impatience and lack of self-control. These are some few of the dreadful things that come out: and if it is dreadful even to speak of them, think how much more dreadful to see them alive and to set them at work! Now let's shut the dark Door! And let us hope that some day Nature herself may not be able to open it ever again!" Hitherto the older of the two mothers, the mother of many children, had remained silent with that peculiar expression of patience and sweetness which lies like a halo on the faces of good women who have brought many children into the world. She now spoke as if to release many thoughts weighing heavily upon her. "It has always been my trouble--not that my children would not imitate me, but that they _would_ imitate me! I have my faults, for I am human; and I can endure them as long as they remain mine. They have ceased to give me much concern. I suppose in a way I have grown attached to them, just as I like people whom I do not entirely approve. But as soon as I see the children reproducing my faults, these become responsibilities. They keep me awake at night; sometimes they distress me almost beyond endurance. I know I have spent many anxious years with this problem. And I know also that the only times when their father has been overanxious about his failings has been when the boys have imitated _him_. He is always ready to lead a splendid attack on his faults, and they march at him from the direction of the boys!" "And so," said the doctor, laughing, "this instinct of parental imitation is an instrument safe to take by the handle, and dangerous to grasp by the blade!" He knew fathers in the neighborhood who were dreading the time when their sons might begin to imitate them--too far. And other fathers dreading the hour when their sons might cease to imitate their sires, and wander away preferably to imitate persons outside the family connection,--possibly an instinct of non-parental imitation! He rose to go in a mood of great good nature, and looked from one to the other of the two mothers:--