to what we may style the influence of experimental philosophy;
and if Farmer Matterby had been a poor man he must soon have been
ruined, but, being what is styled "well-to-do," he only said, in
reference to these things--

"Go ahead, my boy. Make hay while the sun shines. If you carry on as
you've begun, you'll make your mark _somewhere_ in this world."

"Alas!" remarked poor Mrs Matterby, "he has made his mark already
_everywhere_, and that a little too freely!"

Nevertheless she was proud of her boy, and sought to subdue his spirit
by teaching him lessons of self-denial and love out of the Word of God.
Johnny listened intently to these lessons, gazing with large wondering
eyes, though he understood little of the teaching at first. It was not
all lost on him, however; and he thoroughly understood and reciprocated
the deep love that beamed in his mother's eyes.

Soon after Johnny had slid into the Jack period of life he became
acquainted with a fisher-boy of his own age, whose parents dwelt in a
cottage on the sea-shore, not a quarter of a mile from his own home, and
close to the village of Blackby.

Natty Grove was as fine a little fellow as one could wish to see: fair,
curly-headed, blue-eyed, rough-jacketed, and almost swallowed up in a
pair of his father's sea-boots, which had been cut down in the legs to
fit him. As to the feet!--well, as his father Ned Grove remarked, there
was plenty of room for growth. Natty had no mother, but he had a little
sister about three years of age, and a grandmother, who might have been
about thirty times three. No one could tell her age for certain; but
she was so old and wrinkled and dried up and withered and small, that
she might certainly have claimed to be "the oldest inhabitant." She had
been bed-ridden for many years because of what her son called
rum-matticks and her grandson styled rum-ticks.

The name of Natty's little sister was Nellie; that of his grandmother,
Nell--old Nell, as people affectionately called her.

Now it may perhaps surprise the reader to be told that Jack Matterby, at
the age of nine years, was deeply in love. He had, indeed, been in that
condition, more or less from the age of three, but the passion became
more decided at nine. He was in love with Nell--not blue-eyed little
Nellie, but with wrinkled old Nell; for that antiquated creature was
brimming over with love to mankind, specially to children. On our hero
she poured out such wealth o