spirited courage, this Spartan contempt for suffering. Look at them!
the gallant little men and women. Who would think that they had lost
a father? Why, I have seen a British child more upset at losing
sixpence.

Talking to a little girl one day, I enquired of her concerning the
health of her father. The next moment I could have bitten my tongue
out, remembering that there wasn't such a thing as a father--not an
American father--in the whole street. She did not burst into tears
as they do in the story-books. She said:

"He is quite well, thank you," simply, pathetically, just like that.

"I am sure of it," I replied with fervour, "well and happy as he
deserves to be, and one day you will find him again; you will go to
him."

"Ah, yes," she answered, a shining light, it seemed to me, upon her
fair young face. "Momma says she is getting just a bit tired of this
one-horse sort of place. She is quite looking forward to seeing him
again."

It touched me very deeply: this weary woman, tired of her long
bereavement, actually looking forward to the fearsome passage leading
to where her loved one waited for her in a better land.

For one bright breezy creature I grew to feel a real regard. All the
months that I had known her, seen her almost daily, never once had I
heard a single cry of pain escape her lips, never once had I heard
her cursing fate. Of the many who called upon her in her charming