be entreated, if he will excuse the Hibernicism, to read it first. If he does not, we are only too confident he will never read it. This is not prophecy, but intuition.

BRUCE W. MUNRO.

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[17]

A BLUNDERING BOY.

Chapter I. The Story Opened.

The Story Opened.

William, baptized William, but always called Will, was a boy who had a habit of committing blunders—a habit which, as will be seen, occasionally led him into deep disgrace. When a mere boy, his blunders were of little consequence; but when older they assumed a more serious form. Most of them arose from want of care, as he did everything without considering what the end might be. Doubtless, he ought to have been reproved for this; but as he was only a boy, and as many of his blunders partook of the ludicrous, his parents laughed at him, but seldom took pains to correct him.

Will’s father owned a highly cultivated farm, near one of the great lakes, and was a man of means. He indulged freely in dignified language, in illustrated magazines and weeklies, in frequent pleasure trips by land and water, and in gilded agricultural machines, fragile and complicated, but quite as useful as ornamental.

Will’s mother was an amiable lady, who accompanied her husband on every alternate pleasure trip, and who, by the help of an able housekeeper and a fire-proof cook, spread a table that excited the admiration or envy of all who knew her, the housekeeper, or the cook.

Such were Will’s father and mother, who generally, as he was their only child, suffered him to have his own way, took notice of all his sayings and doings, and occasionally jotted them down in a disused diary. But he was not the kind of boy to be spoiled by such usage; on the contrary he was a very good boy.

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[18]

He was an athletic little fellow, able to undergo great fatigue, and endowed with so much perseverance and hope that he would fish all day for trout, and return at dusk with nothing 

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