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financier. Not long ago the father announced to him:

"Well, Harold, that man I was telling you of has failed--lost his
money--and one thousand dollars of mine have gone with it."

The boy's white, set face would have alarmed a more observant man.

"Oh, papa! what shall we do!"

"Get along somehow, my boy!" was the unsatisfactory answer.

Then, as the boy sadly and slowly left the room, the man to whom one
thousand dollars were no more than one dime to this anxious child,
explained, laughingly, to a friend, that "that little fellow was
really wonderful; he understood business, and was as much interested
in it as a man of forty could be."

We fathers and mothers have no right to make our children old before
their time. Each age has its own trials, which are as great as any one
person should bear. We know that the troubles that come to our babies
are only baby troubles, but they are as large to them as our griefs
are to us. A promised drive, which does not "materialize," proves as
great a disappointment to your tiny girl as the unfulfilled promise of
a week in the country would to you, her sensible mother. Of course our
children must learn to bear their trials. My plea is that they may not
be forced to bear our anxieties also. If a thing is an annoyance to
you, it will be an agony to your little child, who has not a tenth of
your experience, philosophy and knowledge of life.

There is something cowardly and weak in the man or woman who has so
little self-control that he or she must press a child's tender
shoulders into service in bearing burdens. Teach your children to be
careful, teach them prudence and economy, but let them be taught as
children.

The forcing of a child's sympathies sometimes produces a hardening
effect, as in the case of a small boy whose mother was one of the
sickly-sentimental sort. She had drawn too often upon her child's
sensibilities.

"Charlie," she said, plaintively, to her youngest boy, "what would you
do if poor mamma were to get very sick?"

"Send for the doctor."

"But, Charlie, suppose poor, dear mamma should die! Then, what would
you do?"

"I'd go to the funeral!" was the cheerful response.

To my mind this mother had the son ordained for her from the beginning
of the world.

Many boys are all love and sympathy for their mothers. Mamma appeals
to all that is tender and chivalrous in the nature of the man that is
to be. The maternal tenderness ought to be too stron