the worthy schoolmaster’s feelings, and Betty Trapps said she saw that Mr. Thorsby had some of th’ owd aggravating spirit in him. But Thorsby would take it to Crusoe: and to the astonishment of all the Woodburns the schoolmaster accepted it, and hung it up in his house, as a pleasant joke of Mister Thorsby’s. He seemed to think it an honour to have so much notice from him. He presented Thorsby with the little book, already mentioned, that he had printed in Castleborough, of all things and subjects—on etiquette! It was meant for the help of country schoolmasters like himself in forming the manners of village children. It was founded on his practice, and certainly was a curiosity in its way. Copies of it, I believe, are yet to be procured in the midland counties. Thorsby was convulsed with laughter at its rules, and read them with infinite gusto, not only at the Grange, but among his friends in Castleborough. Besides the fun Thorsby found in Howell Crusoe’s “Book of Etiquette,” he often brought amusing anecdotes from Fair Manor, where he and Letty frequently took tea. Sylvanus, he said, told him seriously that he was very much concerned to find an utter want of conscience in dogs. They are called, he said, very faithful and affectionate animals, but it was, he added, a lamentable fact, that, like too many of their masters, they had no conscience whatever; they were really nothing but time-servers. This he discovered by watching a number of puppies that he had been training. He had tutored them to avoid going on the garden beds, and they knew their duty so well, that as long as any one was in sight they never set a foot on the beds. Yet somehow he observed that there were prints of their feet all over the newly-dug ground. How could this be? He resolved to watch. He walked about the garden with these young dogs, now half grown. Not one ever offered to wander from the walks, but no sooner did he enter his house, and look cautiously out of the window, than he saw them all deliberately walk on to the beds and behave very badly there. A very slight rap at the window, and they all ran off, and looked very much taken in. Yet, time after time, as he tried the experiment, he found them still ready to run on the beds whenever they thought nobody saw them. “They know their duty,” said Sylvanus, “as well as I do—but the fact is, they have no conscience.” Sylvanus, Thorsby said, sincerely believed that spirits appeared sometimes, and the reason he gave for it was, that it is said in the Scriptures that the souls of the righteous shall see the fruits of their labours and be satisfied, and from the same rule, he expected, he said, that the wicked would be sent back to see the fruits of _their_ labours, their avarice, their spending their lives in folly, their abuses of their power; and that this was part of their torment. He thought it must be a very racking thing for miserly men to see their heirs wasting their gold in folly and sin.