to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson Crusoe was
preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's Tale of a Tub escaped,
as it was assumed (there being no time to read any of the books,
and in this respect John Cross showed himself much more of a
professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise on one
branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic
mechanics in a new country. The reader will remember the manner in
which the library of the knight of La Mancha was disposed of. He
would err, however, if he supposed that John Cross dismissed
the books from the window, or did anything farther than simply to
open the eyes of Mrs. Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the
company she kept. That sagacious lady did not think it worth while
to dispute the ipse dixit of a teacher so single-minded, if not
sagacious. She bowed respectfully to all his suggestions, promised
no longer to bestow her smiles on the undeserving--a promise of no
small importance when it is remembered that, at thirty-three, Mrs.
Thackeray was for the first time a widow--and that night she might
have been seen laughing heartily with Mesdames Ford and Quickly at
the amorous pertinacity of the baffled knight of Eastcheap.

Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained
the desired entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere
admitted with gladness--everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the
unsophisticated old teacher by whose agency this was effected,
congratulated his congregation and himself, on leaving the village,
that he had left in it a person so full of grace, and one who,
with the blessing of God, was so likely to bring about the birth
of grace in others. The good old man bestowed long and repeated
counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study which he prescribed
was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and the Omega--it was