but because that Noisy Boy found him out,--and, quarrelling with him, (your boy, marvellous to relate! having provoked the quarrel by some mean trick, in spite of his seraphic training,) gave him a black eye,--and afterwards, turning out to be the best-hearted Noisy Boy in the world, taught him to climb trees and hunt for birds' nests,--and stopped him when he was going to kill the little birds, (for your pattern boy--poor child! how could he help it?--was as cruel as he was timid,)--and imparted to him the sublime mysteries of base-ball and tag and hockey,--and taught him to swim and row, and to fight bigger boys and leave smaller boys in peace, instructions which he was at first inclined to reverse,--and put him in the way to be an honest, fearless man, when he was in danger of becoming a white-faced and white-livered spooney. And that Noisy Boy himself, perversely declining to verify Mr. Abbott's decorous prophecies, has not turned out badly, after all, but has Reverend before his name and reverence in his heart, and has his theology sound because his lungs are so. No doubt, Tom Jones often turns out badly, but Master Blifil always does,--a fact which Mr. Abbott would do well to note and perpend. What! Because Rollo is virtuous, shall there be no more mud-cakes and ale? Marry, but there shall! Don't keep a boy out of his share of free movement and free air, and don't keep a girl out. Poor little child! she will be dieted soon enough on "stewed prunes." Children need air and water,--milk and water won't do. They are longing for our common mother earth, in the dear, familiar form of dirt; and it is no matter how much dirt they get on them, if they only have water enough to wash it off. The more they are allowed to eat literal dirt now, the less metaphorical dirt will they eat a few years hence. The great Free-Soil principle is good for their hearts, if not for their clothes; and which is it more important to have clean? Just make up your mind to let the clothes go; and if you can't afford to have your children soil and tear their laced pantalets and plumed hats and open-work stockings, why, take off all those devices of the enemy, and substitute stout cloth and stout boots. What have they to do with open-work stockings? "Doff them for shame, And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs." Believe now, instead of learning by sad experience, that tin trumpets and torn clothes do not necessarily signify depravity, and that quiet children are not always free from deceit, cruelty, and meanness. The quiet, ideal child, of whom Mr. Abbott thinks so highly, generally proves, in real life, neither more nor less than a prig. He is more likely to die than live; and if he lives, you may wish he had died.