eye,
and he therefore skirted round a piece of woods which concealed him from
his father's view and reaching the door unobserved, crept into the
house.

Though his absence had been discovered, and its cause, if not known, at
least shrewdly suspected, his father and mother in their reception of
him very wisely ignored all knowledge of his truancy and treated the
young prodigal with such unusual marks of kindness and indulgence, that
he was completely melted, and felt, with keen remorse, that he had been
upon the eve of becoming a most wretched ingrate. The lesson of the
experiment was not lost upon him, and he never again tried the foolish
venture.

CHAPTER VII.

WILLARD GLAZIER AT HOME.

Out of boyhood.--Days of adolescence.--True family pride.--Schemes
for the future.--Willard as a temperance advocate.--Watering his
grandfather's whiskey.--The pump behind the hill. The sleigh-ride
by night.--The "shakedown" at Edwards.--Intoxicated by tobacco
fumes.--The return ride.--Landed in a snow-bank.--Good-bye horses
and sleigh!--Plodding through the snow.

Ward Glazier--putting his theories to the test of practice--believed it
best to allow the error of his son to work out its own punishment,
without adding a word to indicate that he knew it had been committed.
The wisdom of such reticence is not often recognized by parents placed
in similar circumstances, but it would perhaps be better for the
children if it were. At the same time the father thought it expedient to
apprise Allen Wight of the matter. That gentleman readily acquiescing in
his plans, saw in the recoil which would probably succeed such an
escapade in the mind of a sensitive and generous boy, the opportunity he
sought to arouse him to a sense of the duties that lay before him in his
future career, in living a useful and worthy life.

One afternoon, therefore, when they were enjoying a quiet chat after
school hours, he managed--without the slightest allusion to the runaway
freak--to turn the conversation to the subject of "self-made men." Not,
be it understood, that species of fungi who only love their maker,
because being

"_Self_-made, _self_-trained, _self_-satisfied,"

they are

"Themselves their only daily boast and pride."

Not the Randall Leslies, or the Peter Firkins of the world or that other

"Score of Peter Funks,
Of the mock-mining stamp, who deal in chunks
Of confidence, or