usand dollars from a Boston merchant, by reminding him
that the boy is not the man. So readily is the young mind poisoned.
During the latter part of the lesson, between looks stolen fearfully at
her profile, I was mentally engaged in borrowing two thousand dollars
from a convenient Mr. Barton with which to establish myself in a small
retail business--preferably a candy store with an ice-cream parlor in
the rear. Then I took her to wife, not forgetting to reward Mr. Barton
handsomely in the day of his ruin. Dimly, in the background of this
hasty dramatization, the distrustful Mr. Hawley, who refused to share
the loan with Mr. Barton, figured as a rival for my love's hand; and
lived to hear her say that she hated, loathed, and despised him.

At recess the others crowded about her, girls at the centre, within a
straggling circumference of young males, who dissembled their gallantry
under a pretence of being mere brutal marauders.

But I, solitary, moped and gloomed in a far grassy corner of the school
yard. I could not be of that crowd, and it was then I perceived for the
first time that the world was too densely populated. I saw how much
better it would be if every one but she and I were dead. Thereupon, in a
breath, I dispeopled the earth of all but us two, and with the courage
gained of this solitude, I saw myself approach her there at the corner
of the old brick schoolhouse, greeting her with assurances that
everything was all right,--and then, after she understood what I had
done, and how fine it was, we came into our own. Alas, how bitter the
crude truth! Instead of this, those wondrous tassels now danced from her
boot tops as she gave chase to Solon Denney, who had pulled one of the
scarlet bows from its yellow braid. Grimly I was aware that he should
be the first to go out of the world, and I called upon a just heaven to
slay him as he fled with his trophy. But nothing sweet and fitting
happened. He went unblasted.

She came back to the group of girls, flushed and lovely beyond compare,
holding up the ravished end of that golden braid with a comic dismay,
while her despoiler laughed coarsely from a distance and pinned the
trophy to his coat lapel. I now saw that blasting was too merciful. He
should be removed by a slower process if the thing could as easily be
arranged.

That was a bitter recess, even though I learned her wonderful name and
the enchanted state "back East" from which she had come. A still more
b