oice, I was well prepared,
having graduated, with a moderate degree of honor, from Cambridge
College. I know of no profession requiring for its complete enjoyment a
more thorough and varied preparation.

My sister Fanny and I were two poor orphans, brought up, fed, clothed,
and loved by our Aunt Huldah. If it had not been for her, I don't know
what we should have done. Our Aunt Huldah was a widow and a _manager_.
Nearly every person has among his acquaintances one individual, usually
a female, who is called _a good manager_. She knows what is to be done,
and who should do it,--picks out wives for the young men, husbands for
the maidens, and attends herself to the matter of bringing them
together. Sometimes these individuals become tyrannical, standing with
vials of wrath all ready to be poured forth upon the heads of the
unsubmissive, and it must be owned that our aunt was in this not wholly
unlike the rest; but then she was so good-natured, so reasonable, that,
although the aforesaid vials were often known to be well filled, yet her
kindness and good sense always kept the corks in.

I think she took us partly from love, and partly to show how children
ought to be managed. We got on admirably together. I was by no means a
fiery youth. I was amiable, fond of books, had soft, light hair, fair
complexion, a quiet, persevering way, and never _ran_ after the girls.
Taking all these things into consideration, my aunt determined that I
should go to college, and become an honor to the family.

Fanny, though not a bit like me, got along equally as well with the
reigning power. She was a smart, black-eyed maiden, full of life, and
had herself some of the managing blood in her veins. In fact, so bright
and so sly was my dear little sister, that she often succeeded in
managing the Grand Panjandra herself. I speak thus particularly of
Fanny, because, if it had not been for her, I might now have no story to
tell. I never, from childhood to manhood, worked myself into any tight
place, that her little scheming brain did not invent some way of getting
me out.

When my collegiate labors were nearly finished, our aunt was taken
_poor_. She was subject to these attacks, under which she always
resorted to the heroic treatment, retrenching and economizing with the
greatest zeal. This attack of hers was the primary cause of my taking a
winter school in the little village of Norway, about twenty miles from
home. I was perfectly willing to