noticeable
thing.

Their knowledge of the mysteries of Fairyland is at once varied and
profound. Everything delights, but nothing astonishes them. That people
covered with spangles should dive headlong through the floor; that
fairy queens should step out of the trunks of trees; that the poor
wood-cutter's cottage should change, in the twinkling of an eye, into a
glorious palace or a goblin grotto under the sea, with crimson fountains
and golden staircases and silver foliage--all that is a matter of
course. This is the kind of world they live in at present. If these
things happened at home they would not be astonished.

The other day, it was just before Christmas, I saw the boys attentively
regarding a large pumpkin which lay on the kitchen floor, waiting to
be made into pies. If that pumpkin had suddenly opened, if wheels
had sprouted out on each side, and if the two kittens playing with an
onion-skin by the range had turned in