improvement, to perfection!--on towards immortality and God!" Happy, however, are those who have few cares--upon whose early years fortune, often called hard, has not showered desires, and tasks, and responsibilities. It cannot, indeed, be said of them, as it was sublimely said of the lily of the field, that "they toil not, neither do they spin;" yet the labour is light and has its reward--the privations are comparatively little felt, and the cares are few. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil contains in itself the seed of all desire and all regret; and those who eat the least of it retain, I do believe, the most of paradise, in paradise's best blessing--content. The boy had little to care for, and his preparations were soon made. The barren spot on which his youth had passed was left with little regret, though perhaps regret might come afterwards. There was nothing to attach him to it firmly, for the only things which had given it sunshine had been taken away; and on he went, walking beside the pedlar, thinking and talking of what he was to do next. His heart was a very open one: he had nothing to conceal; he had no motive whatsoever for keeping back, disguising, or adulterating one idea that rose in his mind, one fact that had occurred, one purpose for the future; and he naturally told the pedlar all the events of the last few days, and his great and strong anxiety again to see her whom he called Bessy. He could have opened his mind to no one better fitted to advise him than his accidental companion: and, to say truth, few were better fitted to understand his feelings and to take an interest in them. "If you want to find out where she is, Jim," said Joshua Brown, "nothing can be easier. You say the driver was one of Mr. Galland's postboys. Well, they've each a line, and go to the same inns; we can easily get a posting-card, and trace them from one inn to another till we come to the last; and then a pot of beer to the boy who drove them on will make him tell you where he took the poor thing." This hint of so simple a proceeding, which he had never thought of, was a ray of light to the poor lad, and he determined to act upon it without delay. At Mr. Galland's he begged a card of the house, which, as was customary at those times of posting, had a list of the stages and inns on the road to London; and, satisfied thus far, he walked on more cheerfully with his companion till they came to the town, lying a little out of the direct road, at which Joshua Brown had some business to transact.