Where did he go?—the “little nuisance”—where? The papers told me the next morning. Listen:
“A little boy who is accustomed to play the accordeon in the street-cars, in stepping from the Fulton ferry-boat to the pier, last evening, accidentally lost his footing, and was drowned.”
No more fault-finding voices to ask why don’t the lad earn his living, or call him “a nuisance” when he tried the only thing he could do, and failed; no more returns at nightfall with leaden feet, and empty pockets. The boats plough on just as merrily; the water dances and sparkles all the same as if the light in his blue eyes were not quenched forever.
Where is the little nuisance? where?
Ask them who, through much tribulation, have washed their robes white, who neither thirst nor hunger any more, and in whose song is no jarring discord. Of such is the little musician!
LIONS.
Did you ever see a live lion?
Yes, at the menagerie.
Pooh! that was no more a lion than your little baby-sister is a full-grown woman; to be sure this lion had a stout old lion for its father, and a lioness for its mother; but that does not make it a lion, though the keeper of the menagerie might tell you so till he is black in the face.
Why?