Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER 1IL PARENTAL SORROW AND SUBMISSION. Entering the dining-room together, we found our chairs set for us at the table, as usual, and between them a high chair. Jane had followed her habit of placing the little chair at table. We both uttered something like a groan, and sat down; but it was some time before I could speak audibly enough to ask a blessing. She was regularly brought in with the dessert, tied into her high chair, and then began the chief pleasure of our meal. Her little body was kept in exultant action; the table was thumped and beaten; and, as the things rattled, she felt encouraged to pound the more. The oranges excited her desire; and, reaching and stretching after them with a straining noise in her throat, her face wouldgrow red, till her determination was soothed by her effort to say "please," or something which was accepted as an equivalent, when her effort to grasp and hold the orange which was rolled toward her proving, literally, fruitless, she made us laugh at her, she striving to laugh as loud as we. The chair kept its place during the meal, and tears were our meat, till my wife essayed to be my comforter, and said,— "We are not the only parents who have gone through such trials." " How little we have, after all," said I, " to weep over, compared with many ! There are trials with living children which arc worse than losing an infant. But do you not think that the death of a dear little child is a very peculiar sorrow ? It seems to me that I have seen people in more anguish under the loss of little children than in any other affliction." " Oh! " said she, " there is an exquisite tenderness in your love for a little child which makes the affliction peculiar. After all, it iamy intense love for Agnes which distresses me." " It is so wi... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.