Does any person want a horse at a low price? A good, stylish-looking animal, close-ribbed, good loin, and good stifle, sound legs, with only the heaves and blind-staggers, and a slight defect in one of his eyes? If at any time he slips his bridle and gets away, you can always approach him by getting on his left side. I will also engage to give a written guarantee that he is sound and kind, signed by the brother of his former owner. CHAPTER X. Children-An Interrupted Discourse-Mrs. Sparrowgrass makes a Brilliant Quakers-A few Remark - Philadelphia Phrases-Another Interruption CHILDREN, God bless them! Who can help loving them! Children, God bless them! are the only beings for whom we have no "imperfect sympathies." We love them through and through. There is nothing conventional in the hearty laugh of a child. The smile of a child is unsuspectable of artifice. I once corrected one of my little ones, and put him to bed, for having been stubborn at his letters. Then I waited until he fell asleep, and then I watched beside him until he slumbered out his sorrows. When he opened his eyes, he stretched out his little arms, smiled up in my face, and forgave me. The Lord forgive me for the whaling I gave him! I owe him an apology, which I intend to make so soon as he is old enough to understand it. There is nothing so odious to the mind of a child as injustice, and young married people are prone to expect too much, and exact too much of their eldest born. If then we are unjustly severe from our want of experience, it seem to me there is something due, some reparation on our part, due to the individual whose feelings we have injured. If we lose temper with a gentleman six feet high, and call him hard names, we often find it convenient to apologize. It seems to me that three feet of wounded sensibility is, at least, entitled to respectful consideration. What do you think of that, Mrs. Sparrowgrass? Mrs. Sparrowgrass said "How much," I con she thought it was true. tinued, reflectively, "children occupy the father's mind." "Yes," said Mrs. Sparrowgrass," and the mother's." "Children," said I, "are to the father as weights are to the clock-they keep him steady and they keep him busy." Mrs. Sparrowgrass looked up from the plaid patch of new gingham she was needling into the breast of a faded gingham apron, and nodded significantly: "True," said she, "you are the hour hand, but I am the minute hand." As this was the most brilliant remark Mrs. S. had made for months, I was silent for some time. "My dear," said I, after a pause, "speaking of children, I wish you would not teach the young ones so many of your Philadelphia phrases." Mrs. Sparrowgrass looked surprised. "You know, my dear," I continued, "how proud I am this year, and justly proud, too, of our musk-melons ?" "Well ?" "And when Uncle Sourgrass was here the other day, what should Ivanhoe do but ask him to go out to look at the cantelopes." "Well, what of that?" said Mrs. S. "Cantelope," said I, "in this part of the world, is the name of a very inferior species of melon, and I would not have had Uncle Sourgrass think we had nothing but cantelopes in the garden, upon any account." "You wouldn't?" "No! You call all kinds of melons 'cantelopes' in Philadelphia, but permit me to say that it is a local error, which should not be transplanted and trained in juvenile minds on the banks of the Hudson." Mrs. Sparrowgrass was much impressed by this horticultural figure. “Then, when visitors come, you always will take them to see that patch of 'Queen Margarets,' and everybody gets disappointed to find they are only China asters." "Well ?" "And there is another thing too Mrs. Sparrowgrass; next Christmas Santa Claus, if you please-no Kriss Kringle. Santa Claus is the patron saint, Mrs. Sparrowgrass, of the New Netherlands, and the ancient Dorp of Yonkers; he it is who fills the fireside stockings; he only can come down Westchester chimneys, and I would much prefer not to have the children's minds, and the flue, occupied with his Pennsylvania prototype. And, since I must speak of it, why will you always call a quail a partridge? All All you Philadelphians will call a quail a partridge. Did you ever read Audubon ?" Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she never had. "Wilson ?" "Never." "Charles Bonaparte?" (A dead silence.) "Nor any other work on ornithology?" Mrs. Sparrowgrass said there was a little bundle of remnants and patches in the upper part of the closet, which she wished I would reach down. "A quail," I continued, as I reached down the bundle, "is not a partridge, my dear." Mrs. Sparrowgrass said the next time we had partridges she would call them all quails, as she supposed I knew which was correct better than she did. With that she unrolled |