kindness of his father, he spoke of that good man's
pecuniary reverses, and professed his faith in Willard as the future
regenerator of the fallen fortunes of Ward Glazier's family.

The boy's generous enthusiasm was awakened at once. His ordinary school
tasks and home duties no longer looked commonplace, and were no longer
distasteful to him. They were but incidents in a general plan of
usefulness, and he performed them with an air of cheerfulness that
pleased his teacher and delighted his parents. He volunteered to help
his father in the fields, and while but a boy in years, he yet performed
the work of a man. In fact, he had discovered that every duty of life
has its heroic side, and needs only the impulse of high and noble
motives to be invested with dignity and interest.

Meanwhile, he did not neglect his studies. The idea of intellectual
culture was no longer a mere abstraction. Books were not only what they
always had been--reservoirs of knowledge, alluring to his imagination,
and fascinating to his mind--but they were now looked upon as levers,
with which he was to move the world. Knowledge _now_ meant the means
whereby, in the days to come, he was to acquire the power to make his
father and mother comfortable for the balance of their lives; and to
surround his sisters with those luxuries which go far towards making
existence a thing of grace and refinement. When, therefore, he worked
during the warm days of summer, aiding his father in the care of the
farm, the summer evenings found him poring earnestly over his
books--practical and useful ones now--and the harvest once gathered, he
was back again in his old place at school, where he studied steadily and
hard. His teacher, Allen Wight, looked on and was satisfied. And yet
Willard was a wild boy--as wild as any in the school. His relish for fun
and frolic was as keen as ever, but it was now subordinated to his
judgment. His practical jokes were fewer, and the peculiarities of his
father no longer furnished him with a subject for their perpetration.
Now and then, however, the old exuberance of mischief _would_ break out,
and upon one occasion his grandfather became its victim.

As that mosaic styled "character" is nothing more than an aggregate of
just such trivial things, we trust our readers will pardon us if we
relate the incident in point.

When Willard was over nine years of age, his father moved from the Old
Homestead and purchased a place named the Good