r every town, river, lake,
mountain or other geographical thing mentioned in any book or paper you
read. I would advise you, too, if I were your schoolmaster, to add up
all the figures given in books and newspapers, to see if the writers
have made any mistakes; and it is a good plan too, to go at once to the
dictionary when you meet a word you do not quite comprehend, or to the
encyclopaedia or history, or whatever else is handy, whenever you read
about anything and would like to know more about it. I say I should stop
here to give you some such advice as this, if I were your schoolmaster.
As I am not, however, I must go on with my story instead.

Within a mile or two of Fort Sinquefield lived a gentleman named
Hardwicke. He was a widower with three children. Sam, the oldest of the
three, was nearly seventeen; Tommy was eleven, and a little girl of
seven years, named Judith, but called Judie, was the other. Mr.
Hardwicke was a quiet, studious man, who had come to Alabama from
Baltimore, not many years before, and since the death of his wife he had
spent most of his time in his library, which was famous throughout the
settlement on account of the wonderful number of books it contained.
There were hardly any schools in Alabama in those days, and Mr.
Hardwicke, being a man of education and considerable wealth, gave up
almost the whole of his time to his children, teaching them in doors and
out, and directing them in their reading. It was understood that Sam
would be sent north to attend College the next year, and meantime he had
become a voracious reader. He read all sorts of books, and as he
remembered and applied the things he learned from them, it was a common
saying in the country round about, that "Sam Hardwicke knows pretty
nearly everything." Of course that was not true, but he knew a good deal
more than most of the men in the country, and better than all, he knew
how very much there was for him yet to learn. A boy has learned the very
best lesson of his life when he knows that he really does not know much;
it is a lesson some people never learn at all. But books were not the
only things Sam Hardwicke was familiar with. He could ride the worst
horses in the country and shoot a rifle almost as well as Tandy Walker
himself, and Tandy, as every reader of history knows, was the most
famous rifleman, as well as the best guide and most daring scout in the
whole south-west. Sam had hunted, too, over almost every inch of
co