The Story of a Child

he day chosen for my first airing was a radiantly beautiful and clear morning in April. Seated under the bower of jasmine and honeysuckle I felt as if I were experiencing the enchantment of paradis

to take possession of me almost to the point of intoxication.-Oh! that pure, warm, soft air; the glorious sunlight and the tender, fresh green of the young plants and the budding trees t

usy with in the garden, which something I was dying of impatience to see. At the end of the yard, in a lovely nook under an old plum tree, my brother was making a tiny lake; he had dug it out and cemented it like a cis

rst time; they had even put little gold fish into the water,

nse that it seemed to me it must last forever. Oh! what unexpected joy to possess it for my very own! And what happiness to know that I could enjoy it every single day during the warm and beautiful

ight so long denied to me. The old plum tree above my head, planted so long ago by one of my ancestors, and now almost at the end of its usefulness, spread its lacy curtain o

the only thing left of it, and spared out of r

old and decayed; the mosses, the delicate little plants brought from the river, and the rushes and wild iris have acclimated themselves, and dragon fli

, there I refresh myself and acquire youth and new life. That little corner is my sacred Mecca, so much indeed is it to me that should any one destroy it I wou

e, from my sea-faring life, with its long voyages to distant places an

ecial affection: the memory of it has often, in times of depress

e that was almost as silent as a tomb, I experienced many a heartache as I thought of the dear hearthstone and of the things so familiar to my childhood that were doubtless going to ruin through neglect. I felt especially anxious to know if the

I sought daily every beautiful summer day for the purpose of studying my lessons. But I lounged there lazily, as a school-boy will, and allowed all my attention to be absorbed by those gray stones with their teeming world of insects. Not only do I love and venerate that old wall as the Moslems love their holiest mosque, but I regard it also as something which actually protects me; as something which conserves my life a

ents of mine in any other way than to re

by workmen who lived and died a century before I was even thought of, I realize the childishness of the illusion, which I indulge in spite of myself, that it can

m infancy been taken from place to place, living in lodging

to impressions of this sort. And do not such people often, because of an old stone wall, a garden known and loved since childhood, an old terrace which has

lusive countenance to others, to those unknown now turned to dust and