Gustavus says that last evening it was as thick as his big dictionary, and you know how cold it was last night, mother.

Please let me go; I won't get in; besides, if I do, it isn't deep--not more than up to there; see here, mother!" putting his little mittened hand, with the palm down, as high as his waist.
His mother looked troubled, and knew not what to say to him, but remarked to us, "O, if I were well, and about the house, I could divert him from his wish; but," said she to him, "if you will ask Gustavus to take care of you, and bring you home when he comes, you may go." Off he went, making fewer steps than there were stairs, and we heard his merry voice without announcing his liberty.
"Here I am," said she to us, "with those three children, who come home from school twice a day, and there is no mother below to receive them.
With the best of help, things sometimes go wrong, and the young woman who sews for me cannot, of course, do for them what a mother could.
Nothing has tried my patience, in suffering, more than to hear the door open, and my children come in from school, and to feel that I am separated from them, within hearing, while I cannot reach them." She controlled her feelings, and helped herself to conceal them by turning to rock a cradle which stood behind her, though we perceived no need of her doing so; yet we must all distrust our own ears in comparison with a mother's.

The child was a boy seven months old.
"Do you know," said she to me, "that I am thinking of joining your church?
I have had a very trying visit from my own pastor, and he says that I am too sick to be baptized by immersion, and that it is, therefore, too late for me to receive Christian baptism.

It is not necessary, he says, in order to being accepted of God.

I was born and brought up in that Communion, and never thought much of the subject of baptism till I hoped that I began to love God, here in my sick-room.