What a picture of a beautiful, brave little spirit, aflame with young fervor, he was the day I went into a room and found him reading for the first time in his brief life the story of the American Revolution! He sat in a large chair, one short leg tucked under him, a big book on his knee, his love-locks tumbling over his ecstasied child face. He looked up, glowing, when I entered. His cheeks were red, his eyes were beautiful. “Dearest,” he said, “dearest, listen. _Here’s_ a brave man, here’s a brave man! This is what he says, ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’” It was somehow so movingly incongruous—this “pretty page with dimpled chin” stirred so valiantly by his “liberty or death.” I kissed his golden thatch, laughing and patting it, but a little lump was in my throat. Where did he learn—faithful and tender heart—to be such a lover as he was? Surely no woman ever had such a lover before! What taught him to pay such adorable childish court, and to bring the first-fruits of every delight to lay upon one shrine? In the small garden where he played—a toddling thing, accumulating stains of grass and earth in truly human fashion on his brief white frock—the spring scattered sparsely a few blue violets. How he applied himself to searching for them, to gather them with pretty laboriousness until he had collected a small, warm handful, somewhat dilapidated before it was large enough to be brought up-stairs in the form of a princely floral gift! It is nearly fourteen years since they were first laid at my feet—these darling little grubby handfuls of exhausted violets—but I can hear yet the sound of the small feet climbing the staircase, stoutly but carefully, the exultant voice shouting at intervals all the way up from the first flight: “Sweet dearest! Sweet de-ar-est! I got somefin’ for you! Please le’ me in.” So many beautiful names had been tried by turns by himself and brother, but they found “sweetest” and “sweet dearest” the most satisfactory. Finally they decided upon “dearest” as combining and implying the sentiment they were inspired by. There was in a certain sacred workroom at the top of the house a receptacle known as the “treasure drawer.” It was always full of wonderful things, rich gifts brought carefully and with lavish generosity from the grass in the back yard, from dust heaps, from the street, from anywhere; bits of glass or pebble, gorgeous advertising cards, queerly shaped twigs or bits of wood, pictures out of papers, small, queer toys, possessing some charm which might make them valuable to an appreciative maternal relative. And just before they were presented I always heard the small feet on the stairs, the knock on the door, and the delightful, confiding voice outside: “Please, may I come in? I’ve brought a treasure for you, dearest.” We always spoke of them as “treasures.” They seemed so beautiful and valuable to the donor, that love brought them at once as a gift to love, and the recipient saw them with his eyes.