you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles
his pretty little microscope."

"Heaven forbid!" said my father. "And now let me proceed. These
thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills?--last till the boy
goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into
thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has
been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no
more with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a
very ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr. Squills?"

"Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant? You
never seem to--"

"Hush!" interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother's
anxious face, he said soothingly: "Be comforted; this is wisely
ordained, and it is for the best."

"It must be the fault of the school," said my mother, shaking her head.

"It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any
one of these wonderful children--wonderful as you thought Sisty himself-
-stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its
body thinner and thinner--eh, Mr. Squills?--till the mind take all
nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly
the mind. You see that noble oak from the window. If the Chinese had
brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years old,
and at a hundred, you would have set it in a flowerpot on your table, no
bigger than it was at five,--a curiosity for its maturity at one age; a
show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for talent is