James was industrious, frugal, energetic, and had engaged to pay the most
of his own expenses by teaching in the long winter vacations. But
unfortunately this year the Mapleton Academy, which had been promised to
him for the winter term, had been taken away by a little maneuver of
local politics and given to another, thus leaving him without resource.
This disappointment, coming just at the time when the yearly interest
upon the mortgage was due, had brought upon his father one of those
paroxysms of helpless gloom and discouragement in which the very world
itself seemed clothed in sack-cloth.
From the time that he heard the Academy was gone, Deacon Silas lay awake
nights in the blackness of darkness. "We shall all go to the poorhouse
together--that's where it will end," he said, as he tossed restlessly in
the dark.
"Oh no, no, my dear," said his wife, with those serene eyes that had
looked through so many gloomy hours; "we must cast our care on God."
"It's easy for women to talk. You don't have the interest money to pay,
you are perfectly reckless of expense. Nothing would do but James must go
to college, and now see what it's bringing us to!"
"Why, father, I thought you yourself were in favor of it.
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