apartment, stamped, and fretted, and exposed himself by his petulance to
the bitter objurgation of Mrs. Lobkins, our young friend would quietly
and suddenly contrive that the article missed should return of its own
accord to the pocket from which it had disappeared. And thus, as our
readers have doubtless experienced when they have disturbed the peace of
a whole household for the loss of some portable treasure which they
themselves are afterwards discovered to have mislaid, the unfortunate
victim of Paul's honest ingenuity, exposed to the collected indignation
of the spectators, and sinking from the accuser into the convicted,
secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not only vexed him with the loss of
his property, but made it still more annoying to recover it.

Whether it was that, on discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled
for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she thought
that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and permanent
correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at last extremely
anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal education. The key
of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed, two years prior to the
present date, obtained for him; but this far from satisfied her
conscience,--nay, she felt that if she could not also obtain for him the
discretion to use it, it would have been wise even to have withheld a key
which the boy seemed perversely to apply to all locks but the right one.
In a word, she was desirous that he should receive an education far
superior to those whom he saw around him; and attributing, like most
ignorant persons, too great advantages to learning, she conceived that in
order to live as decorously as the parson of the parish, it was only
necessary to know as much Latin.

One evening in particular, as the dame sat by her cheerful fire, this
source of anxiety was unusually active in her mind, and ever and anon she