hed hopefully in
caves, coal-banks and rock-dens for gorgons, minotaurs and dragons,
finding nothing worse, however, than a few rattlesnakes and
copperheads,--a tame substitute and an old story. But the value of
drawing their minds to foes in the abstract is already apparent,--they
fight less, and traits other than martial are coming to the front. Nucky
has been giving his energies to learning, with results that astonish.
His teacher says she has never seen such mental alertness. She has
already put him up two grades, and says if he keeps on he may go up
another this half-term. Iry, too, is proving his right to his title of
"pure scholar."

To-night when we began again on the Wonder Book, Nucky said, "I can tell
you a story that beats them,--all about a man by the name of Christian,
that fit with devils, and come near being et up by a giant ten times as
big as him."

There were loud cries of, "Tell it, Trojan!"; and he launched forth into
a most graphic version of Pilgrim's Progress, the other boys listening
absorbed throughout the evening. When all started off to bed, I called
Nucky back. "Where did you learn that story?" I asked him.

"I have knowed it sence allus-ago," he said; "Maw she used to read it to
me out of a book with pictures."

It is the first time he has spoken of his mother,--I hear from the other
boys that he lost her quite recently.

"Then your mother had learning?" I inquired.

"She never got any inside a school-house," he replied; "but her
great-grandpaw he had a sight of learning, and when he was a' old man,
too feeble to do anything but set by the fire, he teached her how to
read and write and figger, and was so proud of her being a scholar that
when he come to die he left her what books he had,--there is several,
all yallow and crumbly. One is a Bible; but the one I like is this-here
about Christian and the devils. I used to lay and look at it by the
hour, and learnt to read a-trying on it."

This is most interesting as being another proof that the early settlers
of this country were men of an education impossible to their
descendants. It also helps to account for Nucky's remarkable mentality.
He grasps a thing almost before it is spoken, has only to read over his
lessons once, and remembers the stories I tell and read with surprising
minuteness.

_Wednesday._

I suppose I might have expected some ill effects from the hero-tales.
When I went down to inspect the stable-lot this m