g, bright, March day--one of those wondrous
days, glorious above with sky and sun, and joyous with the first note
of the blue-bird--the little red school-house by the margin of the
maple-woods was filled with the pupils and their parents, assembled
for the last time. Bart, in a low voice, tremulous with emotion, bade
them all good-by, and most of them forever, and taking his little
valise, walked with a saddened heart back to his mother. This time he
had not failed, and he never was to fail again.

How many events and occurrences linked in an endless series unite to
form the sum-total of ordinary human life! Incident to it, they are
in fact all ordinary. If any appear extraordinary, it is because
they occur in the life of an extraordinary individual, or remarkable
consequences flow from them. Like all parts of human life, in and of
themselves they are always fragmentary: springing from what precedes
them, they have no beginning proper; causing and flowing into others,
they have no ending, in effect; and as the dramatic in actual life is
never framed with reference to the unities, so results are constantly
being produced and worked out by accidents, and the prominent events
often contribute nothing to any supposed final catastrophe. Strangers
interlope for a moment, and change destinies, coming out for a
day, from nothing, and going to nowhere, but marring and misshaping
everything.

No plot is to develop as this sketch of old-time life continues, and
incidents will be of value only as they tend to mould and develop
the character and powers of one, and little will be noticed save that
which concerns him. It is, perhaps, already apparent that he is very
impressible, that slight forces which would produce little effect on
different natures, are capable of changing his shape, will beat him
flat, roll him round, or convert him into a cube or triangle, and yet,
that certain strong, always acting forces will restore him, with more
or less of the mark or impress of the disturbing cause upon him. He
has a strong, tenacious nature, unstained with the semblance of a
vice. He forms quick resolutions, but can adhere to them. He is tender
to weakness, and fanciful to phantasy. His aptitude for sarcasm and
ridicule, unsparingly as it had been turned upon everybody, brought
upon him general dislike. His indecision and vacillation in adopting
and pursuing a scheme in life, lost him the confidence of his
acquaintances--ready to believe