Bill and Andy were boy chums, who at the present speaking were roosting on a picket fence, in that seemingly comfortable manner in which bipeds of their species seem perfectly capable of doing. They were good-hearted, industrious boys, but rather thoughtless at times, and the parents of both often felt troubled that they seemed to care so little for “book learning.” Sure enough, when the Town Hall was filling with a half interested, half curious audience to hear Sam Andrew’s story, among the rest, on the back seats, sat Bill and Andy. Pretty soon Sam began; he told how, through struggles and hardships, want and poverty, he had persisted in gaining an entrance into the seminary. All at once, Bill swallowed hard, then whispered to his companion, “I say, Andy, let’s give Sam twenty cents instead of ten!” “Yes, let’s,” readily agreed Andy. Sam went on; he told how fever broke out among some of the seminary boys, and he and a few others spent the last cent they could raise in getting medicines, and alas! a coffin in more than one case. This time Bill gulped down a great sob, and whispered brokenly, “Andy, old boy, let’s make it thirty cents; a heart of stone couldn’t stan’ that!” “Yes, so we will,” gasped Andy, with shining eyes. Sam continued: he told of selling the coat off his back, sooner than give up his precious opportunities for studying and improving his mind. Here Bill gave Andy a nudge, and whispered desperately, “I’m goin’ the whole forty, Andy; what’s a selfish old lark of nuts and candy, I’d like to know, for a well fed cove like me? I’ll help Sam the whole figger,--cookies if I won’t!” “Feel as if I’d been a pig all my life,” whimpered Andy, as Sam went on with his piteous story of painful perseverance and hard endurance. All at once Bill began edging off the settee, but he stopped to whisper again, “Say, Andy, I’m going home as tight as ever I can leg it after that other ten cents; be back in a minute;” and before Andy could reply he was off: in a few moments he was back again, but where was Andy? A moment later Andy entered softly, and taking his seat by Bill, opened his hand, in which was _his_ last ten cent piece. But it might have done one real good to have seen the peculiar shine in the eyes of the generous boys, as their willing offerings rattled down into the well-filled box which was passed around for the collection at the close of the meeting. And after all, that was not the best of it, for on the way home, instead of the “selfish lark” so cheerfully given up, the boys had a good sensible talk, in which they agreed that it was shameful, the way in which they had neglected their studies, and here was a poor colored boy, who had suffered “all a feller _could_ suffer and pull through,”--as Andy remarked with boy-like earnestness,--for the knowledge they, in their favored freedom from care and privation, had hardly thought worth possessing, much less toiling for.