O!
Ephraim what shall I do unto thee?" "It wouldn't take me long to find
out what to do, if he was mine," said Aunt Lucinda. "I'd take a good
birch rod, and give him such a tanning, that he wouldn't cut up another
clothes-line in a hurry, I'll promise you." "Upon the whole I think your
counsel is wise, Cousin Lucinda," replied his father, "for the wisest
man of whom we have any account says, 'Foolishness is bound up in the
heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from
him,' and the same wise man adds in another place: 'He that spares the
rod spoils the child.'" I know not whether he acted from a sense of duty,
or to appease the anger of my aunt; but, for the first time in his life,
I believe he did use the rod upon his son Ephraim. He provided himself
with a switch, the size of which satisfied even Aunt Lucinda, and,
taking him to the back-kitchen, if we could judge by the screams which
issued from thence, the whipping he bestowed upon Ephraim was no
trifling affair.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Autumn again came, with its many-hued glories, and I must bid adieu to
the uncle and aunt who had been so kind to me for the two past years.
Looking forward two years seem a long period; but, as memory recalled
the evening of my first arrival at Uncle Nathan's, I could hardly
believe that two years had since then glided away. I had bid my kind
teacher and his family good-bye, and in the morning was to set out
on my homeward journey. I accompanied my uncle and aunt to grandma's
grave--a handsome head-stone of white marble had been erected, and I
enjoyed a melancholy pleasure in reading over and over again the
sculptured letters, stating her name and age, with the date of her
death. Eighty-five years, thought I, as my eye rested upon the figures
indicating her age, what a long, long life! and yet she often said that,
in looking back over her long life, it only seemed like a short troubled
dream; but it is all past now, and she rests in peace. We sat long at
the grave and talked of the loved one, now sleeping beneath that grassy
mound; till the deepening twilight hastened our departure. I could not
check the tears which coursed freely down my cheeks when I turned away
from the grave. Seated around the fireside that evening we talked of the
coming morrow when I was to leave them for an indefinite time, and they
both spoke of how doubly lonely the house would seem when I should be
gone. It hardly seemed to me that