Pitcairn.

Meanwhile the Pitcairners, knowing that, even at the shortest, a long,
long time must pass before Folger could communicate with the "old
country," continued the even tenor of their innocent lives.

The school prospered and became a vigorous institution. The church not
less so. More children were born to Thursday October, insomuch that he
at last had one for every working-day in the week; more yam-fields were
cultivated, and more marriages took place--but hold, this is
anticipating.

We have said that the school prospered. The entire community went to
it, male and female, old and young. John Adams not only taught his
pupils all he knew, but set himself laboriously to acquire all the
knowledge that was to be obtained by severe study of the Bible, the
Prayer-book. Carteret's Voyages, and by original meditation. From the
first mine he gathered and taught the grand, plain, and blessed truths
about salvation through Jesus, together with a few tares of error
resulting from misconception and imperfect reasoning. From the second
he adopted the forms of worship of the Church of England. From the
third he gleaned and amplified a modicum of nautical, geographical, and
general information; and from the fourth he extracted a flood of
miscellaneous, incomplete, and disjointed facts, fancies, and fallacies,
which at all events served the good purpose of interesting his pupils
and exercising their mental powers.

But into the midst of all this life death stepped and claimed a victim.
The great destroyer came not, however, as an enemy but as a friend, to
raise little James Young to that perfect rest of which he had already
had a foretaste on the island.

It was the first death among the second generation, and naturally had a
deeply solemnising effect on the young people. This occurred soon after
the departure of the _Topaz_. The little grave was made under the shade
of a palm-grove, where wild-flowers grew in abundance, and openings in
the leafy canopy let in the glance of heaven's blue eye.

One evening, about six months after this event, Adams went up the hill
to an eminence to which he was fond of retiring when a knotty problem in
arithmetic had to be tackled. Arithmetic was his chief difficulty. The
soliloquy which he uttered on reaching his place of meditation will
explain his perplexities.

"That 'rithmetic do bother me, an' no mistake," he said, with a grave
shake of the head at a lively lizard whic