t would suggest a different expedient, and
enable me to procure an immediate subsistence without forfeiting my
liberty.

I determined to commence my journey the next morning. No wonder the
prospect of so considerable a change in my condition should deprive me
of sleep. I spent the night ruminating on the future, and in painting to
my fancy the adventures which I should be likely to meet. The foresight
of man is in proportion to his knowledge. No wonder that, in my state of
profound ignorance, not the faintest preconception should be formed of
the events that really befell me. My temper was inquisitive, but there
was nothing in the scene to which I was going from which my curiosity
expected to derive gratification. Discords and evil smells, unsavoury
food, unwholesome labour, and irksome companions, were, in my opinion,
the unavoidable attendants of a city.

My best clothes were of the homeliest texture and shape. My whole stock
of linen consisted of three check shirts. Part of my winter evenings'
employment, since the death of my mother, consisted in knitting my own
stockings. Of these I had three pair, one of which I put on, and the
rest I formed, together with two shirts, into a bundle. Three
quarter-dollar pieces composed my whole fortune in money.

CHAPTER III.

I rose at the dawn, and, without asking or bestowing a blessing, sallied
forth into the highroad to the city, which passed near the house. I left
nothing behind, the loss of which I regretted. I had purchased most of
my own books with the product of my own separate industry, and, their
number being, of course, small, I had, by incessant application, gotten
the whole of them by rote. They had ceased, therefore, to be of any
further use. I left them, without reluctance, to the fate for which I
knew them to be reserved, that of affording food and habitation to mice.

I trod this unwonted path with all the fearlessness of youth. In spite
of the motives to despondency and apprehension incident to my state, my
heels were light and my heart joyous. "Now," said I, "I am mounted into
man. I must build a name and a fortune for myself. Strange if this
intellect and these hands will not supply me with an honest livelihood.
I will try the city in the first place; but, if that should fail,
resources are still left to me. I will resume my post in the cornfield
and threshing-floor, to which I shall always have access, and where I
shall always be happy."

I ha