The love of children is perhaps the greatest of all affections in the aggregate, because experience has not taught them to doubt and impugn the motives of others, since everything to them is just what it superficially appears to be. Our most violent heartaches come through dissimulation toward others, and nothing tends to make so callous and blunt our finer sensibilities as this. But just in proportion as we are sincere, must we be careful as to who arouses an interest of more than passing moment within us, as after affection is once started and nurtured into luxuriance, it is not within our power to control it. While love, when reciprocated, can afford an ecstasy and happiness, otherwise unknown, it can, also, when not returned by the object of our affection, become the most potent cause of superlative pain and anguish. The expression of this truth by the greatest of all English poets, would, in itself, make his name forever immortal had he never written another line, and constitutes not only the soundest philosophy, but the most sublime of all sentiments evolved from the human mind: "Love is not love That alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark Whose worth's unknown, altho' his height is taken. Love's not Time's fool; though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom."