es which are most different from our own.
Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt because the lad was slow to
perceive all that he had so soon become, and all that I meant him to
become, to me. I knew from every tone of his voice, every chance
expression of his honest eyes, that he was one of those characters in
which we may be sure that for each feeling they express lies a
countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below; a character the
keystone of which was that whereon is built all liking and all
love--DEPENDABLENESS. He was one whom you may be long in knowing, but
whom the more you know the more you trust; and once trusting, you trust
for ever.

Perhaps I may be supposed imaginative, or, at least, premature in
discovering all these characteristics in a boy of fourteen; and
possibly in thus writing of him I may unwittingly be drawing a little
from after-experience; however, being the truth, let it stand.

"Come," said I, changing the conversation, "we have had enough of me;
how goes the world with you? Have you taken kindly to the tan-yard?
Answer frankly."

He looked at me hard, put both his hands in his pockets, and began to
whistle a tune.

"Don't shirk the question, please, John. I want to know the real
truth."

"Well, then, I hate the tan-yard."

Having relieved his mind by this ebullition, and by kicking a small
heap of tan right down into the river, he became composed.

"But, Phineas, don't imagine I intend to hate it always; I intend to
get used to it, as many a better fellow than I has got used to many a
worse thing. It's wicked to hate what wins one's bread, and is the
only thing one is likely to get on in the world with, merely because
it's disagreeable."

"You are a wise lad of your age, John."

"Now don't you be laughing at me." (But I was not, I was in solemn
earnest). "And don't think I'm worse than I am; and especially that
I'm not thankful to your good father for giving me a lift in the
world--the first I ever really had. If I get one foot on the ladder,
perhaps I may climb."

"I should rather believe so," answered I, very confidently. "But you
seem to have thought a good deal about these sort of things."

"Oh, yes! I have plenty of time for thinking, and one's thoughts
travel fast enough lying on this bark-heap--faster than indoors. I
often wish I could read--that is, read easily. As it is, I have
nothing to do but to think, and nothing to think of but myself, and
what I