ry that was trying to get in at doors and
windows, he too would have grown miserable, and then they would have
been all miserable together. But to try to make others comfortable is
the only way to get right comfortable ourselves, and that comes partly
of not being able to think so much about ourselves when we are helping
other people. For our Selves will always do pretty well if we don't pay
them too much attention. Our Selves are like some little children who
will be happy enough so long as they are left to their own games, but
when we begin to interfere with them, and make them presents of too nice
playthings, or too many sweet things, they begin at once to fret and
spoil.

"Why, Diamond, child!" said his mother at last, "you're as good to your
mother as if you were a girl--nursing the baby, and toasting the bread,
and sweeping up the hearth! I declare a body would think you had been
among the fairies."

Could Diamond have had greater praise or greater pleasure? You see
when he forgot his Self his mother took care of his Self, and loved and
praised his Self. Our own praises poison our Selves, and puff and swell
them up, till they lose all shape and beauty, and become like great
toadstools. But the praises of father or mother do our Selves good, and
comfort them and make them beautiful. They never do them any harm. If
they do any harm, it comes of our mixing some of our own praises with
them, and that turns them nasty and slimy and poisonous.

When his father had finished his breakfast, which he did rather in a
hurry, he got up and went down into the yard to get out his horse and
put him to the cab.

"Won't you come and see the cab, Diamond?" he said.

"Yes, please, father--if mother can spare me a minute," answered
Diamond.

"Bless the child! I don't want him," said his mother cheerfully.

But as he was following his father out of the door, she called him back.

"Diamond, just hold the baby one minute. I have something to say to your
father."

So Diamond sat down again, took the baby in his lap, and began poking
his face into its little body, laughing and singing all the while,
so that the baby crowed like a little bantam. And what he sang was
something like this--such nonsense to those that couldn't understand it!
but not to the baby, who got all the good in the world out of it:--
baby's a-sleeping wake up baby for all the swallows are the merriest
fellows and have the yellowest children who would go sleep