So the young pair shook hands upon it, and then paced
happily on again, feeling that their pleasant home was more
home-like because they hoped to brighten other homes, believing
that their own feet would walk more uprightly along the flowery
path before them, if they smoothed rough ways for other feet,
and feeling that their hearts were more closely knit together
by a love which could tenderly remember those less blest than
they.

I CANNOT feel that I have done my duty as humble historian
of the March family, without devoting at least one chapter to
the two most precious and important members of it. Daisy and
Demi had now arrived at years of discretion; for in this fast
age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too,
which is more than many of their elders do. If there ever were
a pair of twins in danger of being utterly spoilt by adoration,
it was these prattling Brookes. Of course they were the most
remarkable children ever born, as will be shown when I men-
tion that they walked at eight months, talked fluently at twelve
months, and at two years they took their places at table, and
behaved with a propriety which charmed all beholders. At
three, Daisy demanded a "needler," and actually made a bag
with four stitches in it; she likewise set up house-keeping in the
sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking-stove with a skill
that brought tears of pride to Hannah's eyes, while Demi
learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new
mode of teaching the alphabet by forming the letters with his
arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels.
The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted
his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate
every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condi'
tion, with his "sewin-sheen," -- a mysterious structure of string,

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