the features of the face appeared peculiarly child-
like--especially the eyes--wakeful and wide apart,
and very bright, yet very mild and very artless; and
the drawn and cramped outline of the legs and feet,
and of the arms and hands, even to the shrunken,
slender-looking fingers, all combined to convey most
strikingly to the pained senses the fragile frame
and pixy figure of some pitiably afflicted child,
unconscious altogether of the pathos of its own deformity.

"Now, mark the cuss, Horatio!" gasped my
friend.

At first the speaker's voice came very low, and
somewhat piping, too, and broken--an eery sort of
voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant
inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the
ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure
golden, and at times fell echoless. The SPIRIT of its
utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and
cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran
an undercadence through it like a low-pleading
prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook
might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic
little changeling thus began:--

"I'm thist a little crippled boy, an' never goin' to grow
An' git a great big man at all!--'cause Aunty told me so.
When I was thist a baby onc't I falled out of the bed
An' got 'The Curv'ture of the Spine'--'at's what the Doctor