How terrible it is when a much-desired child is born to a comparatively useless existence by reason of some deficiency or deformity. Very touching is the story of a lady who, though deaf and dumb, became the wife of an earl through her beauty. In due course the king o' the world, the baby, presented himself--a fine child, of course, and a future earl. Soon after its birth, as the nurse sat watching the babe, she saw the countess mother approach the cradle with a huge china vase, lift it above the head of the sleeping child, and poise it to dash it down. Petrified with horror, wondering at the strange look of the mother's face, the nurse sat powerless and still; she dared not even cry out; she was not near enough to throw herself between the victim and the blow. The heavy mass was thrown down with a tremendous force and crash on the floor beside the cradle, and the babe awoke terrified and screaming, clung to his delighted mother, who had made the experiment to discover whether her child had the precious gift of voice and hearing, or was like herself, a mute. In his "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People," Charles Lamb speaks of "the airs which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children are--that every street and blind alley swarms with them--that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance--that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains--how often they turn out ill and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c.--I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a hundred years, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common----" It is, however, far better for married people to take pride in their children than to be as indifferent to them as was a certain old lady who had brought up a family of children near a river. A gentleman once said to her, "I should think you would have lived in constant fear that some of them would have got drowned." "Oh no," responded the old lady, "we only lost three or four in that way." What is the use of a child? Not very much unless its parents accept it, not as a plaything, much less as a nuisance, but as a most sacred trust--a talent to be put to the best account. It is neither to be spoiled nor buried in the earth--how many careless mothers do this literally!--but to be made the most of for God and for man. Perhaps there was only One who perfectly understood the use of a child. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." In some lines to a child Longfellow has well answered the question we have been considering.