ute mind,
and has been cutting eye-teeth in past experiences; for his final
answer came out loud and emphatic,

"No, son, I don't want your cow,--your calf's lousy!"

_Sunday Night._

With Nucky, moods of deep depression alternate with those of insane
daring. Yesterday, looking up from the garden, I was horrified to see
him balancing on the roof-tree of the big house, with the slippery,
frosty roof slanting steeply down on both sides; and this afternoon on
our walk, while the boys played "fox and dogs" and ran like deer over
the mountains, I saw the "fox," Nucky, make for the gray rocks and crags
that crown the summit of one, and then crawl to the jutting edge of the
highest, and hang with his hands from it, out over space. These
performances of his cause me acute suffering.

I wonder that mothers have not made a study of the effects of color upon
children. My change of dress in the evenings from dark blue serge to
cardinal silk causes an even more pronounced change in the home
atmosphere. Red, the color of life, certainly appeals to boys; when I
put on the cardinal dress, they love to stroke it with their hands, or
to rub their heads against my shoulders as I read.

That beauty also means a great deal more to them than we older people
think, I was made to realize when Iry began to tell to-night about the
"powerful pretty looks" of his young mother, and how he loved, baby
though he was, to "just lay and look at her." He told of one day in
particular when he awoke from sleep in her arms before a great, roaring
fire, and he and she looked and smiled into each other's eyes for a
long, long time, until some strange women came in and interrupted them.
It is a singular thing for him to remember--doubtless he and she had
gazed into each other's eyes many times, after the manner of mothers and
firstborn sons--probably the coming of the strange women fixed this
particular incident in his memory.

Later in the evening, when we resumed the adventures of Odysseus, there
was a chorus of indignation when the hero permits the monster Scylla to
snatch six of his friends from the ship and make a meal of them. "Shut
up the book!" "Don't want to hear about no such puke-stocking as him,"
"Ongrateful's worse'n pizen!" "Why'n't he grab his ax and chop off them
six heads when he seed 'em a-coming?" "Any man can't fight for his
friends better be dead!" were some of the comments. I bowed to the storm
and shut the book, to hear sev