In the fall of this year the family returned to Boston, and lived with Mrs. Lovell in Pearl Street; and there, with parents and grandparents, Mary found a home, whose blessing filled her heart, and never left her to the day of her death. The home of her childhood,--how reverently and tenderly did she revert to it, through all the scenes of a changing and eventful life! Often has she said, that she was continually carried back, not only in her waking, but her sleeping hours, "to the old Pearl Street house and garden; assembling the various friends of all the different periods of her life, in dream-like incongruity, in the little parlor, with its black-oak wainscoting." There also were formed some of those first friendships, which do not cease with childhood, but affect the happiness of a lifetime. The other half of the block in which they lived was occupied by Colonel T. H. Perkins, and with his children, of whom some were near her own age, she grew up in terms of daily intimacy. In the partition between the two houses there were doors which were entirely closed, except their keyholes; and through these, Mary and her favorite companion used to sing to each other "all the songs we could muster," and exchange notes and experiences, the pleasure enhanced, no doubt, by the excitement of the little mystery occasioned by so peculiar a mode of communication. So far as our scanty materials of this period enable us to judge, we infer that in the training of this favorite child there was a singularly wise union of control and indulgence. Mrs. Pickard seems not to have been one of the parents who think control and indulgence incompatible; nor does it appear that Mary was inclined to refuse the one, or abuse the other. The true training, we suppose,--if there be any rule for all,--is that which allows to children all the freedom and enjoyment consistent with deference to authority, refined manners, and fixed principles of truth, gentleness, and unselfishness. That these principles may be inculcated without sternness or perpetual restraint, indeed with a large allowance for the necessary activity and often irrepressible exuberance of childhood's spirit, few can doubt, though so many deny or forget it in practice. From the views which Mrs. Ware herself always expressed on this subject, and the reverence and gratitude with which she adverted to her own childhood, we are confirmed in the impression, that such was her uniform experience at home, and with the happiest effect. "It has been said," writes a friend of her mother, "that she was much indulged; and I believe it may be said so with truth. But she was not indulged in idleness, selfishness, and rudeness; she was indulged in healthful sports, in abundance of playthings, in pleasant excursions, and in companionship with other children, as much as might be convenient. I never knew her to be teasing and importunate, obstinate or contradictory." Nor is this to be