"What's that?" cried she, in a sweet chirping voice; "hey! Look on! What's that, I say?—F—No—o—o—oh!" shaking her little head with the air of a school-mistress, who has made up her mind not to be trifled with.
It reminded me of another little girl somewhat older, who used to sit and play underneath my windows, and look down into the long green grass at her feet, and shake her head, and laugh and talk by the hour, as if she had a baby there, to the infinite amusement of all the neighborhood. That girl should have betaken herself to the stage. She was the very spirit of what may be called the familiar drama.
Talk as we may about children, their notions are sometimes both affecting and sublime; and their adventures more extraordinary than were the strangest of Captain Cook's,—more perilous than that of him who discovered America. I have known a child, not three years of age, and hardly tall enough to reach the round of a ladder, clamber up the side and along the roof, and seat himself on the ridge-pole of a two-story house, before they discovered him.
Very odd things occur to all parents, if they would but observe them, and treasure them—in the flowering of their children's hearts.
"When I am dead, sister Mary, I'll come back to see you, and you must save all the crumbs and feed me—won't ye, sister Mary?" said a little boy to his sister.
Upon full inquiry, I found that he had associated the idea of little angels, that would fly about, with the pigeons belonging to a neighbor, which he had been accustomed to toll from the perch into the back-yard, with little crumbs of bread, saved at the table. On another occasion, he laid down his knife and fork, and looking up with the most perfect seriousness and apparent good faith, said,—
"Father, I mustn't eat any more fat meat."
"Why not, my boy?"
"God told me I must not."
"God!—when?"