other people read the Bible, even then I sin. When I speak, I sin; when I am silent, I sin."
In fact, an anxious alertness, a continual apprehension of ill-doing, is the keynote of this extraordinary book; and that its author, Mrs. Sherwood, considered the innocence of childhood and even of infancy an insufficient barrier to evil, is proven by an anecdote which she tells of herself in her memoirs. When she was in her fourth year, a gentleman, a guest of her father's, "who shall be nameless," took her on his knee, and said something to her which she could not understand, but which she felt at once was not fit for female ears, "especially not for the female ears of extreme youth." Indignant at this outrage to propriety, she exclaimed, "You are a naughty man!" whereupon he became embarrassed, and put her down upon the floor. That a baby of three should be so keen to comprehend, or rather not to comprehend, but to suspect an indecorum, seems well-nigh incredible, and I confess that ever since reading this incident I have been assailed with a hopeless, an undying curiosity to know what it was the "nameless" gentleman said.
