I pushed out the flower-pot on purpose." "Ha! and why ?" said my father, walking up.
Mrs.Primmins trembled like a leaf.
"For fun!" said I, hanging my head,--"just to see how you'd look, papa; and that's the truth of it.

Now beat me, do beat me!" My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, and caught me to his breast.

"Boy," he said, "you have done wrong: you shall repair it by remembering all your life that your father blessed God for giving him a son who spoke truth in spite of fear! Oh! Mrs.Primmins, the next fable of this kind you try to teach him, and we part forever!" From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father, and knew that he loved me; from that time, too, he began to converse with me.

He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to puzzle out the meaning; for he had away of suggesting, not teaching, putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their own problems.

I remember a special instance with respect to that same flower-pot and geranium.