"Play! play! play! Always play and no work, no study, no lessons. And here you are, the only child of the most indulgent parents in the world--parents that, proud as they are of you, would be ten times prouder only to see you at your book, storing your mind with useful knowledge, instead of, day in, day out, frittering away your time over your toys and your tops and marbles. And even when your old grandfather tries to advise you and wants to help you, and is always ready and eager to assist you, and all--why, what's it all amount to? Coax and beg and tease and plead with you, and yet--and yet"-- (Mechanically kneeling as he speaks)-- "Now that's not the way to wind your top! How many more times will I have to show you!" And an instant later the old man's admonitions are entirely forgotten, and his artless nature--dull now to everything but the childish glee in which he shares-- is all the sweeter and more lovable for its simplicity. And so it is, Old Man, that you are always touching the very tenderest places in our hearts-- unconsciously appealing to our warmest sympathies, and taking to yourself our purest love. We look upon your drooping figure, and we mark your tottering step and trembling hand, yet a reliant something in your face forbids compassion, and a something in your eye will not permit us to look sorrowfully on you. And, however we may smile at your quaint ways and old-school oddities of manner and of speech, our merriment is ever tempered with the gentlest reverence. THE GILDED ROLL Nosing around in an old box--packed away, and lost to memory for years--an hour ago I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather, a roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the old sheet for the outer wrapper. I picked it up mechanically to toss it into some obscure corner, when, carelessly lifting it by one end, a child's tin whistle dropped therefrom and fell tinkling on the attic floor. It lies before me on my writing table now--and so, too, does the roll entire, though now a roll no longer,--for my eager fingers have unrolled the gilded covering, and all its precious contents are spread out beneath my hungry eyes. Here is a scroll of ink-written music. I don't read music, but I know the dash and swing of the pen that rained it on the page. Here is a letter, with the selfsame impulse and abandon in every syllable; and its melody--however sweet the other --is far more sweet to me. And here are other letters like it--three--five--and seven, at least. Bob wrote them from the front, and Billy kept them for me when I went to join him. Dear boy! Dear boy!