white chinaware, and the long well sweep, to become hostess in the more
pretentious surroundings of a small city on the Connecticut, living long
enough to realize how futile were her efforts to stay the temptations
which beset "Thad" on every hand. Misfortune overtook all his financial
investments, and, as one enterprise followed another in the maelstrom of
speculation, Sue's life ebbed away, leaving Jack and his sisters to be
cared for by a spinster aunt, who undertook the responsibility at the
earnest solicitation of "Thad."

The awakening from sin was that of genuine remorse and sorrow. With the
characteristic determination of those rugged ancestors, "Thad" broke off
all his former boon companionships, started on entirely new lines of
life and succeeded in living down the awful past. In a few years he
remarried, giving Jack a mother who learned to love her stepson as her
own. Jack was not the ever industrious boy in school, but he was quick
to learn both kinds of knowledge, useful and mischievous. That is the
reason why the old red school-house, at the top of the hill, held
pleasant recollections for him in after life. Of course, "J-A-C-K" was
carved into the top of every desk at which he sat and, as the first row
of desks was the "baby" or A, B, C row, the next one a little larger,
and so on, the four rows of "boxes" represented four classes, and Jack
managed to stay in each class long enough to carve his name where future
generations would find it.

"He's the most trying pupil in the school," was what the teacher told
everybody in the little village.

When the snow was deep, Jack took his dinner in a little basket, just
the same as the other scholars, and at the noon recess he was always in
the games in which the girls liked to have a few of the nice boys to
help out. Two chairs, facing each other, with a little gap between them,
then a ring of boys and girls holding hands to circle around between the
chairs, while a boy and a girl stood on the chairs, hands clasped across
the gap, all joining in singing the little couplet:

"The needle's eye that does supply
The thread that runs so true,
I've caught many a smiling lass,
And now I have caught you."

It was the boy's turn to choose the girl he wanted for a partner, and
she had to submit to the penalty of a kiss before she could mount the
chair. The desks were arranged in horseshoe form, and of course the
favorite seats were in the back row, farthes