I cannot feel that I have done my duty as humble¹ historian of the March family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it. Daisy and Demi had now arrived at years of discretion²; for in this fast age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too, which is more than many of their elders do. If there ever were a pair of twins in danger of being utterly³ spoilt by adoration⁴, it was these prattling⁵ Brookes. Of course they were the most remarkable⁶ children ever born, as will be shown when I mention that they walked at eight months, talked fluently at twelve months, and at two years they took their places at table, and behaved with a propriety⁷ which charmed all beholders. At three, Daisy demanded a "needler," and actually made a bag with four stitches in it; she likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic⁸ cooking-stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to Hannah's eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming the letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic⁹ condition, with his "sewin-sheen,"—a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothes-pins, and spools¹⁰, for wheels to go "wound and wound;" also a basket hung over the back of a big chair, in which he vainly tried to

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