should be connected with the events and occurrences of life."--
Froebel.


Dicky Smiley was eight years old when all these things happened that I
am going to tell you; eight years old, and as bright as a steel
button. It was very funny that his name should be Smiley, for his face
was just like a sunbeam, and if he ever cried at all it was only for a
minute, and then the smiles would creep out and chase the tear-drops
away from the blue sky of his eyes.

Dicky's mother tried to call him Richard, because it was his papa's
name, but it never would say itself somehow, and even when she did
remember, and called him "Richard," his baby sister Dot would cry,
"Mamma, don't scold Dicky."

He had once a good, loving papa like yours, when he was a tiny baby in
long white clothes; but the dear papa marched away with the blue-
coated soldiers one day, and never came back any more to his little
children; for he died far, far away from home, on a green battlefield,
with many other soldiers. You can think how sad and lonely Dicky's
mamma was, and how she hugged her three babies close in her arms, and
said:--

"Darlings, you haven't any father now, but the dear God will help your
mother to take care of you!"

And now she was working hard, so very hard, from morning till night
every day to get money to buy bread and milk and clothes for Bess and
Dot and Dicky.