"Children, all of them!" Thus gently apostrophizing the Wallencampers, I dismissed the cause of my brief mental discomfiture, with a half-pitying smile.
The day after Mr. 'Lihu's death, I looked down from my desk in school to see the infant Sophronia weeping bitterly.
"What is the matter, Sophronia?" I said.
"Carietta's been to see the cops twice," she sobbed; "and I ain't been any."
I only gathered from this that Carietta was somehow implicated as being the cause of the infant Sophronia's sufferings.
"Now," said I gravely; "tell me what you mean?"
"She means the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony means the——"
"That will do," I said. "I understand you perfectly. I understand you only too well. This is about as bad," I reflected; "as anything in my experience."
After admonishing my pupils with that sincere emotion to which the occasion had given rise, that they should speak always respectfully of their elders, but especially in the most tender and solemn tones of the dead; after pointing out to them the perniciousness of a low and vulgar curiosity, and expatiating on the vastness and superiority of the spiritual life, compared with the earthly and carnal, I paused, only to give, further on, a fuller illustration to my words, and said:—
"Now, Sophronia, you have an immortal soul?"