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 favorite. And I always felt so safe with him; I knew he wouldn't die from bein' too good, as so many little Sabbath school heroes do.

And yet he wuz always a noble child, truthful as the day wuz long. He would scorn to tell a lie, he wuz too proud to. If he had done anything he would own up to it, most every time he would. And he had naterally a religious mind, I believed, though sometimes Josiah would laugh the idee to scorn when Jack would git into one of his scrapes. He wuz kinder lazy some of the time, and opposition, onreasonable opposition, made him mad, and he would contend to the last minute when he got to goin'. And he had been fooled by Hamenses folks so much that he had got into the habit of keepin' still and studyin' out things for himself. The fools! they would tell him such stories, lies, a purpose to keep him wonderin' and to hear him talk, that he had got sort o' embittered and tried to rely on himself to find out strange things. It wuz pitiful as anything I ever see, and sometimes I thought pitifuler.

Now, spozin' he wanted to find out some particular thing so dretfully it seemed as if he couldn't live a minute without knowin' about it, he would ask Hamen and Hamen would tell him the greatest story you ever hearn, and Jack would listen to it at first, and talk about it, curous, I'll admit, but not curous at all if it wuz true.

And then Hamen and his brother would laugh like two idiots to see Jack's wonderin' looks, and shamed and mortified and everything. And then he would go to Tamer Ann, but Tamer would most likely have some new dime novel that she'd just commenced, and would be so wropped up in the joys and sorrows of the heroine, and would be cryin' over her lots of times, so she