what else would they be?"

"Does it read like stories and verses?"

"I don't know. He keeps hitting the books with a little switch, and
screamin' out as if the house was afire."

"Come, say over some Dutch; _woon't_ you, Horace?"

So the little boy repeated some German poetry, while his schoolmates
looked up at him in wonder and admiration. This was just what Horace
enjoyed; and he continued, with sparkling eyes,--

"I s'pose you can't any of you _count_ Dutch?"

The boys confessed that they could not.

"It's just as easy," said Horace, telling over the numbers up to twenty,
as fast as he could speak.

"You can't any of you _write_ Dutch; can you? You give me a slate now,
and I'll write it all over so you couldn't read a word of it."

"Ain't it very hard to make?" asked the boys in tones of respectful
astonishment.

"I reckon you'd think 'twas hard, it's so full of little quirls, but _I_
can write it as easy as English."

This was quite true, for Horace made very hard work of any kind of
writing.

It was not two days before he was at the head of that part of the school
known as "the small boys," both in study and play; yet everybody liked
him, for, as I have said before, the little fellow had such a strong
sense of justice, and such kindness of heart, that he was always a
favorite, in spite of his faults.

The boys all said there was nothing "mean" about Horace. He would
neither abuse a smaller child, nor see one abused. If he thought a boy
was doing wrong, he was not afraid to tell him so, and you may be sure
he was all the more respected for his moral courage.

Horace talked to his schoolmates a great deal about his father, Captain
Clifford, who was going to be a general some day.

"When I was home," said he, "I studied pa's book of _tictacs_, and I
used to drill the boys."

There was a loud cry of "Why can't you drill us? Come, let's us have a
company, and you be cap'n!"

Horace gladly consented, and the next Saturday afternoon a meeting was
appointed at the "Glen." When the time came, the boys were all as joyful
as so many squirrels suddenly let out of a cage.

"Now look here, boys," said Horace, brushing back his "shingled hair,"
and walking about the grove with the air of a lord. "First place, if I'm
going to be captain, you must mind; will you? _say_."

Horace was not much of a public speaker; he threw words together just as
it happened; but there was so much meaning in the twistings of hi