uation.

In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver-mining. Of course,
the great thing was an accident in a mine, and there were two "star"
parts; that of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the
daring hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. I knew one
small chap who always insisted on playing BOTH of these parts--and he
carried his point. He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come
to the surface and go back after his own remains.

It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere; he is head
guide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada, head bull-fighter in Spain,
etc.; but I knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who once selected
a part for himself compared to which those just mentioned are tame
and unimpressive. Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary
horse-cars one Sunday--stopped him from playing captain of an imaginary
steamboat next Sunday--stopped him from leading an imaginary army to
battle the following Sunday--and so on. Finally the little fellow said:

"I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. What CAN I play?"

"I hardly know, Jimmy; but you MUST play only things that are suitable
to the Sabbath-day."

Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room door to see if
the children were rightly employed. He peeped in. A chair occupied the
middle of the room, and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap; one of
his little sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it to
another small sister and said, "Eat of this fruit, for it is good." The
Reverend took in the situation--alas, they were playing the Expulsion
from Eden! Yet he found one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself,
"For once Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him, I
did not believe there was so much modesty in him; I should have expected
him to be either Adam or Eve." This crumb of comfort lasted but a very
little while; he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an
imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face.
What that meant was very plain--HE WAS IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of
the guileless sublimity of that idea.

We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven hours out from St.
Nicholas. So we must have made fully a mile and a half an hour, and it
was all downhill, too, and very muddy at that. We stayed all night at
the Hotel de Soleil; I remember it because the landlady, the portie