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to what we may style the influence of experimental philosophy; and if Farmer Matterby had been a poor man he must soon have been ruined, but, being what is styled "well-to-do," he only said, in reference to these things-- "Go ahead, my boy. Make hay while the sun shines. If you carry on as you've begun, you'll make your mark _somewhere_ in this world." "Alas!" remarked poor Mrs Matterby, "he has made his mark already _everywhere_, and that a little too freely!" Nevertheless she was proud of her boy, and sought to subdue his spirit by teaching him lessons of self-denial and love out of the Word of God. Johnny listened intently to these lessons, gazing with large wondering eyes, though he understood little of the teaching at first. It was not all lost on him, however; and he thoroughly understood and reciprocated the deep love that beamed in his mother's eyes. Soon after Johnny had slid into the Jack period of life he became acquainted with a fisher-boy of his own age, whose parents dwelt in a cottage on the sea-shore, not a quarter of a mile from his own home, and close to the village of Blackby. Natty Grove was as fine a little fellow as one could wish to see: fair, curly-headed, blue-eyed, rough-jacketed, and almost swallowed up in a pair of his father's sea-boots, which had been cut down in the legs to fit him. As to the feet!--well, as his father Ned Grove remarked, there was plenty of room for growth. Natty had no mother, but he had a little sister about three years of age, and a grandmother, who might have been about thirty times three. No one could tell her age for certain; but she was so old and wrinkled and dried up and withered and small, that she might certainly have claimed to be "the oldest inhabitant." She had been bed-ridden for many years because of what her son called rum-matticks and her grandson styled rum-ticks. The name of Natty's little sister was Nellie; that of his grandmother, Nell--old Nell, as people affectionately called her. Now it may perhaps surprise the reader to be told that Jack Matterby, at the age of nine years, was deeply in love. He had, indeed, been in that condition, more or less from the age of three, but the passion became more decided at nine. He was in love with Nell--not blue-eyed little Nellie, but with wrinkled old Nell; for that antiquated creature was brimming over with love to mankind, specially to children. On our hero she poured out such wealth o
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