A CANDID CONFESSION.

THERE used to live down on Washington Street, a good man, who endeavored to train up his children in the way they should go, and as his flock was numerous he had anything but a sinecure in this training business. Only last Summer the elder of these male olive branches, who had lived about fourteen wicked years, enticed his younger brother, who had only had ten years’ experience in boyish deviltry, to go out on the river in a boat, a species of pastime which their father had many a time forbidden, and had even gone so far as to enforce his veto with a skate strap. But the boys went this time, trusting to luck to conceal their depravity from the knowledge of their pa, and in due time they returned, and walked around the house, the two most innocent looking boys in Burlington. They separated for a few moments, and at the expiration of that time the elder was suddenly confronted by his father who requested a private interview in the usual place, and the pair adjourned to the woodshed, where, after a brief, but highly spirited performance, in which the boy appeared most successfully as “heavy villain” and his father took his favorite role of “first old man,” the curtain went down and the boy, considerably mystified, sought his younger brother.

“John,” he said, “who do you suppose told dad? Have you been licked?”

John’s face will not look more peaceful and resigned when it is in his coffin than it did as he replied,

“No, have you?”

“Have I? Come down to the cow yard and look at my back.”

John declined, but said:

“Well, Bill, I’ll tell you how father found us out. I am tired of acting this way, and I ain’t going to run away and come home and lie about it any more. I’m going to do better after this, and so when I saw father I couldn’t help it, and went right to him and confessed.”

Bill was touched at this manly action on the part of his younger brother. It found a tender place in the bad boy’s heart, and he was visibly affected by it. But he asked:

“How did it happen the old man didn’t lick you?”

“Well,” said the penitent young reformer, “you see I didn’t confess on myself, I only confessed on you; that was the way of it.”

A strange, cold light glittered in Bill’s eye.

“Only confessed on me?” he said. “Well, that’s all right, but come down behind the cow shed and look at my back.”

And when they got there do you suppose John saw the first mite of Bill’s back? Ah no, dear children, he saw nothing bigger than Bill’s fists, and before he got out of that locality he was the worst pounded John that ever confessed on anybody. Thus it is that our coming reformers are made and trained.

BURLINGTON NOVELETTE.