And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to

the one thousand one classic short stories entails.

Today's story, David Swan by Nathaniel Hawthorne

teaches us that life is a matter of choice and chance

and to save your sleep for the evening hours.

And now our story.

We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life and our final destiny.

There are innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close upon us,

yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying

their near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds.

Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes? Life would be too full of hope

and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity.

This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan.

We have nothing to do with David until we find him at the age of 20, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind the counter.

Be it enough to say that he was a native of New Hampshire,

both of respectable parents,

and had received an ordinary school education with a classic finish by a year at Gilminton Academy.

After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's day,

his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to

sit down in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the stage coach.

As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David's wand.

Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips and then flung himself along the

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