ng that
his tender young legs would be made to smart for his adherence to
principle. With so brave a start in life, our hero, when he and the time
were ripe for it, might have figured as the hero of Mew Orleans, instead
of General Jackson, and, qualified by that achievement, have made the
American people just as good a President--kicking the national bank as
unmercifully out of existence as ever Old Hickory did.

But leaving the might-have-been out of the question and taking things as
we find them, Sprigg, by the time he had climbed to the top of his
twelfth year, had more serious faults and more foolish ways than I feel
willing to stop and take a list of, preferring to let them come out
little by little of their own accord, which will seem less like telling
tales away from home. One of his faults, however, the most conspicuous,
though, by no means, the most grievous, I must mention here at the
outset, it being that trait of his character which imparts to our story
its particular color and drift. I allude to his vanity, which displayed
itself in a ridiculous fondness for fine clothes, not to mention that he
was, in every way, a very handsome boy; and the fools, as usual in such
cases, had blabbed this into his ears, until he had grown to be as
strutty and vain as a peacock.

Now, you smile to think that a boy, who lived in a log cabin and ate his
bread and milk with a pewter spoon, and dressed in buckskin breeches and
a coonskin cap, should fancy that he had anything to be vain of. But
take the second thought; or, if you do not feel inclined to make the
effort, I will, by a simple illustration of the point, save you the
trouble. Is not turkey-cock just as proud of his homely feathers as
peacock of his magnificent plumes? And after the battle fought, which
leaves him but the tattered rag of a tail to display to the sun, will
not turkey-cock spread that tattered rag of a tail as self-complacently,
and strut as grandly and gobble as obstreperously as ever? Aye, that
will he! And why? Because his tail--tag-rag or not--is all his own and
nobody else's; though almost anybody else may have one which the sun
would rather shine on. As with turkey-cock, so with an overwhelming
majority of mankind.

CHAPTER II.

Our Hero Falls in Love.

It had only been three or four years since Jervis Whitney and his wife,
Elster, had left their old home beyond the Alleghenies to find a new
home here in the perilous wilds of green K