LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



The young widow looked after her little estate, and 

 with perhaps some small assistance from her parents, 

 lived comfortably and as happily as one has right to 

 in this vale of tears. Her baby boy had grown strong 

 and well : by the time he was two years old he was 

 quite the equal of most babies, and his mother thought, 

 beyond them. 



It is often stoutly declared by callow folks that mother- 

 love is the strongest and most enduring love in the 

 world, but the wise waste no words on such an idle 

 proposition. Mother-love retires into the shadow when 

 the other kind appears. 



When the Rev. Barnabas Smith began, unconsciously, 

 to make eyes at the Widow Newton over his prayer- 

 book, the good old dames whose business it is to look 

 after these things, and perform them vicariously, made 

 prophecies on the way home from church as to how 

 soon the wedding would occur. People go to church to 

 watch and pray, but a man I know says that women 

 go to church to watch. Young clergymen fall an easy 

 prey to designing widows, he avers. I can discover no 

 proof, however, that the Widow Newton made any 

 original designs she was below the clergyman in so- 

 cial standing, and when the good man began to pay 

 special attentions to her baby boy she never imagined 

 that the sundry pats and caresses were meant for her. 

 Q Little Isaac Newton was just three years old when 

 the wedding occurred, and was not troubled about it. 

 The bride went to live with her husband at the rectory, 

 a mile away, and the little boy in dresses, with long 

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