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thought of parting from Johnny, and Mrs. Boffin said to her:

"If you trust the dear child to me he shall have the best of homes, the best of care, the best of education, the best of friends. Please God, I will be a true good mother to him! "

Jemmy Lirriper had an ideal training in many ways. He had freedom and love, and his imagination and individuality were developed as fully as Mrs. Lirriper and the Major could secure these desirable results. His boyish personality received respectful consideration. The Major's method of revealing mathematical conceptions and processes, while it did not fully reveal Froebel's processes in reaching the same results (even the great mathematicians have been slow in doing that), was much in advance of the pedagogy of his time, and it shows the spirit in which Dickens would have the child treated, and this is much more important than mathematics.

Mrs. Lirriper tells the story:

My dear, the system upon which the Major commenced, and, as I may say, perfected Jemmy's learning when he was so small that if the dear was on the other side of the table you had to look under it instead of over it to see him with his mother's own bright hair in beautiful curls, is a thing that ought to be known to the Throne and Lords and Commons, and then might obtain some promotion for the Major, which he well deserves, and would be none the worse for (speaking between friends, L. S. D-ically). When the Major first undertook his learning he says to me:

"I'm going, Madam," he says, "to make our child a Calculating Boy."

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Major," I says, you terrify me, and may do the pet a permanent injury you would never forgive yourself.”

"Madam," says the Major, "I would regret if this fine mind was not early cultivated. But mark me, Madam," says the Major, holding up his forefinger, cultivated on a principle that will make it a delight."

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Major," I says, "I will be candid with you and tell you openly that if ever I find the dear child fall off in his appetite I shall know it is his calculations, and shall put

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a stop to them at two minutes' notice. Or if I find them mounting to his head," I says, or striking anyways cold to his stomach or leading to anything approaching flabbiness in his legs, the result will be the same, but, Major, you are a clever man and have seen much, and you love the child and are his own godfather, and if you feel a confidence in trying, try."

"Spoken, Madam," says the Major, "like Emma Lirriper. All I have to ask, Madam, is that you will leave my godson and myself to make a week or two's preparations for surprising you, and that you will give leave to have up and down any small articles not actually in use that I may require from the kitchen."

"From the kitchen, Major!

he had a mind to cook the child.

I says, half feeling as if

"From the kitchen," says the Major, and smiles and swells, and at the same time looks taller.

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So I passed my word, and the Major and the dear boy were shut up together for half an hour at a time through a certain while, and never could I hear anything going on betwixt them but talking and laughing and Jemmy clapping his hands and screaming out numbers, so I says to myself "It has not harmed him yet," nor could I, on examining the dear find any signs of it anywhere about him, which was likewise a great relief. At last one day Jemmy brings me a card in joke in the Major's neat writing The Messrs. Jemmy Jackman," for we had given him the Major's other name too, request the honour of Mrs. Lirriper's company at the Jackman Institution in the front parlour this evening at five, military time, to witness a few slight feats of elementary arithmetic.” And, if you'll believe me, there in the front parlour at five punctually to the moment was the Major behind the Pembroke table with both leaves up and a lot of things from the kitchen tidily set out on old newspapers spread atop of it, and there was the Mite stood up on a chair, with his rosy cheeks flushing and his eyes sparkling clusters of diamonds.

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Now, Gran," says he, "oo tit down and don't oo touch ler poople "-for he saw with every one of those diamonds of his that I was going to give him a squeeze.

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'Very well, sir," I says, "I am obedient in this good company, I am sure." And I sits down in the easy-chair that was put for me, shaking my sides.

But picture my admiration when the Major, going on almost as quick as if he was conjuring, sets out all the articles he names, and says, "Three saucepans, an Italian iron, a hand bell, a toasting fork, a nutmeg grater, four potlids, a spice box, two egg cups, and a chopping boardhow many?" and when that Mite instantly cries Tifteen, tut down tive and carry ler 'topping board," and then claps his hands, draws up his legs, and dances on his chair!

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My dear, with the same astonishing ease and correctness, him and the Major added up the tables, chairs, and sofy, the picters, fender and fire irons, their own selves, me and the cat, and the eyes in Miss Wozenham's head, and whenever the sum was done Young Roses and Diamonds claps his hands and draws up his legs and dances on his chair.

The pride of the Major! he says to me behind his hand.)

("Here's a mind, Ma'am! "

Then he says aloud, "We now come to the next elementary rule-which is called

"Umtraction!" cries Jemmy.

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Right," says the Major. We have here a toasting fork, a potato in its natural state, two potlids, one eggcup, a wooden spoon, and two skewers, from which it is necessary, for commercial purposes, to subtract a sprat gridiron, a small pickle jar, two lemons, one pepper castor, a black-beetle trap, and a knob of the dresser drawerwhat remains?"

"Toatin fork! " cries Jemmy.

"In numbers, how many?" says the Major. "One!" cries Jemmy.

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("Here's a boy, Ma'am! says the Major to me, behind his hand.)

“We now approach the next elementary rule-which is entitled

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Tickleication," cries Jemmy.

"Correct," says the Major.

But, my dear, to relate to you in detail the way in which they multiplied fourteen sticks of firewood by two bits of ginger and a larding needle, or divided pretty well everything else there was on the table by the heater of the Italian iron and a chamber candlestick, and got a lemon over, would make my head spin round and round and round, as it did at the time. So I says, "If you'll

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excuse my addressing the chair, Professor Jackman, I think the period of the lecture has now arrived when it becomes necessary that I should take a good hug of this young scholar." Upon which Jemmy calls out from his station on the chair, Gran, oo open oor arms and me'll make a 'pring into 'em." So I opened my arms to him, as I had opened my sorrowful heart when his poor young mother lay a-dying, and he had his jump and we had a good long hug together, and the Major, prouder than any peacock, says to me behind his hand, "You need not let him know it, Madam" (which I certainly need not, for the Major was quite audible), "but he is a boy!"

Doctor Marigold's training of the little deaf-mute girl and "Old Cheeseman's" treatment of children are revelations of the mature ideals of Dickens regarding the proper attitude of adulthood toward childhood.

CHAPTER XIII.

COMMUNITY.

WHILE the opinions of Dickens on the subject of community may not seem very advanced to some of the most progressive men and women of the present, they were much ahead of his own time, and they are beyond the practice of our time.

I have had my share of sorrows-more than the common lot, perhaps, but I have borne them ill. I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God's great creation. The men who learn endurance are they who call the whole world brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty.

Thus spoke Mr. Haredale to Edward Chester, in Barnaby Rudge.

No one who has lived since the time of Dickens could write a more striking statement of the responsibility of every man for his brother, and of the terrific consequences of neglect of the duties of brotherhood both to him who is neglected and to him who neglects, than Dickens wrote in Dombey and Son. There is no phase of sociology that has stepped beyond the position taken by Dickens in the following selection:

Was Mr. Dombey's master vice, that ruled him so inexorably, an unnatural characteristic? It might be worth while, sometimes to inquire what Nature is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforced distortions so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop any son or daughter of our mighty mother within narrow range, and bind the prisoner to one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it on the part of the few timid or de

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