The most successful attempt originated in Ward No. 1, as Mrs.
Minot called Jack's apartment, and we will give our sympathizing
readers some idea of this place, which became the stage whereon
were enacted many varied and remarkable scenes.

Each of the Minot boys had his own room, and there collected his
own treasures and trophies, arranged to suit his convenience and
taste. Frank's was full of books, maps, machinery, chemical
messes, and geometrical drawings, which adorned the walls like
intricate cobwebs. A big chair, where he read and studied with his
heels higher than his head, a basket of apples for refreshment at all
hours of the day or night, and an immense inkstand, in which
several pens were always apparently bathing their feet, were the
principal ornaments of his scholastic retreat.

Jack's hobby was athletic sports, for he was bent on having a
strong and active body for his happy little soul to live and enjoy
itself in. So a severe simplicity reigned in his apartment; in
summer, especially, for then his floor was bare, his windows were
uncurtained, and the chairs uncushioned, the bed being as narrow
and hard as Napoleon's. The only ornaments were dumbbells,
whips, bats, rods, skates, boxing-gloves, a big bath-pan and a small
library, consisting chiefly of books on games, horses, health,
hunting, and travels. In winter his mother made things more
comfortable by introducing rugs, curtains, and a fire. Jack, also,
relented slightly in the severity of his training, occasionally
indulging in the national buckwheat cake, instead of the prescribed
oatmeal porridge, for breakfast, omitting his cold bath when the
thermometer was below zero, and dancing at night, instead of