which good habits of thought would have enabled him to avoid, and ends his career, most probably, in poverty and insignificance, or in sudden ruin and disgrace. The other, carrying along with him the means of avoiding the evil, which is brought upon its victim through the causes we have just named, and, at the same time, the means of grasping the good, which, through similar causes, is rejected, goes on increasing in competence, wisdom, and influence, moving quietly through life, and leaving, at his death, a useful example, and an honest fame behind him.

Such are generally the results deducible from good and bad habits of thought; and yet who will say these habits, for good or for evil, are not usually formed through the care or negligence of teachers? Instructors of youth, where rests the responsibility?

But to return to our young hero. For the remainder of the winter school, though left, for the best of reasons, by the master, to work his way unassisted, he pressed forward steadily and rapidly in his chosen course of mathematics. And the school having at length been brought to a close, spring, summer, and autumn again succeeded but to find him, in every moment of his leisure, employed on his studies in the same manner, and with the same untiring perseverance, as in the preceding season. One incident, however, occurred this season to vary the monotony of his secluded life; while, at the same time, it became the means of affording him advantages in his studies, which he never before had been so fortunate as to receive. That was an accidental acquaintance he formed with an old, self-taught land-surveyor, who resided in a different part of the same town; and who, like himself, was a great lover of that strong, but healthy food of the mind -the science of numbers and quantities. Locke and this man, by that sort of intellectual free-masonry which passes among sympathetic minds, were not long, when the

opportunity occurred, in finding each other out, and forming a close intimacy. The surveyor, having studied much more than was immediately necessary for the exercise of his calling, and dipped considerably deep into principles, was able to explain to the former many knotty points which he had been puzzled to resolve, besides showing him the practical part of surveying, upon which, having gone through geometry and trigonometry, he had now commenced. Locke, in return, brought the other his books, which, to the extent of more than half of them, at least, he had never seen; and which, being loaned him, he fell to studying with boyish enthusiasm. No sooner was this singular companionship thus fairly established, than our boy-hero was found, every rainy day, and at other times when he had finished his tasks, during the summer and fall, posting off on foot to commune and practise with his gray-headed brother in science. And when met, the two might have been seen intently engaged in surveying fields, measuring heights and distances, or patiently plodding on together in navigation, which they soon jointly commenced.

This pleasing intercourse, however, was at length brought to a close by the stormy weather and bad travelling which immediately preceded the setting-in of winter. And Locke, bidding his old friend farewell, took home his books for the purpose of resuming his studies in the winter school, for the beginning of which the time had now arrived. But in this purpose he was for some time doomed to be disappointed. For, when the usual time for commencing the school came, it was found that no teacher had been engaged. The committee, up to this time, had been waiting for applications for the school, expecting that their only trouble, as usual, would be in deciding upon a selection of the various applicants. But it somehow had unaccountably happened, that not a single application had been made; and the committee were

now consequently forced to bestir themselves in going out in search of a teacher. But in this, also, they were without success; for, though they found candidates for teaching in plenty, they could find no one, when they named their particular school, who made not some excuse for not undertaking to instruct it. This they thought very strange, as their school had ever been considered a very orderly one. But as strange and uncommon as the trouble was, they were compelled to yield to it, and reluctantly give up all thought of having a school that winter.

Various were the conjectures formed in the district, by way of accounting for this unexpected failure. Some contended, that the school, after all, must be so unruly that no teacher would engage in it; others, that the masters had not been treated with sufficient attention by the inhabitants of the district; and yet others, that the schoolmasters had combined to strike for higher wages, and had come to the determination not to teach till the punished public should voluntarily come forward, and offer the secretly-fixed prices. Among all these, and other sage conjectures of the cause, however, no one had hit upon the truth. For the true secret of the misfortune at length leaked out; when the discovery was made, that Locke Amsden had, in fact, been the innocent and unconscious cause of the whole of it. He, it appeared, besides annoying his own teacher with questions too hard for him, had also been the means of a similar annoyance to many other teachers of the neighboring districts. He had been in the habit, the preceding winter, of frequently attending the evening spelling-schools, which it was customary for the instructors in that section of the country to appoint and hold at intervals, through the whole term of their engagements. And at each of these evening schools, which he thus went abroad to attend, he was sure to propose to one or two of the best scholars, for answer, some difficult point in

grammar, some mathematical question of his own origi nating, or, as was more generally the case, such as he had met with in his studies, and was anxious to see explained. Nearly all these questions, as had been expected, and, indeed, commonly requested by the mover, were carried for solution to the master; who, too often, was compelled to resort to some pitiful evasion to hide his inability to furnish the required answer. And the same questions, also, besides being agitated in the schools into which they were first introduced, were often communicated to other schools, and thus became a source of trouble to other masters; so that, in this way, there was scarcely a teacher, anywhere in the vicinity, who had not experienced the inconvenience of Locke's scholarship and inquiring disposition; and most of them, though they prudently kept the fact to themselves, fairly wished him out of the country, and secretly resolved never to be caught engaging to instruct any school where he should be a pupil. It appeared, therefore, that the failure of the committee, before mentioned, was occasioned, not by there being bad scholars in the school, but good ones; or rather one, whose aptitude and acquirements had made him so much the dread of the schoolmasters, with whom the country then happened to be favored, as effectually to keep them out of the district.

The disappointment thus occasioned the district, however, as vexatious as it was to Locke at the time, was, like many other disappointments in life, of which we are wont to complain, destined, in a short time, to prove a blessing, not only to him, but to the whole school. For, in a few weeks, an unforeseen occurrence brought them an instructor well qualified for his task. This was a senior collegian, who had returned to spend his last vacation at his father's residence, in a neighboring town; and who, on accidentally learning that the district in question had been unable to supply them

selves with a teacher, from the suspected causes we have named, was thereby induced to send them word he would come and instruct their school, if they would give him a dollar per day and board. To be sure, the very unusual price demanded by the young man, threatened, for some days, to prove an insurmountable obstacle to engaging him. The sum asked, contended the committee, was outrageous, unheard of, and it was out of all question that they should give it. But all the larger boys and girls clamored; Locke electioneered as if life and death hung on the event; and his mother, whose influence was generally felt in the neighborhood, when she chose to exert it, went round to see other mothers, who, being either convinced by her arguments in favor of the cause she had espoused, or tired of having their noisy children any longer at home, beset their husbands to beset the committee; and the result was, that the committee, unable to stem the current thus brought to bear against them, started off, and engaged the young gentleman, whose name was Seaver, at his own price. The next Monday morning, to the great joy of Locke, he appeared on the ground, and commenced the duties of his school.

We have said that Mr. Seaver, the instructor now employed, was well qualified for the task he had undertaken; and in so saying, we meant much more than what extensive attainments in science and literature, merely, would necessarily imply. He possessed science, indeed, to an eminent degree; but as is too rarely the case, especially with those fresh from the schools, he possessed it without any of that learned quackery of technical terms and unusual words, which is so often made to shut out knowledge from the common mind as effectually as the monastic walls of the dark ages. His language, indeed, on whatever subject employed, though the most abstruse to be found in the books, was as simple as that of childhood itself; while, at the same time,