as glowing under the sympathy and loving-kindness of her little mates.
Alas! it was not so. We were senseless little brutes, who, never having
learned the taste of misery ourselves, had no pity for the misfortunes
of others. She was, indeed, ill-treated; but what were we, to translate
the phrase? She was an under dog, and we had no mercy on her. We
"plagued" her, God forgive us! And what the word means, in its full
horror, only a child can compass. We laughed at her cudbar petticoats,
her little "chopped hands;" and when she stumbled over the arithmetic
lesson, because she had been up at four o'clock every morning since the
first bluebirds came, we laughed at that. Life in general seems to have
treated Polly in somewhat the same way. I hear that she did not marry
well, and that her children had begun to "turn out bad," when she died,
prematurely bent and old, not many weeks ago. But when I think of what
we might have given and what we did withhold, when I realize that one
drop of water from each of us would have filled her little cup to
overflowing, there is one compensating thought, and I murmur,
conscience-smitten, "I'm glad she had the pink dress!"

And now the little school is ever present with us, ours still for
counsel or reproof. Its long-closed sessions are open, by day and
night; and I suppose, as time goes on, and we drop into the estate of
those who sit by the fireside, oblivious to present scenes, yet acutely
awake to such as

"Flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,"

it will grow more and more lifelike and more near. Beside it, live all
the joys of memory and many a long-past pain. For we who have walked in
country ways, walk in them always, and with no divided love, even