of my head or the sands of the seashore,"—which was probably true, but not precisely the way in which the Bill Sykeses of real life are wont to acknowledge the fact. In another tale, an English one this time, a little girl named Helen rashly asks her father for some trifling information. He gives it with the usual grandiloquence, and then adds, by way of commendation: "Many children are so foolish as to be ashamed to let those they converse with discover that they do not comprehend everything that is said to them, by which means they often imbibe erroneous ideas, and perhaps remain in ignorance on many essential subjects, when, by questioning their friends, they might easily have obtained correct and useful knowledge." If Helen ever ventured on another query after that, she deserved her fate.
Above all, there is no reason why books intended for the pleasure as well as for the profit of young children should be so melancholy and dismal in their character. Nothing is more unwholesome than dejection, nothing more pernicious for any of us than to fix our considerations stedfastly upon the seamy side
