lmaster in Canton and when Bart is a little older I want him to go
there to school. I'll try to find him a place where he can work for his
board."

"We'll miss Bart but we'll be tickled to death--there's no two ways
about that," said Uncle Peabody.

I had been getting sleepy, but this woke me up. I no longer heard the
monotonous creak of harness and whiffletrees and the rumble of wheels; I
saw no longer the stars and the darkness of the night. My mind had
scampered off into the future. I was playing with Sally or with the boys
in the school yard.

The Senator tested my arithmetic and grammar and geography as we rode
along in the darkness and said by and by:

"You'll have to work hard, Bart. You'll have to take your book into the
field as I did. After every row of corn I learned a rule of syntax or
arithmetic or a fact in geography while I rested, and my thought and
memory took hold of it as I plied the hoe. I don't want you to stop the
reading, but from now on you must spend half of every evening on your
lessons."

We got home at half past eight and found my aunt greatly worried. She
had done the chores and been standing in her hood and shawl on the porch
listening for the sound of the wagon. She had kept our suppers warm but
I was the only hungry one.

As I was going to bed the Senator called me to him and said:

"I shall be gone when you are up in the morning. It may be a long time
before I see you; I shall leave something for you in a sealed envelope
with your name on it. You are not to open the envelope until you go away
to school. I know how you will feel that first day. When night falls you
will think of your aunt and uncle and be very lonely. When you go to
your room for the night I want you to sit down all by yourself and open
the envelope and read what I shall write. They will be, I think, the
most impressive words ever written. You will think them over but you
will not understand them for a long time. Ask every wise man you meet to
explain them to you, for all your happiness will depend upon your
understanding of these few words in the envelope."

In the morning Aunt Deel put it in my hands.

"I wonder what in the world he wrote there--ayes!" said she. "We must
keep it careful--ayes!--I'll put it in my trunk an' give it to ye when
ye go to Canton to school."

"Has Mr. Wright gone?" I asked rather sadly.

"Ayes! Land o' mercy! He went away long before daylight with a lot o'
jerked meat in a pack b