Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THIRD YEAR In a wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down the stream— Lingering in the golden gleam— Life, what is it but a dream? —Lewis Carroll. chapter{Section 4ON the twelfth of January, 1916, came Breckinridge's second birthday. I had been reading a number of authoritative books during the past year on both physical and mental development of children and I find, dated January eighteenth, the following notes in my journal: "His weight, naked, and height, in his stocking feet, are on his birthday almost exactly what they were at twenty-three months, viz.: weight thirty-one pounds, height thirty-five and a fourth inches. I ascribe the lack of his usual growth during the past month to his cutting two more big jaw teeth and necessary dieting. He now has eighteen teeth and his weight at two years is just one pound less than Holt gives as the average weight for boys at three years, and his height is one-fourth of an inch more than the average at three years. The circumference of his head, if I measure correctly, and I think I do, is normal for two years, viz: nineteen inches. The circumference of his chest is three inches over normal, viz: twenty-two inches.—A good start, my man. How I trust that I can so rear you that your possible attainments will never be handicapped by a physique in the smallest particular defective. "It isn't enough to love one's child profoundly. One must put one's brains at his service in advance of his demands. As to the outcome—I never doubt it for a moment. There is the stuff of a great man in Breckinridge." After all, Breckie fell heir this winter to another dog, a female fox terrier puppy, with a black patch over one eye from which she drew her name. She was given us by a butcher ...