THE POOR RICH MAN,
AND THE
RICH POOR MAN.
CHAPTER I.
SCHOOL-DAYS.
Just out of the little village of Essex, in New England, and just at the entrance of a rustic bridge, there is a favourite resting-place for loiterers of all ages. One of a line of logs that have been laid down to enable passengers at high water to reach the bridge dry-shod, affords an inviting seat under the drooping limbs of some tall sycamores. There the old sit down to rest their weary limbs, and read with pensive eye the fond histories that memory has written over the haunts of their secluded lives. There, too, the young pause in their sports, and hardly know why their eyes follow with such delight the silvery little stream that steals away from them, kissing the jutting points of the green meadows, and winding and doubling its course as if, like a pleased child, it would, by any pretext, lengthen its stay;—nor, certainly, why no island that water bounds will ever look so beautiful to them as that little speck of one above the bridge
