nheritance, he devoted himself more
to the business of cultivating himself and less to that of cultivating
his fields.

He was a man who had built himself up out of books. His regular
education had been limited, but he was an industrious reader, and from
the characters of this and that author he had conceived an idea of a
sort of man which pleased his fancy, and to make himself this sort of
man he had given a great deal of study and a great deal of hard labor.
The result was that he had shaped himself into something like an
old-fashioned country clergyman, without his education, his manners, his
religion, or his clothes. Imperfect similitudes of these Stephen Petter
had acquired, but this was as far as he had gone. A well-read man who
happened also to be a good judge of human nature could have traced back
every obvious point of Stephen Petter's character to some English
author of the last century or the first half of this one.

[Illustration: STEPHEN PETTER.]

It was rather odd that a man like this should be the landlord of an inn.
But everything about Stephen Petter was odd, so ten years before he had
conceived the notion that such a man as he would like to be would be
entirely unwilling to live in the little village of Lethbury, where he
had no opportunity of exercising an influence upon his fellow-beings.
Such an influence he thought it fit to exercise, and as he was not
qualified to be a clergyman, or a physician, or a lawyer, he resolved to
keep a tavern. This vocation would bring him into contact with
fellow-beings; it would give him opportunities to control, impel, and
retard.

Stephen Petter did not for a moment think of buying the Lethbury
"Hotel," nor of establishing such a house as was demanded by the
village. What he had read about houses of entertainment gave him no such
motives as these. Fortunately he had an opportunity of carrying out his
plan according to the notions he had imbibed from his books.

Some years before Stephen Petter had decided upon his vocation, a rich
gentleman had built himself a country-seat about two miles out of
Lethbury. This house and its handsome grounds were the talk and the
admiration of the neighborhood. But the owner had not occupied his
country-home a whole summer before he determined to make a still more
attractive home of it by lighting it with a new-fashioned gas of
domestic manufacture. He succeeded in lighting not only his house but
the whole country-side, for one