tolerable cast down. As it is, I advise you to go out and take another snifter,—I appeal from Cæsar drunk to Cæsar drunker." Well, sir, those other two let out a yell and fell on the floor; the old president, he r'ars up with massacre in his eye for a minute, and then it got the best of him.

"Shut your noise, you damn fools," says he to the others; then to Jerry, "With the loan of your arm, I'll fill your prescription." So off he toddles to the door. When he got there he turned around, and fixed upon my father a stern but uncertain eye.

"I'm drunk with liquor, sir," says he, "and there's recovery in that case; but you're drunk on your own virtue,—may God have mercy on your soul! Take the boy home and use him right,—there is no bill to pay."

II

"THE VILLAGE PRIDE"

Well, mother gave me a long talking to, after that. Not scolding, but conversation, just as if I was a human being. Somehow it's easier to get along with me that way.

I reckon I averaged three sessions a week in the woodshed, but father might as well have walloped a lime-kiln, for all the tears he drew out of me.

Yet let mother talk to me in her quiet way—easy and gentle, the words soaking in, and the first thing you knew, I had a lump in my throat, and some blamed thing got in my eyes.

I wanted to do what was right by all of them, I certainly did. It was a misfit all round, there's where the trouble come. Father couldn't possibly enter into my feelings. Sixteen I was, staggering with strength, red-headed, and aching to be at something all the time. It ain't in reason I could remember to put one foot before the other—right-left, right-left, day in and day out.

Then, as soon as I'd cleaned up all the boys in our place, every young man for miles around who made pretensions to being double-handed came to find what I was made of.

It's all right to say don't fight, but when this young man slouched along and cast disparagin' eyes in my direction, it was plain somebody had to be hurt, and it might as well not be me.

Honest, I'd rather have been in the woods, fishing, or just laying on my back, watching the pines swinging over me, so slow, so regular, tasting the smell of 'em, and fancying I was an Injun or Mr. Ivanhoe, or whatever idee was uppermost at the time, than out in the dusty road, smiting my 

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