s was that Margaret and I should
employ them for the gathering of strength, by walking, yet we were
oftener in the cart than out of it. She drove and I superintended.
In the course of the first excursions I found a beautiful little
shell on the beach at Spanish Point; its hinge was old and dry, and
the two halves came apart in my hand. I gave one of them to
Margaret and said:

"Now dear, sometime or other in the future I shall run across you
somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will
be some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself
'I know that this is a Margaret by the look of her, but I don't know
for sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else's'; but, no
matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my half shell out of
my pocket and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am not
certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of
this shell.'"

Next morning when I entered the breakfast-room and saw the child I
approached and scanned her searchingly all over, then said, sadly:

"No, I am mistaken; it looks like my Margaret,--but it isn't, and I
am so sorry. I shall go away and cry now."

Her eyes danced triumphantly, and she cried out:

"No, you don't have to. There!" and she fetched out the identifying
shell.

I was beside myself with gratitude and joyful surprise, and revealed
it from every pore. The child could not have enjoyed this thrilling
little drama more if we had been playing it on the stage. Many
times afterward she played the chief part herself, pretending to be
in doubt as to my identity and challenging me to produce my half of
the shell. She was always hoping to catch me without it, but I
always defeated that game--wherefore she came to recognize at last
that I was not only old, but very smart.

Sometimes, when they were not walking or driving, they sat on the
veranda, and he prepared history-lessons for little Margaret by making
grotesque figures on cards with numerous legs and arms and other
fantastic symbols end features to fix the length of some king's reign.
For William the Conqueror, for instance, who reigned twenty-one years,
he drew a figure of eleven legs and ten arms. It was the proper method
of impressing facts upon the mind of a child. It carried him back to
those days at Elmira when he had arranged for