long reign of boots and brown ducks had 
nearly unfitted my skillful fingers for the 
needlework that I should require for my 
darling. With a strong sense of grateful 
love that lady’s name became my baby’s, 
and we began, with one accord to call her 
Pattj ? . What a dear good baby was the 
little Patty. If she could only see some¬ 
thing moving, she would never make the 
least trouble. I first noticed that she felt 
a peculiar interest in things that had some 
“go” in them one day when she was about 
three months old. Her crib happened to 
be under the line where I was hanging the 
ironing. As fast as I finished a garment 
and hung it, smoothly folded on the line, 
it set all the others a-swinging; the motion 
caught the baby’s eye and kept her quiet 
until the large ironing was finished. After 
that I noticed if everything was still she 
grew uneasy. But the flash and sparkle of 
the fire, the rising of steam, the bubbling 
of a boiling kettle, the motion of one’s 
hands at work, and, as she grew older, the 
waving of things out of the window in the 
wind, would be all the entertainment that 
she needed. 
What an affectionate little thing she 
proved to be. Her brothers had a great 
fashion of kissing her hands. Her lovely 
face, framed by the most wonderful curls 
that ever crowned a young baby’s head, 
attracted great attention from strangers. 
But they were always greatly amused when, 
on trying to kiss her, she proudly drew her 
little head back and offered her hand for 
the salute. Ah, but that first summer was 
a heavenly one, and the angels ministered 
unto us. ■> | 
The second summer she began to develop 
those qualities which have puzzled us so 
much. In June her father brought home a 
litter of pigs with their mother, of some 
choice breed. Wishing to give his prize 
stock every chance of perfect development, 
he gave her the freedom of the yards for 
a time. She was so well fed that she was 
very quiet, doing no mischief, but mostly 
lying around the grassy places with her 
tiny offspring free to roam at will. Wher¬ 
ever went the little black pigs there also 
went the little white Patty. They were 
very shy of her at first, scampering away 
when she came too near; but her persist¬ 
ency soon conquered them, and in less than 
three days I found her sitting down beside 
the mother pig, with the little ones in her 
lap and around her at play—the expression 
on her face perfectly beatific. One sunny 
day she had followed them until complete- 
ty tired out, and I found her almost asleep, 
her sweet head lying upon the broad side 
of the great, black porker. The little ones 
were trying to root her out of the way, as 
her position seriously interfered with their 
hungry intentions. Before her black 
friends were imprisioned, there were two 
calves tied in the yard where she could get 
to them. They, too, were afraid of her at 
first, but she soon conquered them; not, 
however, until she had been run over by 
them, wound up in their ropes, and stepped 
on eeveral times. She soon came to spend 
all her waking hours with the calves. She 
learned by watching us feed them how 
that thing was done, and she would carry 
them everything she could reach, if not 
constantly watched. “Feed calfy” were 
the first connected words she ever used. 
When I first knew that the Giver of all 
good had blessed me with this girl, I shook 
my index finger before John’s eyes and de¬ 
clared that here was one child who would 
not clean out stables. He gave a superior 
smile and replied not. But one morning in 
early fall, before she was three years old, I 
had my answer. He called me to the win¬ 
dow and pointed toward the stables. Tom 
was throwing out the litter and Dick was 
tossing it into a pile. There was Patty, 
with a broken-handled stable-fork, helping 
with all her little might. She could get 
bat little on to her clumsy fork, and it would 
not stay there until she reached the dump¬ 
ing place, but when it fell off, she patiently 
laid down her fork, went and picked up 
the load with her hands and placed it on 
the fork again, and perhaps would have 
one straw clinging to the fork-tines to throw 
off when she reached the pile. 
The summer that she was four years old 
she began to reign right royally. It was, 
“Us boys are going over east with the sheep. 
There are the loveliest flowers there, mam¬ 
ma, for you, and the sweetest grass for the 
sheep and the dear little lambs.” Or it was, 
