FURBISHING. 51 



I remember I remember 



The house where I was born, 

 The little window where the sun 



Came peeping in at morn. 

 He never came a wink too soon, 



Or brought too long a day, 

 But now I often wish the night 



Had borne my breath a way I" 



"We will not believe that HOOD really wished to die 

 for there was nothing in his good life to make him tired 

 of earth but he was tenderly in earnest when he recalled 

 the scenes of his early days, even to the "little window," 

 through which the sun smiled him Good Morning, and 

 the lilac-tree "where the robin built." Youth is such a 

 rose-tinted time that perhaps a bedroom window looking 

 out upon a chaotic back-yard, and looking in upon a room 

 with battered walls, a lumpy bed and a couple of weak- 

 legged chairs, would be something sweetly remembered 

 in after years ; but I am inclined to doubt it. A window, 

 brushed by the boughs of a lilac, or an apple-tree, with 

 its sweet blossoms and humming bees, and beyond it 

 glimpses of hill and valley and the radiant sky, is the 

 window for the Boys' Room, and there should be pleasant 

 little touches of beauty and comfort within that need 

 cost hardly anything but motherly thoughtfulness. 



If help is scarce in the house, and the mother's hands 

 are full, it may not be out of place in this subject of 

 "furnishing" the Boys' Room, to suggest here that the 

 boys can assist in keeping it in order. They can make 

 beds and sweep floors with the most admirable neatness 

 and dispatch, because their arms are so strong and their 

 feet are not impeded by the long skirts the poor mother 

 is doomed to wear. If a boy is ashamed to be seen doing 

 "girl's work," let him be more ashamed still of being an 

 unmanly shirk, and letting his over-burdened mother 

 do for him work that he has time and ability for doing 

 himself. I know a boy, keen and bright enough to be a 



