life in this doleful way. I thought that they really knew better.
It seemed to me that it must be delightful to grow up, and learn
things, and do things, and be very good indeed,--better than
children could possibly know how to be. I knew afterwards that my
elders were sometimes, at least, sincere in their sadness; for
with many of them life must have been a hard struggle. But when
they shook their heads and said,--"Child, you will not be so
happy by and by; you are seeing your best days now," I still
doubted. I was born with the blessing of a cheerful temperament;
and while that is not enough to sustain any of us through the
inevitable sorrows that all must share, it would have been most
unnatural and ungrateful in me to think of earth as a dismal
place, when everything without and within was trying to tell me
that this good and beautiful world belongs to God.

I took exception to some verses in many of the hymns that I loved
the most. I had my own mental reservations with regard even to
that glorious chant of the ages,--

"Jerusalem, my happy home,
Name ever dear to me."

I always wanted to skip one half of the third
stanza, as it stood in our Hymn-Book:

"Where congregations ne'er break up,
And Sabbaths have no end."

I did not want it to be Sabbath-day always. I was conscious of a
pleasure in the thought of games and frolics and coming week-day