Dolly was a good little lad, quite uninteresting and ordinary, but he flourished here, and went through his daily duties and pleasures with placid content and propriety.
Dick Brown's affliction was a crooked back, yet he bore his burden so cheerfully, that Demi once asked in his queer way, "Do humps make people good-natured?
I'd like one if they do." Dick was always merry, and did his best to be like other boys, for a plucky spirit lived in the feeble little body.

When he first came, he was very sensitive about his misfortune, but soon learned to forget it, for no one dared remind him of it, after Mr.Bhaer had punished one boy for laughing at him.
"God don't care; for my soul is straight if my back isn't," sobbed Dick to his tormentor on that occasion; and, by cherishing this idea, the Bhaers soon led him to believe that people also loved his soul, and did not mind his body, except to pity and help him to bear it.
Playing menagerie once with the others, some one said, "What animal will you be, Dick ?" "Oh, I'm the dromedary; don't you see the hump on my back ?" was the laughing answer.
"So you are, my nice little one that don't carry loads, but marches by the elephant first in the procession," said Demi, who was arranging the spectacle.
"I hope others will be as kind to the poor dear as my boys have learned to be," said Mrs.Jo, quite satisfied with the success of her teaching, as Dick ambled past her, looking like a very happy, but a very feeble little dromedary, beside stout Stuffy, who did the elephant with ponderous propriety.
Jack Ford was a sharp, rather a sly lad, who was sent to this school, because it was cheap.

Many men would have thought him a smart boy, but Mr.Bhaer did not like his way of illustrating that Yankee word, and thought his unboyish keenness and money-loving as much of an affliction as Dolly's stutter, or Dick's hump.
Ned Barker was like a thousand other boys of fourteen, all legs, blunder, and bluster.

Indeed the family called him the "Blunderbuss," and always expected to see him tumble over the chairs, bump against the tables, and knock down any small articles near him.

He bragged a good deal about what he could do, but seldom did any thing to prove it, was not brave, and a little given to tale-telling.