y really believed in the venerable
fiction), Johnny was too manly to utter a whimper: he would simply
slip out of the back door, and engage in traffic with affluent
orphans; disposing of woolly horses, tin whistles, marbles, tops,
dolls, and sugar archangels, at a ruinous discount for cash. He
continued these provident courses for nine long years, always banking
his accretions with scrupulous care. Everybody predicted he would one
day be a merchant prince or a railway king; and some added he would
sell his crown to the junk-dealers.

His unthrifty brother, meanwhile, kept growing worse and worse. He was
so careless of wealth--so so wastefully extravagant of lucre--that
Johnny felt it his duty at times to clandestinely assume control of
the fraternal finances, lest the habit of squandering should wreck the
fraternal moral sense. It was plain that Charles had entered upon the
broad road which leads from the cradle to the workhouse--and that he
rather liked the travelling. So profuse was his prodigality that there
were grave suspicions as to his method of acquiring what he so openly
disbursed. There was but one opinion as to the melancholy termination
of his career--a termination which he seemed to regard as eminently
desirable. But one day, when the good pastor put it at him in so many
words, Charles gave token of some apprehension.

"Do you really think so, sir?" said he, thoughtfully; "ain't you
playin' it on me?"

"I assure you, Charles," said the good man, catching a ray of hope
from the boy's dawning seriousness, "you will certainly end your days
in a workhouse, unless you speedily abandon your course of
extravagance. There is nothing like habit--nothing!"

Charles may have thought that, considering his frequent and lavish
contributions to the missionary fund, the parson was rather hard upon
him; but he did not say so. He went away in mournful silence, and
began pelting a blind beggar with coppers.

One day, when Johnny had been more than usually provident, and Charles
proportionately prodigal, their father, having exhausted moral suasion
to no apparent purpose, determined to have recourse to a lower order
of argument: he would try to win Charles to economy by an appeal to
his grosser nature. So he convened the entire family, and,

"Johnny," said he, "do you think you have much money in your bank?
You ought to have saved a considerable sum in nine years."

Johnny took the alarm in a minute: perhaps there was