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GOSSIP ABOUT CHILDREN.

cause them to 'mis-speak half-uttered words,' and to go through with divers little lessons in manners and elocution. But both parents and children were made so apparently happy by it, that I never could think, as certain of my irreverent companions were wont to think, and to say, that it was 'a bore.' No, I never thought, or said that; but I did think, I remember, as I have said, that there was a little bad taste, and not a little presumption, in such a

course.

I don't think so now.

When a father and how much more a mother sees for the first time the gleam of affection illumining, with what the Germans call an 'interior light,' the eyes and features of his infant child; when that innocent soul, fresh from heaven, looks for the first time into yours, and you feel that yours is an answering look to that new-born intelligence then, I say, will you experience a sensation which is not ‘of the earth earthy,' but belongs to the ' correspondences' of a higher and holier sphere.

I wish to gossip a little with you concerning children. You are a full-grown man now, my friend, yet you were once a boy; and I am quite certain that you will feel interested in a few incidents which I am going to relate, in illustration of my theme; incidents which I hope you will judge to be not unfruitful of monitory lessons to 'children of larger growth' than mere girls and boys.

GOSSIP ABOUT CHILDREN.

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Don't you think that we parents, sometimes, in moments of annoyance, through pressure of business or other circumstances, forbid that which was but innocent and reasonable, and perfectly natural to be asked for? And do not the best of parents frequently multiply prohibitions until obedience to them becomes impossible?

Excuse me; but all your readers have been children; many of them are happy mothers; many more that are not will be in GoD's good time; and I cannot but believe that many who shall peruse these sentences will find something in them which they will remember hereafter.

6

'The sorrows and tears of youth,' says WASHINGTON IRVING, are as bitter as those of age;' and he is right. They are sooner washed away, it is true; but oh! how keen is the present sensibility-how acute the passing mental agony!

My twin-brother WILLIS

may his ashes repose in

peace in his early, his untimely grave! and myself, when we were very little boys in the country, saw, one bright June day, far up in the blue sky, a paper-kite, swaying to and fro, rising and sinking, diving and curveting, and flashing back the sunlight in a manner that was wonderful to behold. We left our little tin vessels in the meadow where we were picking strawberries, and ran into a neighboring field to get beneath it; and, keeping our eyes continually upon it, 'gazing steadfastly toward heaven,' we

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GOSSIP ABOUT CHILDREN.

presently found ourselves by the side of the architect of that magnificent creation, and saw the line which held it reaching into the skies, and little white paper messengers gliding upward upon it, as if to hold communion with the graceful bird of the air' at the upper end.

6

I am describing this to you as a boy, and I wish you to think of it as a boy.

Well, many days afterward, and after various unsuccessful attempts, which not a little discomfited us for we thought we had obtained the 'principle' of the kite-we succeeded in making one which we thought would fly. The air was too still, however, for several days; and never did a becalmed navigator wait more impatiently for a breeze to speed his vessel on her voyage than did we for a wind that should send our paper messenger, bedizened with stars of red and yellow paper, dancing up the sky.

At last it pleased the 'gentle and voluble spirit of the air' to favor us. A mild south wind sprang up, and so deftly did we manage our 'invention,' that it was presently reduced to a mere miniature-kite in the blue ether above us. Such a triumph! FULTON, when he essayed his first experiment, felt no more exultant than did we when that great event was achieved! We kept it up until "twixt the gloaming and the mirk,' when we drew it down and deposited it in the barn; hesitating long where to place it, out of several localities that seemed safe and eligible, but

GOSSIP ABOUT CHILDREN.

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finally deciding to stand it end-wise in a barrel, in an unfrequented corner of the barn.

I am coming now to a specimen of the 'sorrows and tears of youth,' of which GEOFFREY CRAYON speaks. We dreamed of that kite in the night; and, far up in the heaven of our sleeping vision, we saw it flashing in the sun and gleaming opaquely in the twilight air. In the morning, we repaired betimes to the barn; approached the barrel with eagerness, as if it were possible for the kite to have taken the wings of the evening and flown away; and, on looking down into the receptacle, saw our cherished, our beloved kite broken into twenty pieces!

It was our man THOMAS who did it, climbing upon the hay-mow.

It was many years afterward before we forgot the cruel neighbor who laughed at us for our deep six months' sorrow at that great loss; a loss in comparison with which the loss of a fortune at the period of manhood sinks into insignificance. Other kites, indeed, we constructed; but that was the kite 'you read of' at this present.

Think, therefore, O ye parents! always think of the acuteness of a child's sense of childish grief.

I once saw an elder brother, the son of a metropolitan neighbor, a romping, roystering blade, in the merest 'devilment,' cut off the foot of a little doll with which his infantine sister was amusing herself. A mutilation of living

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GOSSIP ABOUT CHILDREN.

flesh and blood, of bone and sinew, in a beloved playmate, could scarcely have affected the poor child more painfully. It was to her the vital current of a beautiful babe which oozed from the bran-leg of that stuffed effigy of an infant; and the mental sufferings of the child were based upon the innocent faith which it held, that all things were really what they seemed.

Grown people should have more faith in, and more appreciation of, the statements and feelings of children. When I read, some months since, in a telegraphic dispatch to one of our morning journals, from Baltimore, if I remember rightly, of a mother who, in punishing a little boy for telling a lie, (which, after all, it subsequently transpired that he did not tell,) hit him with a slight switch over his temple and killed him instantly-a mere accident, of course, but yet a dreadful casualty, which drove reason from the throne of the unhappy mother when I read this, I thought of what had occurred in my own sanctum only a week or two before; and the lesson which I received was a good one, and will remain with me forever.

'I

My little boy, a dark-eyed, ingenuous, and frankhearted child as ever breathed-though perhaps I say it who ought not to say it' still, I do say it — had been playing about my table, on

leaving which for a moment,

I found, on my return, that my long porcupine-quill-handled pen was gone. I asked the little fellow what he had