uld
fain pass by it, that the gin-shop, like a devil-fish, sends forth long
tentacles and ruthlessly sucks him in; with the mother-whale, when her
wilful young one insists on swimming up the fiord, and she who has
risked her life to warn him must hear the thud of the harpoon in his
side; with the old tired horse, when they fetch him in from his sober
reverie in the fields, and put his blinkers on; with anything
else?--yes, with the bluebells, whose life above ground is so short,
when wasteful children tread them down;--these all feel something that
one would fain save them from. So perhaps does the rose-tree also, when
some careless boy goes by whooping in the joy of his heart, and whips
off her buds with his cane.

Fruitful sympathy must doubtless have some likeness of nature, and also
a certain kindliness to found itself on; but it comes more from a
penetrative keenness of observation, from the patient investigations of
thought, from those vivid intuitions that wait on imagination, from a
good memory, which can live over again in circumstances that are
changed, and from that intelligent possession of the whole of one's
foregone life, which makes it impossible to ignore the power of any
great emotion or passion merely because it is past. Where these
qualities are there should be, for there can be, sympathy.

Mrs. Melcombe was fond of her one child; but she had forgotten what her
own nature, thoughts, fears, and wishes, as well as joys, had been in
childhood. In like manner, as she was, on the whole, contented herself,
she not only thought that her own example ought to make Laura contented,
but she frequently pointed this out to her.

The child is to the father and mother, who imparted life to him, and who
see his youth, the most excellent consolation that nature can afford
them for the loss of their own youth, and for the shortness of life in
themselves; but if a mother is therefore convinced that her child is a
consoler to those who have none, he is sure, at some time or other, to
be considered an unmitigated bore.

Mrs. Melcombe often thought, "Laura has my child with her constantly to
amuse her, and has none of the responsibility about him that I have.
Laura goes to the shops with me, sees me give the orders, and I
frequently even consult her; she goes with me into the garden, and sees
the interest I take in the wall-fruit and the new asparagus-bed, and yet
she never takes example by me. She will eat just as man