And yet, to put the question to such parents, as Jervis and Elster--though with little expectation of receiving an audible answer--what other result could reasonably have been looked for in a boy, brought up, like Sprigg, to know no will but his own? This was the very thing to render it next to impossible for him to know what his own will really was and how he should use it, not knowing that of his elders and wisers. This, in turn, was the very thing to keep him but ill at ease with himself, and iller at ease, if not at downright loggerheads, with everybody else. Now, had Jervis and Elster been as wise as we are--you and I--they would, at the very outset of their son's existence, have laid their own will down, as the rule, whereby he should order his steps until the beard on his lip announced him qualified to follow his own nose, without too great danger of forgetting to allow that organ the help of his eyes and ears. But as it was, they would have done a wiser and more benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife, without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done would have been slight, compared to that of letting him have his will to play with. So, it were hardly to be laid to poor Sprigg's charge that he was mad enough to figure as a warning example to juvenile evildoers; and it were but Christian in us to draw our sketch of him with a soft nib to our pen, softening down the lines with words from the law of love, which is, or ought to be, written on all our hearts. Had he been as wisely trained as he was affectionately cared for, there is no telling but that Sprigg, instead of being one of the worst boys in the world, he might have turned out to be one of the best--nearly as good, it may be, as a brave little George, the boy, you know, who cut his father's cherry tree with his little hatchet, and when the matter was inquired into, had the courage to own that he was the offender, even while fully expecting that his tender young legs would be made to smart for his adherence to principle. With so brave a start in life, our hero, when he and the time were ripe for it, might have figured as the hero of Mew Orleans, instead of General Jackson, and, qualified by that achievement, have made the American people just as good a President--kicking the national bank as unmercifully out of existence as ever Old Hickory did.