Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/370

Rh mother's bosom; and therefore continually crept out of the former, and stole softly and resolutely, in his Adamic innocence, into the circle of ladies, who were sitting round the room talking or sewing by lamp-light. Here he was snapped up by his mother in his short shirt (much in the same way as our dairy-maids may snap up by their wings a chicken which they will put into a pen, or into the pot), and thus carried through the room back to his bed, where he was thrust in, à la chicken, with a couple of slaps upon that portion of his body which his little shirt did not defend, and then covered in with the quilt. In vain. He was soon seen again, white and round, above the quilt, spite of the hands of brothers and sisters, which let fall upon him a shower of blows: higher and higher he rose, raised himself on hands and feet, and, the next minute, my curly-headed Cupid stood on his two bare feet, and walked in among the circle of ladies, lovely, determined, and untroubled by the plague of clothes, or by bashfulness, where he was received by a burst of laughter, to be snapped up again by his mother, and again thrust under the quilt with an extra whipping, but too gentle to make any very deep impression. Again the same scene was renewed, to my great amusement, certainly six or seven times during an hour or two each evening. A little crying, it is true, always accompanied it; but the perseverance, and the calm good humour of the little Cupid were as remarkable as his beauty, worthy of an Albano's pencil. But pardon me! such tableaux are not exactly of your kind. Nevertheless you should have seen this!

Now for the scenery by the way. A little below St. Louis, we saw on the Mississippi, the magnificent three-decked steamer, the St. Louis, run aground in the middle of the river. We steamed past without troubling ourselves about it. It was a beautiful and sunny day. The landscape on the banks presented, for