Then she patted him tenderly on the cheek, and laid her hand upon his fevered brow so soothingly! The good aunt understood a boy's heart. A faithful teacher's promptness in correcting the first mistake, and a loving motherly sympathy from Aunt Zuba, impressed at the right moment, gave a moral direction to his restless and persistent spirit, not to stain the hands with stolen juices, and always confess a fault where it is due. Both these good women, in the higher school of angels now, delight to recall the incident that channeled the little rill of love, swelling since to a river of integrity.

Reason tests the strength of thought. "Jimmie's" mental powers were one day taxed to their utmost tension at a new idea, that made him reticent for many weeks. His father's sister, Aunt Sally Corkings, getting old, suddenly passed away. It was winter time; snow deep. They put the coffin on a stone-boat, and dragged it with oxen to the grave; the white mantle of nature and the black drapery of the mourners forming a strange contrast, weirdly impressive to the lad.

always his

"What did they put her in the ground for?" he silently asked. After the dismal funeral, he soberly went to his mother oracle — with the inquiry,

"Will Aunt Sally sprout again, like corn and beans?" "Her body, my son, will come to life again at the resurrection, in the end of time."

66

Well, what makes 'em put her in a coffin? She can't get out!' "The coffin will rot away, my son."

"And not the body rot, mother? Won't something then eat Aunt Sally up, and she won't live again?"

The mother did not anticipate such an argument, and could only answer in the usual orthodox way,

“Oh, well, my son, these are God's mysteries! we must not ask too many questions."

The next spring, there was a "revival of religion" in Whitingham, and "Aunt Betsey" was converted. Whilst witnessing her baptism, James clung to his mother, and, in a trembling voice, asked,

"What are they doing with Aunt Betsey, drowning her?"

She then told him about a dismal hell below, and a beautiful heaven above.

"What did God make a hell for, mother?

Finding his mother evaded this question, he inquired again,"Have you been baptized?"

It was his turn to be silent, when she answered in the negative. Thinking she should attend to this duty as soon as possible, he wondered what the difference could be between being baptized and "going in swimming."

A few days after, seeing he was thoughtful, and believing he might be under "conviction," she pursued her advantage, and told him about a "recording book kept by a sober angel." This hightened his ideal fancy. "How much," he said to himself, "he will have to write about me!" He thought the book had gold covers, and was big as a window. He very orthodoxically conceived God to be a great man, with a long beard, just like the picture of a prophet he saw in the old family Bible. When told about the "all-seeing eye," he imagined it was in the center of God's forehead, looking straight at him. When he pouted, or played the truant (very innocently), that night he dreamed God said to the angel of records, "Put all that down against the boy!" These instilled ideas, bodied forth in corresponding fancy, tinged his first years with a shade of melancholy. "Theological mysteries " produce spiritual fevers.

How dreamily prophetic were the successive sabbaths, when this youth walked beside his mother to church, holding her by the hand, inquiring what it all meant. B. F. Taylor paints the picture of those "meeting-times,"

"For a sprig of green carroway carries me there,
To the old village church and the old village choir;
When, clear of the floor, my feet slowly swung,
And timed the sweet praise of the song as they sung,
Till the glory aslant from the afternoon sun
Seemed the rafters of gold in God's temple begun.
You may smile at the nasals of old Deacon Brown,
Who followed by scent till he ran the tune down;

And the dear Sister Green, with more goodness than grace,
Rose and fell on the tunes as she stood in her place;
And, where old 'Coronation' exultingly flows,
Tried to reach the high notes on the tips of her toes.
To the land of the leal they went with their song,
Where the choir and the chorus together belong.
Oh, be lifted, ye gates! let me hear them again!
Blessed song! blessed sabbath! for-ever, amen!"

Narrow valleys contract the mind. Room, room, is what we need. Seized with a "Western fever," the Peebles Family moved to Smithville, N.Y., then "the West." Here new hardships presented themselves. Under the tuition of Prof. Hurlburt, he was cured of stammering. What a joy! He used to put a pebble under the point of his tongue to keep it down, and not flopping up against the roof of the mouth.

Exuberant over his stammering victory, - scarcely knowing, like a minnow just finned out, what to do with himself, he thought he would fall in love with a pretty damsel; at the age of thirteen, writing love-sick poetry! After sending the palpitating verses to the bashful girl, who, it seems, was "going to sea," the psychological effusion suddenly vanished. The animus of the poetry indicates at this age the musical genius of the man: so we snatch it from oblivion. The first poetry and first little shoe should always be preserved.

“When the storm-god wildly rages,

And the foaming billows roar;
When thou art far away, my lady,
I'll think of thee the more.

Often friends in life deceive us,

Till we know not whom to trust;
But the links of love that bind
US,

Oh! may they never, never rust!

Though oceans may between us roll,

Still will fancy love to trace,

In thy true, devoted soul,

Ever thy remembered face.

I'll think of thee when evening's ray

Is gleaming o'er the sea;

When gentle twilight's shadows play
On mountain, vale, and tree."

At Smithville, James attended a select school, taught by Amos H. Bedient, making rapid progress in geography, elocution, and roguery. Proud of his proficiency, he resolved to return to Vermont in the spring, to make money by teaching elocution! Suddenly appearing in Whitingham, it did cause a wonderful expansion of self-reliance— such as he needed to hear familiar friends congratulate him on his "lingual improvement." But his "elocutionary fortune," that was verily "a will-o'-the-wisp." Above all expenses, he earned just fif

teen dollars. The disposal of these hard earnings is the sure index of his sweet sympathies, running then quite at random, as do mountain streams, to bless the jagged fern. Meeting a poor, unfortunate traveler one day, lame and sorrowful, his heart was touched; and he impulsively emptied the whole fifteen into the beggar's grateful hand, saying, “I am even now better off than he, the poor lame man!" Here is the key-note to his nature, sympathetic; sometimes imprudent in giving. No money, no home, hungry and weary, he sat by the roadside, and ate a raw turnip for a supper, the tears flowing freely. Poverty stared him in the face, and haunted him a full year. His clothes were threadbare, his health below par. Poor fellow ! he wished himself dead.

“Tell me, accursed whelps, what are ye stirring up with the porridge ?”

Monkeys :

"We are cooking coarse beggars' broth."--- GOETHE'S FAUST.

"Eyes are found in light; ears in auricular air; feet on land; fins in water; wings in air; and each creature where it is wont to be, with a mutual fitness.” —— EMERSON.

MISFORTUNES in Vermont taught James to go ahead, not backwards. Wiser for the sorrows, he returned to New York a little tamed. Placing himself again under the tuition of Prof. Bedient, he soon won a high recommendation. He was now seventeen; and with bright hopes did he enter upon the experiment of teaching a district school in Pitcher, Chenango Co., N.Y., and was successful. He boarded at the home of a Baptist deacon, who had some very bad children. One morning, whilst the old man was praying with his usual fervor, a boy of his made confusion with his feet, chuckling at the same time. The deacon paused, and, getting roiled at the repeated noise, sprung up from his knees with a flushed face, and shook the "young sauce-box," accompanied with a desperate threat; then knelt down again, and commencing at the "Jews," where he left off, finished the prayer, his son groaning "Amen! This strange exhibition at a "family altar" repelled the young teacher from religious ceremonials.

About this time, a "revival" breaking out near Mr. Cole's, in Smithville, Jerry Brown, a particular friend, got religion. Others "got it bad." Being the only person who could specially affect "the teacher," Mr. Brown talked with him most pleadingly, warning him to "flee from the wrath to come." At length, he consented to go to