I am sure the early-begun and oft-reiterated teaching of daily thankfulness for daily blessing was very useful to me at Crayshaw’s and has been useful to me ever since.  With my dear mother herself it was merely part of that pure and constant piety which ran through her daily life, like a stream that is never frozen and never runs dry.  In me it had no such grace, but it was an early-taught good habit (as instinctive as any bodily habit) to feel—­“Well, I’m thankful things are not so with me;” as quickly as “Ah, it might have been thus!” Looking at the fates and fortunes and dispositions of other boys, I had, even at Snuffy’s “much to be thankful for” as well as much to endure, and it was a good thing for me that I could balance the two.  For if the grace of thankfulness does not solve the riddles of life, it lends a willing shoulder to its common burdens.

I certainly had needed all my philosophy at home as well as at school.  It was hard to come back, one holiday-time after another, ignorant except for books that I devoured in the holidays, and for my own independent studies of maps, and an old geography book at Snuffy’s from which I was allowed to give lessons to the lowest form; rough in looks, and dress, and manners (I knew it, but it requires some self-respect even to use a nail-brush, and self-respect was next door to impossible at Crayshaw’s); and with my north-country accent deepened, and my conversation disfigured by slang which, not being fashionable slang, was as inadmissible as thieves’ lingo; it was hard, I say, to come back thus, and meet dear old Jem, and generally one at least of his school-fellows whom he had asked to be allowed to invite—­both of them well dressed, well cared for, and well mannered, full of games that were not in fashion at Crayshaw’s, and slang as “correct” as it was unintelligible.

Jem’s heart was as true to me as ever, but he was not so thin-skinned as I am.  He was never a fellow who worried himself much about anything, and I don’t think it struck him I could feel hurt or lonely.  He would say, “I say, Jack, what a beastly way your hair is cut.  I wish Father would let you come to our school:”  or, “Don’t say it was a dirty trick—­say it was a beastly chouse, or something of that sort.  We’re awfully particular about talking at ——­’s, and I don’t want Cholmondley to hear you.”

Jem was wonderfully polished-up himself, and as pugnacious on behalf of all the institutions of his school as he had once been about our pond.  I got my hair as near right as one cutting and the town hair-cutter could bring it, and mended my manners and held my own with good temper.  When it came to feats of skill or endurance, I more than held my own.  Indeed, I so amazed one very “swell” little friend of Jem’s whose mother (a titled lady) had allowed him to spend part of the summer holidays with Jem for change of air, that he vowed I must go and stay with him in the winter, and do juggler and acrobat