“Now, James, I’ll tell you what you’ll do, when you reach the larned south.  Plant yourself on the highest hill in the neighborhood wherein the academician with whom you intend to stop, lives.  Let the hour of reconnoitring be that in which dinner is preparing.  When seated there, James, take a survey of the smoke that ascends from the chimneys of the farmer’s houses, and be sure to direct your steps to that from which the highest and merriest column issues.  This is the old plan and it is a sure one.  The highest smoke rises from the largest fire, the largest fire boils the biggest pot, the biggest pot generally holds the fattest bacon, and the fattest bacon is kept by the richest farmer.  It’s a wholesome and comfortable climax, my boy, and one by which I myself was enabled to keep a dacent portion of educated flesh between the master’s birch and my ribs.  The science itself is called Gastric Geography, and is peculiar only to itinerant young gintlemen who seek for knowledge in the classical province of Munster.

“Here’s a book that thravelled along wid myself through all my peregrinations—­Creech’s Translation of Horace.  Keep it for my sake; and when you accomplish your education, if you return home this way, I’d thank you to give me a call.  Farewell!  God bless you and prosper you as I wish, and as I am sure you desarve.”

He shook the lad by the hand; and as it was probable that his own former struggles with poverty, when in the pursuit of education, came with all the power of awakened recollection to his mind, he hastily drew his hand across his eyes, and returned to resume the brief but harmless authority of the ferula.

After arriving at the next town, Jemmy found himself once more prosecuting his journey alone.  In proportion as he advanced into a strange land, his spirits became depressed, and his heart cleaved more and more to those whom he had left behind him.  There is, however, an enthusiasm in the visions of youth, in the speculations of a young heart, which frequently overcomes difficulties that a mind taught by the experience of life would often shrink from encountering.  We may all remember the utter recklessness of danger, with which, in our youthful days, we crossed floods, or stood upon the brow of yawning precipices—­feats which, in after years, the wealth of kingdoms could not induce us to perform.  Experience, as well as conscience, makes cowards of us all.

The poor scholar in the course of his journey had the satisfaction of finding himself an object of kind and hospitable attention to his countrymen.  His satchel of books was literally a passport to their hearts.  For instance, as he wended his solitary way, depressed and travel-worn, he was frequently accosted by laborers from behind a ditch on the roadside, and, after giving a brief history of the object he had in view, brought, if it was dinner-hour, to some farm-house or cabin, where he was made to partake of their meal.  Even those poor creatures who gain a scanty subsistence by keeping what are called “dhry lodgins,” like lucus a non lucendo, because they never keep out the rain, and have mostly a bottle of whiskey for those who know how to call for it, even they, in most instances, not only refused to charge the poor scholar for his bed, but declined to receive any remuneration for his subsistence.