y; so prepare for those comfortable slumbers I have predicted. I will
call my story

THREE YOUNG MEN.

"Now you must not expect from me," said Mr. Wyndham, "exciting tales of
adventure, and hairbreadth escapes by sea and land. I have never read a
dime novel in my life, and therefore couldn't undertake to rival them in
highway robbery, scalping Indians, and bowie-knives and revolvers. My
heroes were never left on a desert island, nor escaped with difficulty
from the hands of cannibals, nor were pursued by hungry wolves; and
never even saw a lion or tiger except behind the bars of a menagerie.
They were not strikingly handsome nor charmingly hideous, nor had they
rich uncles to die opportunely and leave them heirs to a few millions;
indeed, they were very much such young men as you see every day walking
the streets of your own city.

"I would gladly leave my name entirely out of the story if I could; but
as it is an 'o'er true tale,' and I happened to be mixed up with the
other two, whom I have known from childhood, I am very sure my dear
nephews and nieces will not accuse me of egotism. It is the other two
who are my heroes--not myself.

"John Howard and Mortimer Willing were my schoolmates, in the same class
for years, neighbors and playfellows, so that I know them well. And I
speak of them the more freely because they are now both living at a
great distance from here, one being the honored Governor of a Western
State, and the other residing in a remote town in the interior of Texas.
Such are the changes in our land of freedom.

"But to begin with our school-days. We had not a genius in the class,
neither had we a dunce; we were average boys, digging our way through
the classics and mathematics, and not too familiar with science, history
and geography. The world we live in was not much studied then. Such
minor knowledge we were somehow expected to pick up at home, and we did
after a fashion. I liked both these boys; but while Willing was the more
self-possessed, showy and brilliant, I always felt Howard to be the most
true; he was the very soul of honor, as transparent as glass without a
flaw in it. Willing did things with a dash, and by his superior tact and
ready language often appeared to know more than he really did. If he got
into a scrape he was pretty sure to get out of it smoothly.

"I have sometimes known him, for example, to go unprepared to a
recitation, depending upon his luck not to be called upon t