WOULD I WERE A BOY AGAIN. 303 



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so coufidiug, so earnest and true in their young affections, 

 clinging to each other so closely, as if no shadow could 

 ever come between them, or turn their hearts from each 

 other. How natural was that simple question put by that 

 little girl to her brother, ' Wouldn't you like to be a little 

 bird ?' It was the thought of a pure young mind, that sees 

 only the bright sunshine of to-day, whose life is in the pre- 

 sent, and to which there is no forebodings of darkness in the 

 future. There was philosophy, too, in the answer of her 

 brother, a simple but suggestive sermon, 'But the sun' 

 said he, ' don't always come up bright and clear ; the morn- 

 ings aint always warm ; the leaves and blossoms aint always 

 on the trees. The cold storms, and the winter come and 

 kill the blossoms and scatter the leaves, and what would 

 you do then ?' To finite minds like ours, it would seem to 

 have been a more beautiful arrangement of nature, could 

 it have been, that we could always have the spring time in 

 its glory with us ; if the leaves and the blossoms were 

 always young and fresh and fragrant ; if the cold storms of 

 winter could never come to ' kill the blossoms and scatter 

 the leaves ; ' if the sun would always come up bright and 

 clear ; if the birds were always merry, and their glad voices 

 always on the air. This world would be a paradise then, 

 and one older and wiser in the learning of the schools, but 

 not wiser or better in the heart's affections, than that little 

 girl, might well wish to be a little bird, to fly around among 

 the branches, the green leaves, and the blossoms on the 

 trees. And yet what presumption in finite man to sit in 



