BESSIE’S ISLAND. "9

double the wages he now does. I am going
to study about chemistry and dyeing, and then
I can help him, and we will lay up money
against time and need come.

Bessie.—But how can you learn all this?

Tom—I am going to. buy some books to
study, and then I will try experiments here, on
this island.

Lessie—Where will you get the money to
buy books ?

Tom.—I know. What do you think put it
into my head. |

Bessie—T’'m sure I don’t know; you are
always having queer notions come into your
head.

Tom.—W ell ; I read in a life of John Fitch,
the Connecticut man, who invented steam-
boats, that when he was a boy his father was
too poor to buy him books, and John wanted a
geography. Only think, he had not even a
geography. That was many years ago, Bessie,
when they didn’t have geographies so common
as we do now. Well, John Fitch begged his
father, who was a cross, crabbed old fellow,

not like our kind father—John begged for an