as he gazes out on the great buttonwood tree, and is
calculating how he shall fix his squirrel trap when school is out? Or is
it that curly-headed little rogue, who is shaking with repressed
laughter at seeing a chicken roll over in a dinner basket? Or is it that
arch boy with black eyelashes, and deep, mischievous dimple in his
cheeks, who is slyly fixing a fish hook to the skirts of the master's
coat, yet looking as abstracted as Archimedes whenever the good man
turns his head that way? No; these are intelligent, bright, beautiful,
but it is not these.

Perhaps, then, it is that sleepy little girl, with golden curls, and a
mouth like a half-blown rosebud. See, the small brass thimble has fallen
to the floor, her patchwork drops from her lap, her blue eyes close like
two sleepy violets, her little head is nodding, and she sinks on her
sister's shoulder: surely it is she. No, it is not.

But look in that corner. Do you see that boy with such a gloomy
countenance--so vacant, yet so ill natured? He is doing nothing, and he
very seldom does any thing. He is surly and gloomy in his looks and
actions. He never showed any more aptitude for saying or doing a pretty
thing than his straight white hair does for curling. He is regularly
blamed and punished every day, and the more he is blamed and punished,
the worse he grows. None of the boys and girls in school will play with
him; or, if they do, they will be sorry for it. And every day the master
assures him that "he does not know what to do with him," and that he
"makes him more trouble than any boy in school," with similar judicious
information, that has a striking tendency to promote improvement. That
is the boy to whom I apply the title of "the most interesting one."

He is interesting because he is _not_ pleasing; because he has bad
habits; because he does wrong; because, under present influences, he is
always likely to do wrong. He is interesting because he has become what
he is now by means of the very temperament which often makes the noblest
virtue. It is feeling, acuteness of feeling, which has given that
countenance its expression, that character its moroseness.

He has no father, and that long-suffering friend, his mother, is gone
too. Yet he has relations, and kind ones too; and, in the compassionate
language of worldly charity, it may be said of him, "He would have
nothing of which to complain, if he would only behave himself."

His little sister is always bri