upon his handsome
face, and his expression, so full of sensibility, assumed the cast of
anxiety and pain. "He thanked me for my eloquent praises of the boy,
and--not too partially, he hoped--believed that he deserved them all.
A prize of beauty and of love had fallen to him in his little Ferdy,
for which he would be grieved to seem ungrateful. But yet--but
yet--the responsibility, the anxiety, the ceaseless fretting care!
This fierce, unbroken city";--he spoke of it as though it were a
newly-lassoed and untamed mustang,--I liked the simile; "this lawless,
blasphemous, obscene, and dangerous community; these sights of
heartlessness and cruelty; these sounds of selfish, greedy contention;
the absence of all taste and culture,--no lines of beauty, no strains
of music, no tones of kindness, no gestures of gentleness and grace,
no delicate attentions, no ladies' presence, no social circle, no
books, no home, no church;--Good God! what a heathenish barbarism of
coarse instincts, and irreverence, and insulting equalities, and all
manner of gracelessnesses, to bring the dangerous impressionability of
fine childhood to! The boy was nervous, sensitive, of a spirit quick
to take alarms or hurts,--physically unprepared to wrestle with
arduous toil, privation, and exposure,--most apt for the teachings of
gentleness and taste. It was cruel to think--he could wish him dead
first--that his clean, white mind must become smeared and spotted
here, his well-tuned ear reconciled to loud discords, and his fine eye
at peace with deformity; but there was no help for it." And then, as
though he had suddenly detected in my face an expression of surprised
discovery, he said, "But I am sure I do not know how I came to say so
much, or let myself be tedious with sickly egotisms to a polite, but
indifferent, stranger. If you have gathered from them more than I
meant should appear, you will at least do me the justice to believe
that I have not been boasting of what I regard as a calamity."

I essayed to reassure him by urging upon his consideration the
manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and
economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance,
which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude
surroundings,--at the same time granting the necessity of sleepless
vigilance and severe restraints. But he only shook his head sadly, and
said, "No doubt, no doubt; and I hope, Sir, the fault is in myse