ed, confined, and cramped almost
to numbness. When, behold! by the marvellous miracle of man or
womanhood--a dull, tiresome child is suddenly transformed, takes on
shapeliness and stature, opens the bolted doors of life, leads the
father or mother into valleys of ease and on to hopeful hilltops; slays
dragons, chains ogres, and smiles with the eyes and lips which have been
vaguely dreamed of, longed for, who knows how long!

So children do occasionally constitute compensations and blessings not
merely in disguise. And this particularly where they have not been
looked upon as investments for future happiness or arrangements for
paying off parental debts to society, to glory, or the Supreme Being.
For surely, if children are ever to renovate the flagging life of
parents, it can only be by their leaving off their childhood and coming
back as equals, brothers, sisters, sometimes as tenderest and most
admiring of chivalrous lovers.

'Tis, in fact, unexpected new life adding itself to ours which
constitutes the supreme compensation in middle age; and our heart puts
forth fresh blossoms of happiness (of genius sometimes, as in the case
of Goethe) because younger shoots are rejoicing in the seasonable
sunshine or dews. The interests and beliefs of the younger generation
prevent our own from dying; nay, the friendships and loves of our
children, whether according to the flesh or the spirit, may become our
own. Daughters-in-law are not invariably made to dine off the poisoned
half of a partridge, as in works of history. Some stepfathers and
stepmothers feel towards those alien youths and maidens only as that
dear Valentine Visconti did towards the little Dunois, whom she took in
her arms, say the chronicles, and, with many kisses on eyes and cheeks,
exclaimed, "Surely thou wast stolen from me!" And, in another
relationship which is spoken ill of by those unworthy of it, we can
sometimes watch a thing which is among reality's best poetry: where a
mother, wisely and dutifully stepping aside from her married daughter's
path, has been snatched back, borne in triumph, not by one loving pair
of arms, but two; and where the happy young wife has smiled at
recognizing that in her husband's love for her there was mixed up a
head-over-ears devotion for her mother.

Some folks have no sons or daughters, or husbands or wives, and hence no
stepchildren or children-in-law. Yet even for them autumn may blossom.
There are the children of frien