"Demi was one of the children who show plainly the effect of intelligent love and care, for soul and body worked harmoniously together.
The natural refinement which nothing but home influences can teach, gave him sweet and simple manners; his mother had cherished an innocent and loving heart in him; his father had watched over the physical growth of his body, and kept the litte body straight and strong on wholesome food and exercise and sleep, while Grandma March cultivated the little mind with tender wisdom of a modern day Pythagoras - not tasking it with long, hard lessons, parrot-learned, but helping it to unfod as naturally and beautifully as sun and dew help roses bloom.
He was not a perfect child, by any means, but his faults were of the better sort; and being early taught the secret of self-control, he was not left at the mercy of appetite and passions, as some poor little mortals are, and then punished for yielding to temptations against which they have no armour.
A quiet, quaint boy was Demi, serious yet cheery, quite unconscious that he was unusually bright and beautiful, yet quick to see and love intelligence or beauty in other children."
page 19 LITTLE MEN Louisa May Alcott
