I seem to be living again in the world of the little child, and so hard is it to recross to that forgotten bourne that I cannot help wishing to linger there. I remember that as I grew beyond the time to play base-ball and to join in other still more youthful games, I now and then had the rare privilege of revisiting these early scenes in sleep; and often and often in my waking moments, when I realized that I dreamed and yet half thought that all was real, I tried to keep my eyes tight shut that I might still dream on. And if I can now and then forget my years and feel again the life of the little child, why should I not cling to the fond remembrance and tell the story which he is all too young to make us understand? It is rarely indeed that the child is able to prevent the sorrows of the man or woman; and when he can prevent them, and really knows he can, no man or woman ever looks in vain to him for sympathy or help. But the happiness of the child is almost wholly in the keeping of men and women of maturer years, and this charge is of the most sacred kind. If schools for the education of children were closed, and those for the instruction of parents were kept open, surely the world and the children would profit by the change. No doubt men and women owe duties to themselves that even their children have no right to take away; but these duties are seldom inconsistent with the highest welfare of the child. As I look back at the father and mother who nourished me, I know that they were both wise and kind beyond others of my time and place; and yet I know that many of my deepest sorrows would have been spared had they been able to look across the span of years that divided them from me, and in thought and feeling become as little children once again. The joys of childhood are keen, and the sorrows of childhood are deep. Years alone bring the knowledge that in thought and in feeling, as in the heavens above, sunshine and clouds follow each other in quick succession. In childhood the shadows are wholly forgotten in the brilliant radiance of the sun, and the clouds are so deep as to obscure for a time all the heavens above. Over childhood, as over all the world, hangs the black pall of punishment,—which is only another name for vengeance and hate. In my day, and I fancy too often even now, parents believed that to “spare the rod” was to “spoil the child.” It was not the refinement of cruelty that made parents promise the child a whipping the next day or the next week, it was only their ignorance and thoughtlessness; but many times I went to bed to toss and dream of the promised punishment, and in the morning, however bright the sunshine, the world was wrapped in gloom. Of course it was seldom that the whipping was as severe as the fear that haunted the mind of the child; but the punishment was really there from the time it was promised until after it was given.