Two

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1901. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. If you suffer your people to be ill-educated and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those causes to which their first education disposed them, you first make thieves and then punish them.--Sir Thomas Moore. But what of poor little Jim during these long years that have been of so much value to Joe? What of the poor boy whom we left drunk in the snow? That afternoon Mrs. Stebbins began to grow uneasy about him soon after dinner. She feared lest the little fellow had lost his way, and being naturally kind-hearted, wished that she had given him a fried cake for his dinner. But, as hour after hour passed and he did not return, she became so uneasy that she sent Uncle Pete out in search of him. The old fellow grumbled and scolded; he didn't want to go, 'twas "all nonsense"; the "young scamp would come back all right," and if he didn't "'twasn't much odds, anyway"; such a "tricky young 'un wasn't no good." But after he had started and found that the short winter afternoon was almost gone he became worried himself. He thought of the times when he had almost frozen to death. One night in particular he recollected, when dead drunk, he had fallen and when discovered at last by a neighbor, his legs were frozen above his knees. That was the reason he stumbled so this afternoon. 'She'd no business to 'a let the little fellow come all by hisself, she wouldn't 'a dared to if old Stebbins had been to home. Of course he's lost, might know he would be, a little chap like that!" It was growing quite dark and the old man could not see well at the best of times. "I wouldn't know him, if I should see him, but s'pose he'd know old Pete and be glad enough to see him this time." Talking thus to himself, he went stumbling along until suddenly he found hims...