[Sidenote: A child’s philosophy.] “But, Tina, mother always told us it was wicked to hate anybody. We must love our enemies.” “You don’t love old Crab Smith, do you?” “No, I don’t; but I try not to hate him,” said the boy. “I won’t think anything about him.” “I can’t help thinking,” said Tina; “and when I think, I am so angry! I feel such a burning in here!” she said, striking her little breast; “it’s just like fire.” “Then don’t think about her at all,” said the boy; “it isn’t pleasant to feel that way. Think about the whip-poor-wills singing in the woods over there,—how plain they say it, don’t they?—And the frogs all singing, with their little, round, yellow eyes looking up out of the water; and the moon looking down on us so pleasantly! she seems just like mother!” * * * * * [Sidenote: A child’s questions.] Is there ever a hard question in morals that children do not drive straight at in their wide-eyed questioning? PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND. [Sidenote: Holiness of infancy.] The wise men of the east at the feet of an infant, offering gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in every house where there is a young child. All the hard and the harsh, the common and the disagreeable, is for the parents,—all the bright and beautiful for their child. * * * * * [Sidenote: Pure joy.] Childhood’s joys are all pure gold. * * * * * [Sidenote: Mischief.] “Of all the children that ever she see, he beat all for finding out new mischief,—the moment you make him understand he mustn’t do one thing, he’s right at another.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Different temperaments.] “Mis’ Pennel ought to be trainin’ of her up to work,” said Mrs. Kittridge. “Sally could oversew and hem when she wa’n’t more’n three years old; nothin’ straightens out children like work. Mis’ Pennel she jest keeps that ar’ child to look at.” “All children a’n’t alike, Mis’ Kittridge,” said Miss Roxy, sententiously. “This ’un a’n’t like your Sally. ‘A hen and a bumble-bee can’t be fetched up alike,’ fix it how you will!” * * * * * [Sidenote: Child’s buoyancy.] All the efforts of Nature, during the early years of a healthy childhood, are bent on effacing and obliterating painful impressions, wiping out from each day the sorrows of the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows on the seashore. * * * * * [Sidenote: Unseen dangers.] Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous trance of forbidden pleasure, which shadowed with so many fears the wiser and more far-seeing heads and hearts of the grown people; nor was there enough language yet in common between the two classes to make the little ones comprehend the risk they had run.