Nor can I ever forget the stroke of poetic justice with which the anecdote concluded. Mr. Hawley of Milk Street was also embarrassed by the failure of Perleg, Jackson & Co., but, for want of a trustful friend in funds, was thrown into bankruptcy. Mr. Barton had the chastened pleasure of telling Mr. Hawley about Hiram's loan, and of reminding him that he had neglected a fair opportunity to become a co-benefactor of that upright and open-handed youth; whereupon the ruined Hawley--deservedly ruined, the tale implied--"moved on, dejected and sad, while Mr. Barton returned to his establishment cheered and animated." The gross, the immoral romanticism of this tale was not then, of course, apparent to me. Children are so defenceless! Child that I was, I believed it would be entirely practicable for a lad in his teens to borrow two thousand dollars from a Boston merchant, by reminding him that the boy is not the man. So readily is the young mind poisoned. During the latter part of the lesson, between looks stolen fearfully at her profile, I was mentally engaged in borrowing two thousand dollars from a convenient Mr. Barton with which to establish myself in a small retail business--preferably a candy store with an ice-cream parlor in the rear. Then I took her to wife, not forgetting to reward Mr. Barton handsomely in the day of his ruin. Dimly, in the background of this hasty dramatization, the distrustful Mr. Hawley, who refused to share the loan with Mr. Barton, figured as a rival for my love's hand; and lived to hear her say that she hated, loathed, and despised him. At recess the others crowded about her, girls at the centre, within a straggling circumference of young males, who dissembled their gallantry under a pretence of being mere brutal marauders. But I, solitary, moped and gloomed in a far grassy corner of the school yard. I could not be of that crowd, and it was then I perceived for the first time that the world was too densely populated. I saw how much better it would be if every one but she and I were dead. Thereupon, in a breath, I dispeopled the earth of all but us two, and with the courage gained of this solitude, I saw myself approach her there at the corner of the old brick schoolhouse, greeting her with assurances that everything was all right,--and then, after she understood what I had done, and how fine it was, we came into our own. Alas, how bitter the crude truth! Instead of this, those wondrous tassels now danced from her boot tops as she gave chase to Solon Denney, who had pulled one of the scarlet bows from its yellow braid. Grimly I was aware that he should be the first to go out of the world, and I called upon a just heaven to slay him as he fled with his trophy. But nothing sweet and fitting happened. He went unblasted.