eir uses. If one
commits a toy to a purpose undreamed of by its maker, it but rouses
the invention to further discovery. Once on a dark and frosty
Christmas morning, I spent a puzzling hour upon a coffee-grinder--a
present to my mother--in a delusion that it was a rare engine destined
for myself. It might have been a bank had it possessed a slot for
coins. A little eagle surmounted the top, yet this was not a
sufficient clue. The handle offered the hope that it was a music-box,
but although I turned it round and round, and noises issued from its
body quite foreign to my other toys, yet I could not pronounce it
music. With sails it might have been a windmill. I laid it on its side
and stood it on its head without conclusion. It was painted red, and
that gave it a wicked look, but no other villainy appeared. To this
day as often as I pass a coffee-grinder in a grocer's shop I turn its
handle in memory of my perplexing hour. And even if one remains
unschooled to the uses of the toys, their discovery in the dawn while
yet the world lies fast asleep, is far beyond their stale performance
that rises with the sun.

And yet I know of an occurrence, to me pathetic, that once attended
such an early discovery. A distant cousin of mine--a man really not
related except by the close bond of my regard--was brought up many
years ago by an uncle of austere and miserly nature. Such goodness as
this uncle had once possessed was cramped into a narrow and smothering
piety. He would have dimmed the sun upon the Sabbath, could he have
reached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. My
cousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this love
was strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas when
children speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers,
he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, his
uncle was stolid against the thought, but finally, with many winks
and nods--pleasantries beyond his usual habit--he assented.

Therefore in the early darkness of the day, the child came down to
find his gift. First, probably, he went to the stable and climbing on
the fence he looked through the windows for an unaccustomed form
inside the stalls. Next he looked to see whether the pony might be
hitched to the post in front of the house, in the manner of the family
doctor. The search failing and being now somewhat disturbed with
doubt, he entered his nursery on the slim chance