"None can be called deformed but the unkind."
SHAKSPEARE.

"'Tis true, his nature may with faults abound;
But who will cavil when the heart is sound?"
STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

It is a bright June morning. The fresh grass is loaded with dew,
every bead of which sparkles in the light of the brilliant sun. A
big, yellow-shouldered bee comes booming through the open window,
and buzzes up and down my room, and threatens my shrinking ears,
and then dives through the window again; and his form recedes and
his hum dies away, as if it were the note of a reed-stop in the
"swell" of a church organ. There is such confusion in the songs of
the birds, that I can hardly select the different notes, so as to
name their owners. There is a great deal of bird-singing that is
simply what a weaver would call "filling." Robins and bobolinks
and blue-birds and sundry other favorites furnish the warp, and
color and characterize the tapestry of a flowing, vocal morning;
while the little, gray-backed multitude work in the neutral ground
tones, and bring the sweeter and more elaborate notes into
beautiful relief. Thus, with a little aid of imagination, I get up
some very exquisite fabrics--vocal silks and satins:--robins on a
field of chickadees; bobolinks and thrushes alternately on a
hit-or-miss ground of blackbirds, wrens, and pewees. Into the midst
of all this delicious confusion there breaks a note that belongs to
another race of creatures; and as I look from my window, and see
the singer, my eyes fill with tears. It is a little boy, possibly
twelve years old, though he looks younger, walking with a crutch.
One withered limb dangles as he goes. He is a cripple for life;