struck him in passion with your fist. You cannot forget his sobs
then;--if he were only alive one little instant to let you
say,--"Charlie, will you forgive me?"

Yourself you cannot forgive; and sobbing over it, and murmuring "Dear,
dear Charlie!" you drop into a troubled sleep.




V.

_Boy Religion._


Is any weak soul frightened, that I should write of the Religion of the
boy? How indeed could I cover the field of his moral or intellectual
growth, if I left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of goodness,
which come sometimes to his quieter moments, and oftener to his hours of
vexation and trouble? It would be as wise to describe the season of
Spring with no note of the silent influences of that burning Day-god
which is melting day by day the shattered ice-drifts of Winter,--which
is filling every bud with succulence, and painting one flower with
crimson, and another with white.

I know there is a feeling--by much too general as it seems to me--that
the subject may not be approached except through the dicta of certain
ecclesiastic bodies, and that the language which touches it must not be
that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of our thought, but
should have some twist of that theologic mannerism, which is as cold to