s and dying, the kind visitor insisted on
putting a doll into her arms. Instantly the eyes of the little invalid
opened, and she pressed the gift eagerly to her heart, murmuring over
it and caressing it. The matron afterwards wrote that the child died
within two hours, wearing a happy face, and still clinging to her
new-found treasure.

And beginning with this transfer of all human associations to a doll,
the child's life interfuses itself readily among all the affairs of the
elders. In its presence, formality vanishes, the most oppressive
ceremonial is a little relieved when children enter. Their influence is
pervasive and irresistible, like that of water, which adapts itself to
any landscape,--always takes its place, welcome or unwelcome,--keeps
its own level and seems always to have its natural and proper margin.

Out of doors how children mingle with nature, and seem to begin just
where birds and butterflies leave off! Leigh Hunt, with his delicate
perceptions, paints this well: "The voices of children seem as natural
to the early morning as the voice of the birds. The suddenness, the
lightness, the loudness, the sweet confusion, the sparkling gayety,
seem alike in both. The sudden little jangle is now here and now there;
and now a single voice calls to another, and the boy is off like the
bird." So Heine, with deeper thoughtfulness, noticed the "intimacy with
the trees" of the little wood-gatherer in the Hartz Mountains; soon the
child whistled like a linnet, and the other birds all answered him;
then he disappeared in the thicket with his bare feet and his bundle of
brushwood.

"Children," thought Heine, "are younger than we, and can still remember
the time when they were trees or birds, and can therefore understand
and speak their language; but we are grown old, and have too many
cares, and too much jurisprudence and bad poetry in our heads."

But why go to literature for a recognition of what one may see by
opening one's eyes? Before my window there is a pool, two rods square,
that is haunted all winter by children,--clearing away the snow of many
a storm, if need be, and mining downward till they strike the ice. I
look this morning from the window, and the pond is bare. In a moment I
happen to look again, and it is covered with a swarm of boys; a great
migrating flock has settled upon it, as if swooping down from parts
unknown to scream and sport themselves here. The air is full of their
voices; they have