"Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupation, Which is known as the Children's Hour." _Longfellow_. Let a child be employed--take an interest in his employment, let him fancy that he is useful--_and he is useful_, he is laying in a stock of health. He is much more usefully employed than many other grown-up children are! A child should be happy; he must, in every way, be made happy; everything ought to be done to conduce to his happiness, to give him joy, gladness, and pleasure. Happy he should be, as happy as the day is long. Kindness should be lavished upon him. Make a child understand that you love him; prove it in your actions--these are better than words; look after his little pleasures--join in his little sports; let him never hear a morose word--it would rankle in his breast, take deep root, and in due time bring forth bitter fruit. Love! let love be his pole-star; let it be the guide and the rule of all you do and all you say unto him. Let your face, as well as your tongue speak love. Let your hands be ever ready to minister to his pleasures and to his play. "Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may again bloom forth. Does not almost everybody remember some kind-hearted man who showed him a kindness in the dulcet days of childhood? The writer of this recollects himself, at this moment, a bare-footed lad, standing at the wooden fence of a poor little garden in his native village, while, with longing eyes, he gazed on the flowers which were blooming there quietly in the brightness of the Sabbath morning. The possessor came from his little cottage. He was a wood-cutter by trade, and spent the whole week at work in the woods. He had come into the garden to gather flowers to stick in his coat when he went to church. He saw the boy, and breaking off the most beautiful of his carnations (it was streaked with red and white), he gave it to him. Neither the giver nor the receiver spoke a word, and with bounding steps the hoy ran home. And now, here, at a vast distance from that home, after so many events of so many years, the feeling of gratitude which agitated the breast of the boy, expressed itself on paper. The carnation has long since faded, but it now bloometh afresh."--_Douglas Jerrold_. The hearty ringing laugh of a child is sweet music to the ear. There are three most joyous sounds in nature--the hum of a bee, the purr of a cat, and the laugh of a child. They tell of peace, of happiness, and of contentment, and make one for a while forget that there is so much misery in the world. A man who dislikes children is unnatural, he has no "milk of human kindness" in him; he should be shunned. Give me, for a friend, a man-- "Who takes the children on his knee, And winds their curls, about his hand."--_Tennyson_.