claimants in their confiding affection; undivided in study, in sport,
and in interest. Some object, that such union renders the boy too
effeminate and the girl too masculine. In our case it did neither. He
was the manliest, the hardiest, most decided, most intrepid character
imaginable; but in manners sweet, gentle, and courteous, as they will be
who are accustomed to look with protecting tenderness on an associate
weaker than themselves. And as for me, though I must plead guilty to the
charge of being more healthy, more active, and perhaps more energetic,
than young ladies are usually expected to be, still I never was
considered unfeminine; and the only peculiarity resulting from this
constant companionship with one of the superior sex, was to give me a
high sense of that superiority, with a habit of deference to man's
judgment and submission to man's authority, which I am quite sure God
intended the woman to yield. Every way has this fraternal tie been a
rich blessing to me. The love that grew with us from our cradles never
knew diminution from time or distance. Other ties were formed, but they
did not supersede or weaken this. Death tore away all that was mortal
and perishable, but this tie he could not sunder. As I loved him while
he was on earth, so do I love him now that he is in heaven; and while I
cherish in his sons the living likeness of what he was, my heart
evermore yearns towards him where he is.

Parents are wrong to check as they do the outgoings of fraternal
affection, by separating those whom God has especially joined as the
offspring of one father and one mother. God has beautifully mingled
them, by sending now a babe of one sex, now of the other, and suiting,
as any careful observer may discern, their various characters to form a
domestic whole. The parents interpose, packing off the boys to some
school where no softer influence exists to round off, as it were, the
rugged points of the masculine disposition, and where they soon lose all