ion.

It is the old, old story: Mr Evson was taking his son to a large public
school, and this was the first time that Walter had left home. Nearly
every father who deigns to open this little book has gone through the
scene himself; and he and his sons will know from personal experience
the thoughts, and sensations, and memories, which occupied the minds of
Walter Evson and his father, as the carriage drove through the garden
gate and the village street, bearing the eldest boy of the young family
from the sacred and quiet shelter of a loving home, to a noisy and
independent life among a number of strange and young companions.

If you have ever stood on the hill from which Walter caught a last
glimpse of the home he was leaving, and waved his final farewell to his
mother, you are not likely to have forgotten the scene which was then
spread before your eyes. On the right-hand side, the low hills, covered
with firs, rise in gentle slopes one over the other, till they reach the
huge green shoulder of a mountain, around whose summits the clouds are
generally weaving their awful and ever-changing diadem. To the left,
between the road and a lower range of wooded undulations, is a deep and
retired glen, through which a mountain stream babbles along its hurried
course, tumbling sometimes in a noisy cataract and rushing wildly
through the rough boulder stones which it has carried from the heights,
or deepening into some quiet pool, bright and smooth as glass, on the
margin of which the great purple loosestrife and the long fern-leaves
bend down as though to gaze at their own reflected beauty. In front,
and at your feet, opens a rich valley, which is almost filled as far as
the roots of the mountains by a lovely lake. Beside this lake the white
houses of a little village cluster around the elevation on which the
church and churchyard stand; while on either shore, rising among the
fir-groves that overshadow the first swellings of the hills, are a few
sequestered villas, commanding a prospect of rare beauty, and giving a
last touch of interest to the surrounding view.

In one of these houses--that one with the crowded gables not a hundred
feet above the lake, opposite to which you see the swans pluming their
wings in the sunlight, and the green boat in its little boathouse--lived
the hero of our story; and no boy could have had a dearer or lovelier
home. His father, Mr Evson, was a man in easy, and almost in affluent
circums