“Swinging in the grape-vine swing, Laughing where the wild birds sing I dream and sigh For the days gone by, Swinging in the grape-vine swing!” But the violin laughed like a child and my dream changed again. I saw a cottage among the elms and oaks and a little curly head toddled at the door. He toddled under the trees, prattling to the birds and playing with the ripening apples that fell upon the ground. He toddled among the roses and plucked their leaves as he would have plucked an angel’s wing, strewing their glory upon the green grass at his feet. He chased the butterflies from flower to flower and shouted with glee as they eluded his grasp and sailed away on the summer air. Here I thought his childish fancy had built a Paradise and peopled it with dainty seraphim and made himself its Adam. He saw the sunlight of Eden glint on every leaf and beam in every petal. The flitting honey bee, the whirling June bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery pulse beat of the dashing brook, sounded in his ears notes of its swelling music. The iris-winged humming bird darting like a sunbeam to kiss the pouting lips of the upturned flowers was to him the impersonation of its beauty. And I said, truly childhood is the nearest approach in this world to the Paradise of long ago. Then I saw him skulking like a Cupid in the shrubbery, his face downcast with guilt, his skirts bedraggled and soiled. He had waded the Atlantic ocean in the mud puddle, and stirred up the Mediterranean sea in the slop bucket. He had shipwrecked the young ducks, capsized the goslings, and drowned the kitten, which he imagined a whale. And I said, there is the old original Adam coming to the surface. “Lawd bless my soul, jis look at dat chil’! Look at dat face and dem hands, all kivered wid mud and mulberry juice! You’s gwine to ketch it! Jis ’zactly like your fadder,—always gittin’ into some scrape or nudder—always breakin’ into some kind uv debilment! Gwine to brek into Congress some uv dese days, sho! Dey can’t keep you out’n it! Come along wid me dis instinct to de baf tub! I’se gwine to wash dat face uv yown an’ lucidate some uv dat dirt off’n dem han’s an’ dem clo’es, you triflin’ rascal, you!” and so saying she carried him away kicking and screaming like a young savage in open rebellion.