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mon became alarmed, lest, tasting the sweets of an open and honest character, reformation should begin.

One day his neighbour, the lottery office keeper, came in for a policy of insurance, and suggested that he should like to pay the premium in his way. "You can credit the company with the cash, and supply the deficiency when the prizes come into your hands."

The bait took, and the bargain was made. But the lottery office keeper and the devil had both cut their eye-teeth, and our secretary was drawn in to purchase more tickets to draw prizes (!) to cover up the first deficiencies.

Frisbie, at first, hoped that a prize would enable him, before the next semi-annual exhibit was to be made to the board, to pay all he owed. His demon flattered him with this hope, and that thus he was only borrowing the company's money, and certainly could repay it before it was missed. Alas! how many defalcators, in the very commencement of their guilt, have quieted their consciences by the same sophistry!

Soon his old habits of dishonesty regained their full force; and all he cared for was to cover up the deficiencies in his accounts, and take as much

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as he could, and not be discovered. The confidence placed in him, enabled him for a long while to do this by false entries; by charging premiums on book lower than what he obtained, trusting to the want of thoroughness in the directors, that the discrepancy would not be detected; by adding trifles to the discount on prompt payments of losses, or on drafts; and by fictitious small løsses, placed so far back on the books, that, on the semi-annual inspection, the board supposed that they had forgotten them.

How long this might have lasted, cannot be told. His two friends, the lottery office keeper and the devil, were in a hurry for their share; the latter wished to hasten him to desperation, in order, if possible, to lead him to self-destruction; so he persuaded the former to demand some share of the plunder from Frisbie, threatening to denounce him to the company, if he refused. The first compensation did not satisfy him, and he applied again, and was refused. He then wrote an anonymous letter to the directors, advising them to examine their accounts, and giving them some hints of the manner in which their funds had been abstracted. The demand for an examination was made, and a committee of auditors appointed to

investigate; but Frisbie, foreseeing the result of their examinations, and that credit, and fame, and property, were all gone, was impelled by his demon to the act of suicide; and now stood before the pandemoniacal assembly to await his doom.

The details of his life having been read, and the usual formulas attended to, the dictator, in a loud, severe voice, uttered the suicide's judgment:

"John Frisbie, because you have cut off your days by your own act, and have, uncalled, rushed into eternity, you are doomed to go back to earth, and serve out the usual length of man's life in the body of a brute; and I command you to enter a carman's horse, as I know of no animal whose condition is more miserable.”

CHAPTER XXV.

ROBERT WOODS.

ROBERT WOODS, when his mother died, was too young to tell where his native town was; he

could tell his own name and that of his mother, but he knew too little of the names of other persons, or places, in consequence of the seclusion in which his mother kept him, to give any information respecting the town that claimed his parentage, and which, by the laws of the state, should now support him.

The minister and the selectman, each kept his own secret respecting his birth; and the town where his mother died, was obliged to support him, receiving some little compensation from the state, he being one of the "state poor." His first residence was the poor-house, where, under the control of a stern overseer, he was badly fed, worse taught, compelled to any laborious duty that his strength could perform, and the dry crust of bread, that constituted his meal, seasoned with blows and curses.

But Robert was like some plants in nature, the more they are trampled upon, the faster they grow. The poor fare, the hard labour, the blows and the curses never crushed his spirit; they only seasoned his frame, and hardened his constitution to endurance. He had that elasticity of spirits and character, that rose superior to any bad treatment of body or mind. He remembered many

of his mother's instructions upon this very point. She had said so much of all that he was to do and to suffer in life, from the stain of his birth and his poverty, that he supposed it was all a matter of course; hence he preserved a most rigid silence about any peculiarity of his birth, and took labour and toil, reproach and contempt, as a part of every boy's experience. He had a peculiar temperament. There seemed to be printed innately on his heart, 'things will be better and brighter presently;' and long before he could express it in words, or understand the words if expressed to him, he acted upon it as a principle. It was something more than hope; it was a romantic confidence in that which he could not explain, but only feel.

In after life, when ideas and imaginations crowded on his mind, this confidence still continued, but never gave rise to castles in the air, or dreamy outlines of fancied happiness, realized only in fairy lands. It was a principle within that impelled to action, not an imagination that excited to romance. This principle was the source, therefore, of resignation to his situation, and cheerfulness in the performance of his duties. He never complained; was always ready to

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