affirms, altered the arrangement at least seven times during that period.
Everybody wondered what the old gentleman was at, all this time; but it
was discovered afterwards, that he was endeavoring to effect a
distribution of the works according to a minute division of human science,
which entirely failed, owing to the unlucky accident of several of his
departments being without any volumes.

After this matter was settled, he regularly spent his evenings in the
library. Frank Meriwether was hardly behind the parson in this fancy, and
took, for a short time, to abstruse reading. They both consequently
deserted the little family circle every evening after tea, and might have
continued to do so all the winter but for a discovery made by Hazard.

Ned had seldom joined the two votaries of science in their philosophical
retirement, and it was whispered in the family that the parson was giving
Frank a quiet course of lectures in the ancient philosophy, for Meriwether
was known to talk a great deal, about that time, of the old and new
Academicians. But it happened upon one dreary winter night, during a
tremendous snowstorm, which was banging the shutters and doors of the
house so as to keep up a continual uproar, that Ned, having waited in the
parlor for the philosophers until midnight, set out to invade their
retreat--not doubting that he should find them deep in study. When he
entered the library, both candles were burning in their sockets, with
long, untrimmed wicks; the fire was reduced to its last embers, and, in an
armchair on one side of the table, the parson was discovered in a sound
sleep over Jeremy Taylor's "Ductor Dubitantium," whilst Frank, in another
chair on the opposite side, was snoring over a folio edition of Montaigne.
And upon the table stood a small stone pitcher, containing a residuum of
whisky punch, now grown cold. Frank started up in great consternation upon
hearing Ned's footstep beside him, and, from that time, almost entirely
deserted the library. Mr. Chub, however, was not so easily drawn away from
the career of his humor, and still shows his hankering after his
leather-coated friends.

NOTES.--Cadmus is said to have taught the Greeks the use of the alphabet.

Socrates (b. 469, d. 399 B. C.), a noted Athenian philosopher.
Rebellion.--In 1798, the Irish organized and rose against the English
rule. The rebellion was suppressed.

Actaeon [Ak-te'on], a fabled Greek hunter, who was changed into a s