olish! Consistent only in folly, and steady
in the purpose of being foolish. How beautiful, and how ugly! What a
lovable, detestable, desirable, proud, wilful, arrogant, supercilious,
laughing, passionate, tender, cruel, loving, hating, good sort of a
good-for-nothing he is! He believes everything--he believes nothing;
and, like Mary's Son, questions and mocks the doctors to their beards
in the very temple. Patience! he must have his time, and room to grow
in, develop, and shape out. Let him have coral for his teeth, and
climbing, and running, and jumping for his muscle. No man may love
him, and no woman but his mother, and she is to be tried to the extent
of endurance. Wait for him; he will, with or without your help, turn
out good or bad, and in either event people will say: "I always told
you so," "I always knew it was in him"; and cite a score of unhappened
things in proof of their sagacity.

Barton was one of these; neither better nor worse, full of
possibilities and capabilities, impulsive, rash, and unreasoning. He
has just made a resolve, and will act upon it; proud and sensitive
to a degree, he had heard a word of fault once at the store, which
another word would have explained. He would not say it, and went. It
was discovered that the fault was not his, in time for him to remain;
but he left without that word. He is willing to take his chances, and
must speak and act for himself.

He sealed and directed his letter, walked about with the plaintive
airs of old melodies running and running through his head, and sang
snatches and verses of sad old ballads, going over and over with some
touching line, or complaining strain, till he was saturated with its
tender melancholy, and so he came back to ordinary life.

CHAPTER III.

NEWBURY.

Newbury was one of the twenty-odd townships, five miles square, that
then made up the county of Geauga, and a part of the Western Reserve,
the Yankee-doodledom of Ohio, settled exclusively by emigrants from
New England. It was so much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont,
etc., translated into the broader and freer West. It has been
said that the Yankee, like a certain vegetable, heads best when
transplanted. It was the old thing over, under new and trying
circumstances. The same old ideas and notions, habits of thought and
life; poor, economical and thrifty folk, with the same reverence
for religion and law, love of education, and restless desire for
improvement, and