keep awake, and also to scuffle in and out of bed. The immediate
occasion of these predatory dashes at the waking world, was the
construction of an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other
youths of tender age; on which fortification the two in bed made
harassing descents (like those accursed Picts and Scots who
beleaguer the early historical studies of most young Britons), and
then withdrew to their own territory.

In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the retorts
of the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges at the bed-
clothes under which the marauders took refuge, another little boy,
in another little bed, contributed his mite of confusion to the
family stock, by casting his boots upon the waters; in other words,
by launching these and several small objects, inoffensive in
themselves, though of a hard substance considered as missiles, at
the disturbers of his repose,--who were not slow to return these
compliments.

Besides which, another little boy--the biggest there, but still
little--was tottering to and fro, bent on one side, and
considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a large baby,
which he was supposed by a fiction that obtains sometimes in
sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! the
inexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness into which
this baby's eyes were then only beginning to compose themselves to
stare, over his unconscious shoulder!

It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the whole
existence of this particular young brother was offered up a daily
sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have consisted in its