ment not to have compelled his father
to put him to school. If education were universal--"

"You think there would be no brutes in particular. It may be so; but
education is universal in China, and so is the bastinado. I thought,
however, that you said the schoolmaster was abroad, and that the age of
enlightenment was in full progress."

"Yes, in the towns, but not in these obsolete rural districts; and that
brings me to the point. I feel lost, thrown away here. I have something
in me, sir, and it can only come out by collision with equal minds. So
do me a favour, will you?"

"With the greatest pleasure."

"Give the governor a hint that he can't expect me, after the education
I have had, to follow the plough and fatten pigs; and that Manchester is
the place for ME."

"Why Manchester?"

"Because I have a relation in business there who will give me a
clerkship if the governor will consent. And Manchester rules England."

"Mr. Bob Saunderson, I will do my best to promote your wishes. This is
a land of liberty, and every man should choose his own walk in it, so
that, at the last, if he goes to the dogs, he goes to them without that
disturbance of temper which is naturally occasioned by the sense of
being driven to their jaws by another man against his own will. He has
then no one to blame but himself. And that, Mr. Bob, is a great comfort.
When, having got into a scrape, we blame others, we unconsciously
become unjust, spiteful, uncharitable, malignant, perhaps revengeful.
We indulge in feelings which tend to demoralize the whole character.
But when we only blame ourselves, we become modest and penitent. We make
allowances for others. And indeed self-blame is a salutary exercise of
conscience, which a really good man performs every day of his life. And
now, will you show me the room in which I am to sleep, and forget for a
few hours that I am alive at all: the best thing that can happen to us
in this world, my dear Mr. Bob! There's never much amiss with our days,
so long as we can forget about them the moment we lay our heads on the
pillow."

The two young men entered the house amicably, arm in arm. The girls had
already retired, but Mrs. Saunderson was still up to conduct her
visitor to the guest's chamber,--a pretty room which had been furnished
twenty-two years ago on the occasion of the farmer's marriage, at the
expense of Mrs. Saunderson's mother, for her own occupation when she
paid them a visit, and with it