York.

MDCCCLXII.



This little volume contains a simple record of the trials and
temptations which a poor orphan boy passed through a few years since.
It teaches that best of lessons,--the need of Divine help in the
battle of life. It shows that a child may attain a beautiful character
amid great trials and great evils.

The author assures us that the incidents in this delightful story are
real occurrences. Some of them are "stranger than fiction;" yet they
are not fancies, but facts.




CHAPTER I.

WILLIAM'S FIRST GRIEF.


In one of the many beautiful spots which the traveller sees in making
a voyage up the Hudson, stands the village of M----. It attracts the
notice of all tourists, for it seems to occupy the very place in which
a painter or a lover of the picturesque would have chosen to place it.
Its inhabitants love to boast of its antiquity, for it was founded by
the original Dutch settlers, and its present settlers are mostly their