beauty. What Bud doesn't require for a baseball diamond the roses
possess.

Early one morning in July, Bud came to us. Immediately, the character
of that front bedroom was changed. It was no longer just "our bedroom;"
it was "the room where Bud was born." Of all the rooms in all the houses
of all the world, there is none so gloriously treasured in the memories
of man and woman as those wherein their children have come to birth.

I have had many fine things happen to me: Friends have borne me high on
kindly shoulders; out of the depths of their generous hearts they have
given me honors which I have not deserved; I have more than once come
home proud in the possession of some new joy, or of some task
accomplished; but I have never known, and never shall know, a thrill of
happiness to equal that which followed good old Doctor Gordon's brief
announcement: "It's a Boy!"

"It's a Boy!" All that day and the next I fairly shouted it to friends
and strangers. To Marjorie's sweetness, and to the radiant loveliness of
the little baby which was ours for so brief a time, had been added the
strength and roguishness of a boy.

The next five years saw the walls of our home change in character.
Finger marks and hammer marks began to appear. When Bud had reached the
stage where he could walk, calamity began to follow in his trail. Once
he tugged at a table cover and the open bottle of ink fell upon the rug.
There was a great splotch of ink forever to be visible to all who
entered that living-room! Yet even that black stain became in time a
part of us. We grew even to boast of it. We pointed it out to new
acquaintances as the place where Bud spilled the ink. It was an evidence