"You can't fool our teacher that way. He knows our hand-writing too well. He knows yours, too, by this time."
"I can disguise it so that he'll not recognize it, I bet you! Don't let's go, Leon. I am heartily sick of school, and everything connected with it."
"So am I."
"Then suppose we spend the day in the woods."
The conversation above recorded took place, one gloomy autumn morning, between Leon Parker and his city cousin, Frank Fuller.
They were about sixteen years of age, and were bright, honest-looking boys; but one of them, at least, was just the opposite of what he appeared to be.
Leon Parker lived in the little town of Eaton, in one of our Northern States. His father was a practising lawyer, and the boy was given every opportunity to prepare himself for usefulness in after-life. But Leon was too indolent to study, and the consequence was that he always stood at the foot of his class, and saw boys younger than himself carry off the honors he might have won if he had been willing to work for them.
Leon was not such a boy as you would have chosen for a companion. He was cross and overbearing, and his father was often obliged to take him to task for some of his misdeeds.
This always made him very angry. Other boys seemed to get on without having the least trouble with their parents or anybody else, and Leon finally came to the conclusion that his father was a tyrant, and that he would be much happier if he could go so far away from him that he would never see him again. And yet there were a good many boys in Eaton who would have been glad to change places with him.
While his father insisted that he should behave himself, he was, at the same time, very indulgent, and he had supplied Leon with a good many things which the majority of the boys in Eaton regarded as necessary to their happiness. He owned a beautiful little skiff, a jointed bass rod, and a light fowling-piece. He had ample opportunity to use them, too.