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Amsden

let me repeat to you my advice, to give this elder son of yours the chance for a good education."

"Do you think he has capacities which would warrant such a step, sir?" asked the gratified mother of the boy. "Indeed, I certainly do, Madam; even to sending him to a college," replied the other.

"That would be impossible in my circumstances, provided I thought as you do on the subject," remarked Mr. Amsden. "Let him go to a good academy, then," rejoined the stranger.

"Well, now, I don't exactly know about that," replied the other. "He may go winters to our district schools as long as he pleases; and I think, for the present, at least, that he should, and will be, quite satisfied with that. Is it not so, Locke?"

"Why," answered the boy diffidently, "I should be satisfied to go to our district masters, if they could tell me the reasons of things, which I always wish to know."

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"That is right, Master Locke, responded the stranger

you have expressed, in almost a word, the great aim and essence of all true knowledge and philosophy — to know the reason of things.' Yes, my young friend, let that still be your ambition; and, if your father will give you the opportunity, I doubt not you will do honor to the motto you have chosen."

"Well, I would be a scholar, Locke, if I was you," added Mary, with charming naïveté ; and if you will, and come and keep school where I live, I will go to school to you, and become a great scholar too, if I can."

The travellers now took their leave of the family, and drove from the yard, attended by the repeatedly expressed good wishes of the good-hearted farmer, and his equally kind and more high-minded companion. And, in these wishes, they

were joined by another, who, though he had uttered less, yet felt more than they had expressed! That was our young hero; who, as the rest of the family returned into the house, stood mutely gazing after the receding carriage, till its last traces were lost to his sight; when he slowly turned away, the big drops of tears standing in his eyes, and his lip quivering with emotions which had been awakened by this brief, but to him, as will appear in the sequel, important visit of these interesting strangers.

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THE accidental call of the travellers at the house of the farmer, as narrated in our opening chapter, formed an era in the life of Locke Amsden. By that call, new thoughts had been suggested to his mind -new feelings and hopes awakened in his bosom; and, as the slumbering energies of his intellectual and moral nature became thus aroused, young ambition began to point him upward to the temple of science, over whose distanced-hallowed pinnacles floated the mystic banner of fame. At first, every word of the revered stranger was recalled, every position revolved over and over in mind, and every argument carefully weighed; and the result of the process was faith and conviction. Then came the inspiriting words of the beautiful little being, who, in angel shape, had thus appeared in his path to incite him onward; and, "I would be a scholar, Locke," continued to ring in his ears. "Ay, and I will be a scholar!" he at length mentally ejaculated; "and then I will go where she lives, and she shall know that I have worthily done her bidding, and justified the good opinion of her father. But where does she live? yes, where? For he now recollected, that he had not learned from her, or her father, the place of their residence; and, under the proud and joyous impulse which his reverie had imparted, he flew to his parents with the inquiry. But neither of them could answer it. They had not ascertained even the family name of their visiters. Mr. Amsden had

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thought of asking the man these particulars; but, it occurring to him that his wife would naturally find them out from the little girl, he desisted. And this Mrs. Amsden had intended to do; but her attention was so much engrossed in the cares of preparing the dinner, that she had neglected it, till the return of the gentleman into the house deprived her of the opportunity of doing so, without appearing obtrusive. The Christian name of the girl, therefore, with the fact, that she and her father came from a place some fifty miles to the south, and were destined to another nearly as far to the north, was all that had been ascertained concerning them, other than what their personal appearance indicated. But, although our young hero was thus left in ignorance of the names, residence, character, and calling of his new friends, and for many years was doomed to remain so, yet the event of their visit was not the less destined to exercise an important influence on his future life and fortunes. It seemed to be, indeed, one of those trifling incidents which so often seem to change the fate of individuals, and impart an enduring impulse towards a destiny to which, in all human probability, they otherwise would never have been called. Such an impulse had been imparted, in the present instance, by the mere call of two entire strangers; and that simple incident would probably have been sufficient of itself, had no other grown out of it, to give a new and continuing direction to the energies of him on whom it so peculiarly operated. But there yet remained to be added another occurrence arising from the circumstances of the first, which was directly calculated to strengthen every impulse already received, and every resolution formed under it.

About a month from the time the incidents we have been sketching transpired, a strong board box, directed to Master Locke Amsden, was left at the door by a teamster; who, saying he had received it from another teamster, with directions to

leave it at this place, went on his way, without giving any further information respecting it, or those who sent it.

Wondering what might be the contents of the box, the receipt of which was so unexpected to him, though partly anticipating the source from which it must have come, Locke flew for his hammer, and knocked off the cover; when, to his joyful surprise, he found the box filled with books, upon the top of which lay a neatly folded and superscribed little billet, directed to himself. Eagerly snatching up the paper, he opened it, and read, in the finely-traced characters of an unsettled female hand, the laconic contents:

"A lot of old, musty volumes, in return for your nice little present. Father has picked them out from his old college books, and given them to me to send to you, saying you would like them. If you think, as he says, about them, I shall be pleased to have you accept them from

"Your friend,
"MARY."

With a low shout of irrepressible joy, he now hastily caught up his treasure, rushed into the house, and, calling on his mother to come and witness his good fortune, fell to unpacking the books, greedily running over the title-pages of each, as, with many a half-suppressed exclamation of pleasure, he successively took out the different volumes, which, to the number of eight or ten, the box contained, and spread them around him on the floor. The collection corsisted of a complete set of mathematics, from common arithmetic to fluxions; a standard work on natural philosophy; another on astronomy; together with separate treatises upon geology, mineralogy, and chemistry; while the whole was accompanied by a good set of mathematical instru

ments.

From what we have already shown the reader of the

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