ned sympathy with his harder fate would tend to dwarf egotistic
absorption in my own. Such considerations, in short, are no
justification of those who are responsible for needless evil or
neglected good, but they are handy helps to those who suffer from them,
and who feel sadly sorry for themselves.

I am sure the early-begun and oft-reiterated teaching of daily
thankfulness for daily blessing was very useful to me at Crayshaw's and
has been useful to me ever since. With my dear mother herself it was
merely part of that pure and constant piety which ran through her daily
life, like a stream that is never frozen and never runs dry. In me it
had no such grace, but it was an early-taught good habit (as instinctive
as any bodily habit) to feel--"Well, I'm thankful things are not so with
me;" as quickly as "Ah, it might have been thus!" Looking at the fates
and fortunes and dispositions of other boys, I had, even at Snuffy's
"much to be thankful for" as well as much to endure, and it was a good
thing for me that I could balance the two. For if the grace of
thankfulness does not solve the riddles of life, it lends a willing
shoulder to its common burdens.

I certainly had needed all my philosophy at home as well as at school.
It was hard to come back, one holiday-time after another, ignorant
except for books that I devoured in the holidays, and for my own
independent studies of maps, and an old geography book at Snuffy's from
which I was allowed to give lessons to the lowest form; rough in looks,
and dress, and manners (I knew it, but it requires some self-respect
even to use a nail-brush, and self-respect was next door to impossible
at Crayshaw's); and with my north-country accent deepened, and my
conversation disfigured by slang which, not being fashionable slang, was
as inadmissible as thieves' lingo; it was hard, I say, to come back
thus, and meet dear old Jem, and generally one at least of his
school-fellows whom he had asked to be allowed to invite--both of them
well dressed, well cared for, and well mannered, full of games that were
not in fashion at Crayshaw's, and slang as "correct" as it was
unintelligible.

Jem's heart was as true to me as ever, but he was not so thin-skinned as
I am. He was never a fellow who worried himself much about anything, and
I don't think it struck him I could feel hurt or lonely. He would say,
"I say, Jack, what a beastly way your hair is cut. I wish Father would
let you come to our sc