I
am happy, yes, I am blessedly happy in this prospect, and yet--'
Another day.--'My beloved work! How beautiful it is! Toniella has
not brought little Nino this week. She says he is ill, but that he
sits every day in the orchard, singing our songs and modelling birds
from the lump of clay we sent him. When I heard that phrase "in the
orchard," I felt a curious sensation, for I know they live in a
tenement house; but I said nothing, and went to visit them.
'The orchard is a few plants in pots and pans on a projecting window-
sill!
'My heart went down on its knees when I saw it. The divine spark is
in those children; it will be a moving power, helping them to
struggle out of their present environment into a wider, sunnier one--
the one of the real orchards. How fresh, how full of possibilities,
is the world to the people who can keep the child heart, and above
all to the people who are able to see orchards in window-boxes!'
Another day.--'Lisa's daily lesson is just finished. It was in
arithmetic, and I should have lost patience had it not been for her
musical achievements this morning. Edith played the airs of twenty
or thirty games, and without a word of help from us she associated
the right memory with each, and illustrated it with pantomime.
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