In addition to this, our friend was never without a
pocketful of intellectual _bon-bons_ for them. A child whom he met with
grammar and dictionary, puzzled for months over the sentence he gave
her, assuring her that it was genuine Latin:--
"Forte dux fel flat in guttur."
To another he would give this problem, from ancient Dilworth:--
"If a herring and a half cost three-halfpence, how many will eleven
pence buy?"
Persons who are too stately to stoop to this way of pleasing childhood,
have very little idea of the magic influence it exerts, and how it opens
the heart to receive "the good seed" of serious admonition from one who
has shown himself capable of sympathy in its pleasures.
Those whose privilege it has been to know Mr. Gallaudet in his own home,
surrounded by his own intelligent children, have had a new revelation of
the gentleness, the tenderness and benignity of the paternal relation.
Many years since I was a "watcher by the bed," where lay his little
daughter, recovering from a dangerous illness. He evidently felt that a
great responsibility was resting upon a young nurse, with whom, though
he knew her well, he was not familiar in that character. I felt the
earnest look of inquiry which he gave me, as I was taking directions for
the medicines of the night. He was sounding me to know whether I might
be trusted. At early dawn, before the last stars had set, he was again
by the bed, intent upon the condition of the little patient.
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