I cannot help digressing, dear readers, when I think how happy children may be, and how miserable they are too often made by their over-kind, very foolish parents. We were let alone a great deal as children, mercifully, and taught that if we wanted amusement we must find it in ourselves; and I can never be too thankful for an education that has enabled me, with only a small cessation, to be happy always in my own company, without the everlasting craving for information as to ‘What shall I do?’ If we used to make this most aggravating inquiry, we did not do it twice, and soon discovered that we could make occupations for ourselves without driving our elders nearly mad in the process. Children cannot too early learn to amuse themselves, and therefore great care should be taken by parents that they have the means for this, the while the children do not know much care is taken, and are shown--what children are so seldom shown nowadays--that they are not the head and front of the household, and that something is due to the bread-winners and managers of the establishment, as well as to themselves. I am sure good pictures are, therefore, or ought to be, indispensable in all nurseries, while the moment a child is old enough to inhabit a separate room, he or she should be encouraged to the utmost to begin to care for the surroundings, and to carefully collect pretty things around them, for in after life each thing so collected will be as a link to a precious past, and serve to remind them of happy times, that may influence their whole life if properly remembered and looked back upon. This is another hint for parents, especially for young parents. A child’s mind is a curious thing (or at least mine was, and I am speaking, as I always speak, from actual experience), and receives certain memories in the shape of pictures. My memory always seems to me like a room hung round with paintings, and I recollect each incident of my life as one remembers a picture one has once seen and never forgotten. I have but to think for a moment, and I see--don’t faint, please, I was only three; I am not quite a Methuselah, though it will sound like it--I see the Duke of Wellington riding along with bowed shoulders, and putting his hand, or rather his fingers, up to his hat every few seconds in answer to every one’s respectful bows. I see flash by from our play-place on ‘the leads’--the best play-place in the world; now, alas! no more--the royal carriage with four grey horses and the scarlet-jacketed riders, and I see the Queen in a hideous plaid-flounced frock and large bonnet, and the Prince Consort, and two big boys, drive by to look at some one’s pictures in our neighbourhood; and I remember seeing two ‘Bloomers,’ followed by jeering boys, turn round the corner by our house, and remember quite well how sorry I felt for the stupid women, although I had profound contempt for their louder assertions of women’s rights. Now I remember a great deal more than this, of course,