brief tale has to deal with.

Yet, with all of these points held in common with the rest of the race,
the hero of the adventures herein chronicled had an individuality that
was his own, and most thoroughly so. This, too, is common. Most
people have an individuality, if they can only find it! A good many
men never do find this quality in themselves, having it crushed out by
the timid or designing people who take charge of their education, so
called; but for all that, to every man is given a being unlike that of
any other in all the world, and it is the business of each, for
himself, to make the most of his own peculiar gift, and for all his
teachers and all systems of education to help him in his
heaven-ordained task.

The young Weaver, whose advent has just been mentioned, was an
individual. The nurse became conscious of it before he was an hour
old, and the same impression has been received by all of his
since-acquired acquaintances. He was a boy with a way of his own. He
came into a world where there are crowds possessed of the same
characteristics. It is a marvel, how, in such a multitude of
differences, either he or the rest of us get along, even as well as we
do.

When it came to naming the child, he was called "Dodd."

"Dodd" was the short for Doddridge, and the full appellation given to
the youth at his christening, when he was two months old, was Doddridge
Watts Weaver, a name which the officiating clergyman pronounced with
great unction, and in the prayer after baptism made mention of again,
asking heaven to grant that the mantle of both the old worthies whose
names the child bore might fall upon the little body wrapped up in an
embroidered blanket and held on the shoulder of the good woman who
stood before the altar.

That is not just the way the preacher said this, but it is
substantially the idea that he tried to convey to the Lord, and perhaps
he succeeded in doing so better than I have succeeded in conveying it
to you, dear reader; but then, he had this advantage: The Lord is
quicker at taking a point hinted at than the public is! Though this
needs to be added: that if the Hearer of Prayer did catch the meaning
that lay around loose somewhere in the jumble of the parson's petition,
that morning, He did not see fit to grant the request, for no scrap of
a rag that ever had graced the backs of those dear old hymn-makers
fell, either soon or late, upon the form of the boy whose wriggling
little