The Hillsborough Recorder

THE NEW SCHOLAR.

The new scholar arrived after the beginning of the term at academy, a well-dressed, fine looking lad, whose appearance all the boys liked.

There was a set of gay fellows, who immediately surrounded and invited him to join their carousals. They had "sprees," and I suppose the boys know pretty well what that means. They used to spend their money in eating and drinking and amusements, and often run up large bills which their friends sometimes found it hard to pay.

They wanted the new scholar to join them and they always contrived, by laughing at him or reproaching him, to get almost any boy they wanted into their meshes. The new boys were afraid not to yield to them.

The new scholar refused their invitations. They called him mean and stingy—a charge boys are particularly sore at hearing.

"Mean!" he answered; "and where is the generosity of spending money which is not my own, and which, as soon as it is spent, is to be supplied again with no sacrifice on my part? Stingy! Where is the stinginess of not choosing to beg money of my friends in order to spend it in a way which those friends would disapprove of? for, after all, our money must come from our friends, as we haven't it, nor can we earn it. No, boys, I do not mean to spend one cent in a way that I should be ashamed to account of to my father and mother if they asked me."

"Eh, not out of your leading-strings then? 'Fraid of your father: 'fraid of his whipping you; 'fraid of your mother! Won't she give you a sugar-plum? A precious chap you?" they cried in mocking tones.

"And yet you are trying to make me afraid of you," said the new scholar, boldly. "You want me to be afraid of not doing what you say. But which, I should like to know, is the worst sort of fear—the fear of my school-fellows, which would lead me into everything low, weak or contemptible; or fear of my parents, which will inspire me to things manly, and noble and high-toned? Which fear is the best? It is a very poor service you are doing me to try to set me against my parents and teach me to be ashamed of their care and authority."

The boys felt there was no head way to be made against such a new scholar. All they said hurt themselves more than him, and they liked better to be out of his way than in it—all bad boys, I mean. The others gathered around him; and never did they work or play with greater relish than while he was their companion and friend.

"They study better and play better where he is," said the principal; "Hunt is a choice fellow, and carries more influence than any boy in school. You can't put him down. Everything mean and bad sneaks out of his way."