Yes, we progressively advance through many pedal changes. Master Tommy--with more fortunate parents than you, Madam, for he has worn out many a pair of infantine soles (a bushel, I should think, by the frequency with which Mrs. Asmodeus has insisted on the necessity of a new pair, each one more costly)--now sports his first boots. Even as I now write comes the noisy stamp of those pegged soles in the passage-way, to which I have banished the over-proud urchin. It sounds like a man, he says. Why, Grant, when he entered Vicksburg,--and I can imagine no more glowing pride than that hero might have felt on that occasion,--never felt so proud as that same Master Tommy does at this moment, tramping up and down outside my door.--Mrs. A., do take off those glories forthwith, or your first-born will fall before his time by the same sin that the angels did in early days; and I know you think him above all the angels of heaven. By-and-by Mercury will drop his fluttering pinions, and, when bereft of their buoyant aid, his step will be heavy and slow. Those winged messengers of delight will be leaden weights on his weary way. When youth and hope, which have borne him so lightly over the rugged earth, shall have lost their plumage, he will stumble at every pebble, and welcome the decline of life's hill-side, which assists his tardy steps.--Who is Mercury?--Dear Mrs. A., 't is only a name for our Tommy, not bestowed by the clergyman who officiated at his baptism. You thought my subject a very vulgar one. Why, Madam, as it opens upon me, I see all the hopes, dreams, fears, cares, and joys of life passing before me. Do you remember those wedding-slippers of yours? They were quite unlike these slip-shod things I have perched on the chair before me. When you fitted them on so joyously, and prepared for the journey for which they were put on,--so short, (from your chamber to your parlor,) and yet so long, (from your blooming youth to your wrinkled age,)--did you think they would last the distance through? They were long ago thrown by. You may have them yet. Some people love to garner up and cherish mementos of the dead; and dead enough are the tremulous flutterings they then upbore. Long ago buried were the gay-tinted visions of those first days of the journey. Bring them out now, and let us look at them.--Is it possible that you ever thought those old-fashioned things pretty? Can it be that those dingy, shapeless affairs could have borne you up to the empyrean? My dear Madam, they went with you to the upper circle of joy. Dante must have described just such in some unpublished canto; and Milton has certainly some account of them in "Paradise Lost." Frank thought them the loveliest things he ever beheld, and would kiss them as religiously as ever ardent Catholic did the Papal toe; and now!--Well, put them away. It doesn't do to examine too closely the relics of departed joys. They have a sad, old-time, faded, shrunken look.