Kansas University Weekly.
165
MISGELLANEOUS.
A Child Study.
Dorothy is a very young person, but a very important person, notwithstanding, in the small world over which she reigns, an absolute monarch. Blue eyes has Dorothy—big, innocent, blue eyes, round cheeks, and yellow-golden curls. Serious of mind is Dorothy; there are no such things as jests or trifles in her world. That the little shoes and stockings be properly arranged upon a certain chair at night, is of as great consequence as that they be taken off at all. When as the youngest member of the Sabbath school, she is called up in front and lifted upon the chancel rail to say the Golden Text, no orator pleading for a noble cause was ever more in earnest than she, as her clear little voice rings out in words whose meaning she can only guess at, as yet. "I do love Jesus, next week," says Dorothy, fervently, and we are inclined to be ashamed of our failure to comprehend words whose meaning is evidently so clear to her.
Dorothy objects to the habit that grown people have of crossing their legs. Somewhere in her code of manners and morals it is written that this is not to be permitted. "Man," she says in a quiet, but authoritative, tone, to the offender—be he who or where he may—"Man, boo' down." The man looks over his newspaper in some surprise perhaps, but the boot comes down inevitably before the direct gaze of those honest eyes.
"Papa," says Dorothy, when she has received her "good-bye" kiss, "now Papa, now remember Papa—now remember! Three things: crayons, el'phant pattern, and b'loon." The usual half-promise is given, the good-byes fined, his and Dorothy takes her station at the window to wait for the last wave of the hand from the top of the hill. But alas for Papa! Thinking too intently, doubtless, of the "crayons," the "el'phant pattern," and the "b'loon," he reaches the brow of the hill and passes on without once turning back. Not a sound escapes the eager watcher at the window, but it
is a very determined little figure which slips down from the seat, out the door, and trudges up the road as rapidly as two short legs can carry it. Fartunately Papa is soon stopped by an obliging passer-by, and turns back, full of remorse, to make his peace. But though he picks up a tired, tearful little girl, he does not doubt that Dorothy would have toiled the the three long miles to town but she would have brought him back to do his duty.
There comes an important epoch in Dorothy's life. It is moving time and she is the busiest person in the household. Oh, the joy of sitting on the floor of the best bed room and putting to practical use the hammer and tacks of which she has surreptitiously gained possession! Here her grand-father and grandmother discover her hard at work, and the unsteady fall of the hammer is interrupted by many "tut-tut-tuts" and other equally forcible expostulatory expressions. Dorothy is a carefully reared little girl—and besides, any real impertinence is impossible to a nature like hers but the best of us object to infringements on our rights, and Dorothy feels that this one is not to be borne. She gets upon her little feet in as rapid and dignified a manner as possible, and eyes her grand-parents with great disapproval; then lifts her fat fore-finger and says—with as much delicacy as is compatible with a lofty sternness: "Gran'pa Russell, Gran'ma Russell, two Russells! Go down stairs in the kitchen!"
It is the fifth spring of Dorothy's life when she does her first gardening. A four-o'clock seed is planted and watered, and cared for with an assiduity worihy a better object. The kitchen-girl Kate, Dorothy's staunch friend, is fully as interested as she, and enters the dining room one morning in a state of great excitement, to announce—"Dorothy, your fouro'clock seed is coming up." Dorothy's is not a mind to be upset by trifles. "Well, poke it down again, please," she says with great complacency, and returns to her unfinished bowl of