Before the publication of your third volume--the father--you had been measurably blind. Your mental sight was afflicted with amaurosis. Like the philosopher of old you are now tempted to grasp every one by the hand and cry "Eureka." How indignantly you take down "Malthus" from your upper library shelf and bury him on the lowest among the books of possible reference. Your political views upon education are cured of their jaundice. You pray of Sundays in the service for the widow and the orphan with a double unction. You walk the streets with a new mantle of comfort. The little beggar child whose importunities of the last wet day at the street crossings excited your petulance, upon the next wet day invites your sympathies. You stop and talk to her, nor perceive until you have ascertained where her hard-hearted parents live, and that she is uncommonly bright for the child of poverty and wretchedness, and that you have a half dollar unappropriated--nor perceive until these are found out, I say, that your umbrella has been dripping upon the skirts of your favorite coat, and that you have stood with one foot in a puddle. How this would have annoyed you years ago. But now--? How unconcernedly of the curious looks from pedestrians around do you stop the careless nurse in Broadway, who has allowed her infant charge to fall asleep in a painful attitude, and lay "it" tenderly and comfortably in position. You recall to mind with much remorse the execrations of five years ago, when the moanings of a dying babe in the next apartment to your own at the hotel disturbed your rest; and you wonder whether the mother still thinks of the little grave and the white slab which a sympathetic fancy _now_ brings up before you. You are at your business: the lamps are lighting: in the suggestions of profit by an hour or longer at the desk you recognize an unholy temptation. Now, as often before, through all the turmoils of business memory suggests the lines of Willis: "I sadden when thou smilest to my smile, Child of my love! I tremble to believe That o'er the mirror of thine eye of blue The shadow of my soul must always pass-- That soul which from its conflicts with the world Comes _ever_ to thy guarded cradle home, And careless of the staining dust it brings, Asks for its idol!" And you dwell on them. You bless the author first, and truly think how cruelly unjust are they who can call into torturing question the loyalty as husband and father of him whose soul could plan and whose pen could write such holy lines. And then you think deeper of the sentiments. And then the profit-tempter hides himself in the farthest corner of the money-drawer; and you begin to think your clerk a very clever manager: and wonder if _his_ remaining will not do as well--poor fellow, he's _only_ a bachelor. And then you decide that he will, and so yourself, "careless of the staining dust" your coming brings, fly to "the guarded cradle home."