child and delight to watch him. How charming he is, graceful in
movement, swift of speech, picturesque in action! Enviable little
being! The more so because he is able to retain his perfection for so
brief a time.

But we all know the unhappy period from seven to fourteen when he who
formerly was all grace and spontaneity discovers that he has too many
arms and legs. How disagreeable the boy then becomes! Before, we liked
to see him playing about the room. Now we ask why he is allowed to
remain. For he is a ceaseless disturber; constantly noisy and
constantly aware of making a noise, his excuses are as bad as his
indiscretions. He cannot speak without making some awkward blunder. He
is forever asking questions without knowing what to do with the
answers. A confused and confusing creature! We say he has grown
backward. Where before he was all that is estimable, he has become all
that we do not wish him to be.

All that _we_ do not wish him to be, but certainly much more what God
wishes him to be. For if we could get rid of our sense of annoyance,
we should see that he is here reaching a higher stage, coming into his
heritage and obtaining a life of his own. Formerly he lived merely the
life of those about him. He laid a self-conscious grasp on nothing of
his own. When now at length he does lay that grasp, we must permit him
to be awkward, and to us disagreeable. We should aid him through the
inaccurate, slow, and fatiguing period of his existence until, having
tested many tracts of life and learned in them how to mechanize
desirable conduct, he comes back on their farther side to a childhood
more beautiful than the original. Many a man and woman possesses this
disciplined childhood through life. Goodness seems the very atmosphere
they breathe, and everything they do to be exactly fitting. Their acts