any commander but a sea-struck boy.

Demi was one of the children who show plainly the effect of
intelligent love and care, for soul and body worked harmoniously
together. The natural refinement which nothing but home
influence can teach, gave him sweet and simple manners: his
mother had cherished an innocent and loving heart in him; his
father had watched over the physical growth of his boy, and kept
the little body straight and strong on wholesome food and exercise
and sleep, while Grandpa March cultivated the little mind with the
tender wisdom of a modern Pythagoras, not tasking it with long,
hard lessons, parrot-learned, but helping it to unfold as naturally
and beautifully as sun and dew help roses bloom. He was not a
perfect child, by any means, but his faults were of the better sort;
and being early taught the secret of self-control, he was not left at
the mercy of appetites and passions, as some poor little mortals
are, and then punished for yielding to the temptations against
which they have no armor. A quiet, quaint boy was Demi, serious,
yet cheery, quite unconscious that he was unusually bright and
beautiful, yet quick to see and love intelligence or beauty in other
children. Very fond of books, and full of lively fancies, born of a
strong imagination and a spiritual nature, these traits made his
parents anxious to balance them with useful knowledge and
healthful society, lest they should make him one of those pale
precocious children who amaze and delight a family sometimes,
and fade away like hot-house flowers, because the young soul
blooms too soon, and has not a hearty body to root it firmly in the
wholesome soil of this world.

So Demi was transplanted to Plumfield, and took so kindly to the