Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Erik Bent, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net WE AND THE WORLD: A BOOK FOR BOYS. PART I. BY JULIANA HORATIA EWING. SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, LONDON: NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET. NEW YORK: E. & J.B. YOUNG & CO. [Published under the direction of the General Literature Committee.] DEDICATED TO MY TWELVE NEPHEWS, WILLIAM, FRANCIS, STEPHEN, PHILIP, LEONARD, GODFREY, AND DAVID SMITH; REGINALD, NICHOLAS, AND IVOR GATTY; ALEXANDER, AND CHARLES SCOTT GATTY. J.H.E. WE AND THE WORLD. CHAPTER I. "All these common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled security, and hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation."--WASHINGTON IRVING'S _Sketch Book_. It was a great saying of my poor mother's, especially if my father had been out of spirits about the crops, or the rise in wages, or our prospects, and had thought better of it again, and showed her the bright side of things, "Well, my dear, I'm sure we've much to be thankful for." Which they had, and especially, I often think, for the fact that I was not the eldest son. I gave them more trouble than I can think of with a comfortable conscience as it was; but they had Jem to tread in my father's shoes, and he was a good son to them--GOD bless him for it! I can remember hearing my father say--"It's bad enough to have Jack with his nose in a book, and his head in the clouds, on a fine June day, with the hay all out, and the glass falling: but if Jem had been a lad of whims and fancies, I think it would have broken my poor old heart."