ho bade fair to be a great scholar.
These half dozen were nearly always on the cellar-door for half an hour
on Friday evenings, when they happened to have a little more leisure than
on other evenings.

"I say, boys," said Hans, "I've got an idea."

"How strange it must seem to you," said Tom Miller; whereupon they all
laughed, good-natured Hans with the rest.

"Do let's hear it," said Harry; "there has not been an idea in this crowd
for a month."

"Well," said Hans, "let's every fellow tell a story here on the cellar
door, turn about, on Friday evenings."

"All except m-m-me," stammered Sampson, who was always laughing at his
own defect; "I c-c-couldn't g-g-get through be-be-fore midnight."

"Well," said Miller, "we'll make Will Sampson chairman, to keep us in
order."

They all agreed to this, and Sampson moved up to the top of the
cellar-door and said: "G-g-gentlemen, th-th-this is th-th-the proudest
m-m-moment of my life. I'm president of the C-c-cellar-d-d-door C-club!
M-m-many thanks! Harry Wilson will tell the first st-st-story."

"Agreed!" said the boys. After thinking a minute, Harry began.

_HARRY WILSON'S STORY._

I will tell you a story that my father told me. In a village in
Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Schuylkill River, there lived a wealthy
man.

"Once upon a time," said Jimmy Jackson.

"B-be st-still! Come to order th-th-there, Jackson," stammered the
chairman, and the story went on.

Yes, once upon a time, there lived a wealthy man who had two sons. The
father was very anxious to make great men of them, or at least, educated
men. I think, or rather my father thinks, that their father used to dream
that one of these boys would grow to be President, and that the other
would be a member of Congress, at any rate. But while his younger son
grew to be a good student, the other one was a good, honest, industrious,
and intelligent boy, who did not much like books. His father intended to
make him a lawyer, and he got on well enough in Arithmetic and Geography,
but Grammar came hard, and when he got into Latin he blundered
dreadfully. He studied to please his parents, and from a sense of duty,
but it mortified him greatly to think that he could not succeed as the
other boys did. For you know it is hard to succeed at anything unless
your heart is in it. And so one night he sat down and cried to think he
must always be a dolt. His mother found him weeping and tried to com