I could never fill your place!--that is quite
impossible! Nobody can do that!"

"Try!--only try, Harry! grandmama is very easily pleased when people do
their best. She would not have felt so well satisfied with me, if that
had not been the case."

"Frank!" said Harry, sorrowfully, "I feel as if ten brothers were going
away instead of one, for you are so good to me! I shall be sure to
mention you in my prayers, because that is all I can do for you now."

"Not all, Harry! though that is a great deal; you must write to me
often, and tell me what makes you happy or unhappy, for I shall be more
interested than ever, now that we are separated. Tell me everything
about my school-fellows, too, and about Laura. There is no corner of the
wide world where I shall not think of you both every day, and feel
anxious about the very least thing that concerns you."

"My dear boys!" said Major Graham, who had joined them some moments
before, "it is fortunate that you have both lived always in the same
home, for that will make you love each other affectionately as long as
you live. In England, children of one family are all scattered to
different schools, without any one to care whether they are attached or
not, therefore their earliest and warmest friendships are formed with
strangers of the same age, whom they perhaps never see again, after
leaving school. In that case, brothers have no happy days of childhood
to talk over in future life, as you both have,--no little scrapes to
remember, that they got into together--no pleasures enjoyed at the same
moment to smile at the recollection of, and no friction of their tempers
in youth, such as makes every thing go on smoothly between brothers when
they grow older; therefore, when at last grown up and thrown together,
they scarcely feel more mutual friendship and intimacy than any other
gentlemen testify towards each other."

"I dare say that is very true," said Frank. "Tom Brownlow tells me when
his three brothers come home from Eton, Harrow, and Durham, they quarrel
so excessively, that sometimes no two of them are on speaking terms."

"Not at all improbable," observed Major Graham. "In every thing we see
how much better God's arrangements are than our own. Families were
intended to be like a little world in themselves--old people to govern
the young ones--young people to make their elders cheerful--grown-up
brothers and sisters to show their juniors a good example--and children
to be