A GREAT INSTITUTION. 25 



scribed a frugal diet and the country. Wild game, and 

 bleeding by the musquitoes, will do him good. Spalding 

 is entitled to a holiday, for he's working himself into dys- 

 pepsia in this hot weather." 



" Just the thing;" I replied, and we started to find Smith 

 and Spalding. We found them, and it was settled that 

 they should go with us for a month among the mountains. 

 Everybody knows Smith, the good-natured, eccentric Smith; 

 Smith the bachelor, who has an income greatly beyond his 

 moderate expenditures, and enough of capital to spoil, as he 

 says, the orphan children of his sister. By way of saving 

 them from being thrown upon the cold world with a fortune, 

 he declares he will spend every dollar of it himself, simply 

 out of regard for them. But Smith will do no such thing, 

 and the tenderness with which he is rearing the two beauti- 

 ful, black-eyed, raven-haired little girls, proves that he will 

 not. But Smith has no professional calling or business, and 

 when his digestion troubles him, he has visions of the alms- 

 house, and the Potters' Field, and of two mendicant little 

 girls, while his endorsement would be regarded as good at 

 the bank for a hundred thousand dollars. 



Spalding, as everybody within a hundred leagues of the 

 capitol knows, is a lawyer of eminence, full of good-nature, 

 always cheerful, always instructive ; a troublesome opponent 

 at the bar ; a man of genial sympathies and a big heart. 

 If I have given him, as well as Smith, a nom de plume, it is 

 out of regard for their modesty. We arranged to meet at 



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