Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/24

 palate, or invigorate the habit with its full grown and concocted substance, was still grateful in its odour and its blush. Remembrance is most sweet, and sympathy most endearing, to those whom mutual privations have brought together. Should this book beguile, but for an hour, the sorrows of a single parent, brooding over a similar loss, I shall not repent having put it together, though critics should disapprove, or my bookseller shake his head at the account.

Yet there was with me a doubt of a different nature, which took its rise from a prevailing folly of the time. The passion for infantine and puerile exhibitions, so far from having been a motive for taking advantage of the popular caprice, had almost weighed upon my mind, to defer or abandon the project, and set your friendly wishes at defiance. This town has of late been in a fever of precocious admiration; ready to catch at whatever might administer food to the rage for novelty and the surprising. The