uch as a squirrel or a chicken may have, but they can in no
wise interpret the Mighty Mother, nor even hear her words. The ocean
moans his secret to unheeding ears. The agony of the underworld finds
no speech in the mountain-peaks, bare and grand. The old oaks stretch
out their arms in vain. Grove whispers to grove, and the robin stops
to listen, but the child plays on. He bruises the happy butter-cups,
he crushes the quivering anemone, and his cruel fingers are stained
with the harebell's purple blood. Rippling waterfall and rolling
river, the majesty of sombre woods, the wild waste of wilderness, the
fairy spirits of sunshine, the sparkling wine of June, and the golden
languor of October, the child passes by, and a dipper of blackberries,
or a pocketful of chestnuts, fills and satisfies his horrible little
soul. And in face of all this people say,--there are people who DARE to
say,--that childhood's are the "happiest days."

I may have been peculiarly unfortunate in my surroundings, but the
children of poetry and novels were very infrequent in my day. The
innocent cherubs never studied in my school-house, nor played
puss-in-the-corner in our backyard. Childhood, when I was young, had
rosy checks and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also extremely
given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made
nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes
it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told
lies,--"whoppers" at that. It took the larger half of the apple. It
was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may
have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who were in
the midst.

This whole way of viewing childhood, this regretful retrospect of its
vanished joys, this infatuated apotheosis of doughiness and rank
unfinish, this fearful looking-for of dread old age, is low, gross,
material, utterly unworthy of a sublime manhood, utterly false to
Christian truth. Childhood is pre-eminently the animal stage of
existence. The baby is a beast--a very soft, tender, caressive
beast,--a beast full of promise,--a beast with the germ of an
angel,--but a beast still. A week-old baby gives no more sign of
intelligence, of love, or ambition, or hope, or fear, or passion, or
purpose, than a week-old monkey, and is not half so frisky and funny.
In fact, it is a puling, scowling, wretched, dismal, desperate-looking
animal. It is only