A GKEAT INSTITUTION. 21 



handles it so awkwardly, she will certainly dress it too 

 loosely, or too tight, or leave a pin that will prick it, or 

 some terrible calamity will happen. So she takes posses- 

 sion of the little thing, and with a hand guided by expe- 

 rience and the instincts of affection, puts its things on hi a 

 Christian and comfortable way. 



" A great institution 1" I repeated again. 



" I do believe the man has lost his wits," remarked Mrs. 



H , handing the baby to the nurse. " Who ever heard 



of a baby less than three months old being called an insti- 

 tution ?" 



" Never heard of such a thing in my life/ 7 I replied, 

 " though a much greater mistake might be made." 



" What then, in the name of goodness, have you been 

 talking about ?" inquired Mrs. H . . 



" The COUNTRY of course," I replied. 



I had just returned from a business trip to Vermont 

 who ever thought that Vermont would be traversed by rail- 

 roads, or that the echoes which dwell among her precipices 

 and mountain fastnesses, would ever wake to the snort of 

 the iron flbrse? Who ever thought that the locomotive 

 would go screaming and thundering along the base of th 

 Green Mountains, hurling its ponderous tram, loaded with 

 human freight, along the narrow valleys above which moun- 

 tain peaks hide their heads in the clouds ? How old Ethan 

 Allen and General Stark, " Old Put," and the other glorious 

 names that enrich the pages of our revolutionary history, 

 would open their eyes in astonishment, if they could come 



