the matter, as evinced by extra sweetness and brightness immediately after, and eager resumption of some one or other of his plays or calls with one or both of us. This may be what is known as discipline. It always brings a smile to our faces, however. Without a break of more than a day or two at a time, we have been able to be equally near him all the while, and divide up about equally the matters of bathing, feeding, dressing and undressing him. The conventional estimate of those standing nearest to a child of, 1--Mother, 2--Nurse, 3--Teacher, 4--Servants and playmates, 5--Older brother or sister, 6--Father--the man behind the newspaper, certainly does not apply here. When I am absent for from three to six hours his uneasiness sets in, and grows stronger and stronger, ending in repeated expeditions to a short distance along the road, where he stands and calls "Vager," "Vager," (Father, Father,) at first hopefully, then protestingly, and sometimes at last with indignation or tears. When I return--and he listens and catches the first distant sound of hoofs, or wheels, or whinny of the left-at-home colts, or voice, or opening gate--an eager, beaming face welcomes me from gate or doorway, or even several rods down the beaten snow on the road. Once back, things are all right in his little domain again, and he goes on, without special attention to me, in his series of occupations and plays. I say "occupations." They are nothing else to him; serious matters that he goes about accomplishing. He is at his best when he can help his mother at her work--blowing the fire, bringing her kindling, handing her clothespins one by one as she needs them, shutting or opening doors on request, picking up articles from the floor. But there are many hours continuously when he is left to his own devices, which are numerous, though many of them he goes through daily, such as feeding the cat, visiting his little sister, emptying and refilling the wall-pockets, collecting his blocks, and fishing articles off the table with a long stick. He has learned, untaught, to get a cloth to open the stove door with and save burned fingers; to get and bring clean diapers to his mother when he wishes a change; to stoop and lap water out of the pail; to stand by his bed and point up at it when wishing his mid-day nap; to retreat to a dark corner and drape his handkerchief over his head for a brief period towards the close of a day, in lieu of the discarded second nap; to scoop bread or biscuit out of a pail hung above his reach, with an iron spoon; to lasso peaches toward him with a cord, said peaches being in pan on the floor just beyond where he could reach from a little gate separating the kitchen and sitting-room. None of these things has been taught him. Nothing whatever has been taught him, and especially no words and no "tricks." He invents or does without, in all non-essential matters, in regular Spartan style. So, in pursuit of his own