She had not an atom of moral sense, nor the least capacity of penitence or pity, but she was a friendly little thing, with no worse tempers than a resentful whimpering when she was put into her clothes--incumbrances that she much disliked. She was assiduous in putting her crackers into her friends’ mouths, whether for fun or for good-will; and it was not uncommon for her to throw herself, with kisses and clinging arms, about our necks after we had given her some specially valued pleasure, such as taking her outdoors. She was learning to coax effectively with kisses, too, when she wished very much to go. And so the story of the swift, beautiful year is ended, and our wee, soft, helpless baby had become this darling thing, beginning to toddle, beginning to talk, full of a wide-awake baby intelligence, and rejoicing in her mind and body; communicating with us in a vivid and sufficient dialect, and overflowing with the sweet selfishness of baby coaxings and baby gratitude. And at a year old, there is no shadow on the charm from the perception that its end is near. By the second birthday we say, “Ah, we shall be losing our baby soon!” But on the first, we are eager, as the little one herself is, to push on to new unfoldings; it is the high springtime of babyhood--perfect, satisfying, beautiful. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.