CHAPTER VII.
Among Margaret's life-long characteristics was a genuine love of little children, which sprang from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness of childhood. When she visited the homes of her friends, the little ones of their households were taken into the circle of her loving attention. Three of these became so especially dear to her that she called them her children. These were Waldo Emerson, Pickie Greeley, and Herman Clarke. For each of them the span of earthly life was short, no one of them living to pass out of childhood,
Waldo was the eldest son of Emerson, the child deeply mourned and commemorated by him in the well-known threnody:—
The hyacinthine boy for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom.
The gracious boy who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favour of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye.
