votion to principle, though distressingly eager for pocket-money.

"Fred," whispers the dear woman at my side, breaking in upon my
cogitation, "what were you like as a boy--er--a young man, I mean?"

Her words are the answering echo to my own secret thought. Like myself
she is groping for light and counsel. May not the cleverest man and
woman fitly quail before the soul-hunger of eager adolescent youth?
And I do not profess to be clever.

"What were you like as a young woman?"

"I was afraid you would make that answer," she murmurs, reproachfully.
"Oh, I have forgotten!"

"And if we could remember, Josephine, it would not help us very much.
Each generation finds the world a virgin field. Somehow, though, I had
fancied that when we had seen them through the scarlet fever and landed
them in college, it would be plain sailing. We have to begin all over
again, though, and the second half promises to be the most difficult."

"I know it. And think how we worried, or rather tried not to worry,
over them when they were little things, and how we fancied there were
no problems to compare in difficulty with supplying them with proper
food and proper masters. In the last fifteen years they have had
everything--chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough, mumps, and scarlet
fever. And they've collected everything--postage-stamps, minerals,
butterflies, coins, and cigarette pictures. And they've kept
everything--rabbits, goats, bull-terriers, white mice, a pony, and
guinea-pigs."

"And owned, and subsequently discarded, to my certain knowledge, a
music-box, doll's-house, puppet-show, printing-press, steam-engine,
aquarium, and camera."

"Yes, and over and above their school learning they've been taught to
swim, ride, dance, use tools, play on the piano, and speak fair to
middling French. Yet, as you say, Fred, the most difficult part is to
come, just as we fancied that we were through. And the terrible
reflection is that we're not so sure now what we ought to do for them
as we were when they were younger."

"Precisely, dear."

"And it seems sometimes very strange to me, Fred, that though they've
eaten out of the same dish, as it were, all their days, and had the
same opportunities, they should be so totally unlike one another
physically, mentally, and morally. It's impossible to lay down any
hard-and-fast rule for them now, as one could do when they were little."

It is indeed. I see them on the threshold of manhood