seeing nothing, when the great world is open. I mean to try it some time."

And so he went on discussing the matter within himself, and reasoning away many of the staid and valuable ideas that had kept him a noble boy.

"I wonder what mother will say to it? Women are always afraid, and want to keep their boys at home all the time. I 'spose she will make a terrible fuss about it; but I mean to see more of the world, somehow."

Sleep finally came to his relief, and he dreamed of ships bearing him over the ocean to other lands, where fairy-like cities delighted his vision; and other enrapturing scenes, that exist only in dreams, made him thrice happy. It was quite evident now that Satan was opening the door of the future wide, instead of that Providence whose watch and care his good mother had invoked.

He continued a faithful laborer to Mr. Barton, attending to the details of the business with promptness, and securing his love and confidence. Barton watched him with pride, and once he said to him:

"Yer kin read, yer kin write, and yer are death on figgers; so stay with me, keep my 'counts, and tend to the saltery. I'll find yer, and glad to give yer the fourteen dollars a month."

"I want to be a sailor," replied James.

"A sailor!" exclaimed Barton, in amazement. "Yer don't mean it. There's too much of yer for that bisness. What's put that idee into yer head?"

"I want to see more of the world than I can see in

Ohio," answered James. "It will be dull business to make black-salts all my days."

"We'll, yer will never go to sea if yer take my advice. Stay here, and some day yer'll have a saltery of yer own."

"I don't want one," replied James. "I'd rather have something else."

"My word for it," continued Barton; "yer are too good a boy to spile on the seas. Stay with me, and some day yer'll have a saltery as big as o'urn."

"I wouldn't spend my life in this business for a dozen salteries as big as this," replied James.

Barton was exceedingly afraid that he should lose · his excellent employé, and so he endeavored to make his position agreeable as possible. His praise, too, was not stinted at all.

"Yer are a cute boy, good at readin', good at figgers, good at work, good at everything," he would say; "stay with me, and I'll do we'el by yer."

James continued through the winter, until April opened, when the following incident terminated his career as a salter.

Barton's daughter had a beau, and he came to see her one night when James was working over some difficult problems in arithmetic. There was but one room below in the farm-house, and that was a very large one, so the young couple occupied a distant corner, James and the "old folks" sitting near the fireplace. James took in the situation well for a boy of his years, and designed to retire as soon as the girl's father and mother did; but he became so

absorbed in his arithmetic that he did not notice they had left the room, until the impatient girl startled him by the remark,

"I should think it was time for hired servants to be abed."

James' anger was aroused. He looked at her fiercely for a moment, but said nothing. Then he took his candle and started for his room, his very tread on the floor showing that the invincible spirit within him was thoroughly stirred. The coast was now clear for the matrimonial aspirants, though at quite a loss to the establishment, as the sequel will show.

James could not sleep. The sarcastic girl had knocked sleep out of him.

"Hired servant!" he repeated to himself, over and over. "And that's all I am in this concern,'a hired servant.' I'll not be a 'scrvant' long, let them know." And he tried to compose himself, and forget his trouble by going to sleep, but in vain.

"Hired servant!" It would not down at his bid. ding. He kept repeating it, in spite of himself; and the more he repeated it, the more his feelings were harrowed.

"Hired servant!' I can rise above that, I know, and I will. I'll not stay in this place another day, let what will happen. I'll leave to-morrow. The trollope shall see whether I'm a hired servant' or not. I'll hire servants yet."

The fact was, that unexpected appellation proved

to James just what the kick in the stomach, which the schoolmate gave to Newton, did. The kick made a scholar out of Newton; the girl's remark aroused latent aspirations in James' heart to be somebody. Years afterwards, when James had become a man, and was battling with the stern realities of life, he said, "That girl's cutting remark proved a great blessing to me. I was too much annoyed by it to sleep that night; I lay awake under the rafters of that old farm-house, and vowed, again and again, that I would be somebody; that the time should come when that girl would not call me a 'hired servant.""

The bad books, however, very nearly turned the aspirations awakened into the way to ruin instead of honor.

James arose early in the morning, dressed himself, and tied up his few possessions in a bundle, and presented himself to Mr. Barton for settlement. "I'm going to leave to-day,” he said.

If he had fired off a pistol at his employer the latter would not have been more astounded.

"Goin' ter leave!" he exclaimed.

"Yes; I'm done working at this business." "Hi, Jim, yer can't mean it."

"I do mean it," answered James; and he adhered to his purpose against the entreaties and good promises of his employer, and that, too, without saying a word to him about the "hired servant." The upshot was, that Mr. Barton paid him off, and James was at home before noon.

OME for good," said James to his mother, on entering the house. "Got enough of saltering."

"I am glad to see you, James; but what's the matter now?" his mother replied. "Matter enough. I've come home to stay." "I'm glad of that."

"I can be somebody if I try, instead of a 'hired servant,' continued James, speaking the last two words contemptuously.

"What now? Have you had any trouble with Mr. Barton?"

"None at all; he is one of the kindest men in the world. I shouldn't want to work for a better man." "What, then, is to pay?" urged his mother, earnestly.

James rehearsed to her the experience of the previous evening, and his determination to quit the business, together with Mr. Barton's disappointment at his leaving, and his entreaties for him to stay. Mrs.