their eyes wandered away from it again, and they became the prey of anyone who had it in his heart to get them into difficulty by setting them to laughing. If they all mastered the first three letters that day they were content, and were so pleased with their progress that they forgot them the next. It was always safe to go to their house and expect a warm welcome, for there seemed enough love hid away somewhere in the big house in which they lived, not only for all the white-headed boys (with a reserve stock for those yet to come), but also for the friends who came to see them. Their mother, a large, fresh-looking woman, who was noted for a capacity to lead in prayers and blessings when her husband was away, was good-natured, too. It was the happiest family I had ever known, for though they were all beset with difficulties, every one of them having either weak eyes or the scald-head, they seemed not to mind it, but patiently applied sulphur for one and mullein tea for the other, remedies which were kept in saucers and bottles all over the house. I never heard The. Meek or his wife speak impatiently to any of their children, but they were obedient for all that--much more so than those of us who were beaten on the slightest provocation--and were very fond of one another. While other boys were anxious to get away from home, The. Meek’s children were content, and believed there was not another so pleasant place in the world as the big house, built after the architecture of a packing-box, in which they lived. I often thought of this circumstance to their credit, and thought it was also to the credit of the father and the mother. There were but three rooms in the house, two down stairs, and one above as large as both of those below in which all the boys slept; and here also were the company beds, so that had I ever heard of an asylum at the time of which I write, I should certainly have thought the big room with the nine or ten beds scattered about in it was like one. I frequently went from school to spend the night with the young Meeks, and, after we had gone to bed in the big room upstairs, I either froze their blood with ghost stories, or convulsed them by telling any foolish event I happened to think of, at which they laughed until I feared for their lives. If the uproar became particularly loud their father and mother came up to see what it was all about, and, on being informed of the cause, laughed themselves, and went down again.