fellow-man. But if you should be mean enough to ask me if I took no pleasure in the art of assault and battery, I'd have to admit a slight inclination.

Not that I wanted to hurt anybody, either—small malice there was in those mix-ups! I reckon, with the other lad, as with me, it was more a case of doing your little darnedest—of letting out all you held, once in so often—that made the interest.

But father was powerful opposed to scrapping, and, of course, mother didn't like it, neither. The only place a woman likes a row is in a book.

Women is fond of bargains. They like a fine fight with no bills to pay.

It was a little that way with mother. This time she was talking to me, she brought up for my instruction Great-grandfather Saunders, who fought in the Revolution. He was one of 'em that clubbed their muskets at Bunker Hill. When they asked the old man about it afterward he said he acted that way because he was too darned scart to run. Howsomever, he was a fair-to-medium quarrelsome old gentleman when his blood was up. Mother carefully explained to me that was different—he was fighting for his country. Yet, at the same time, I recollect seeing a letter the old man wrote, calling his neighbors a lot of rum-swilling, psalm-singing hypocrites. Now a man's neighbors are his country. I think Grandpa Saunders liked a row, myself.

Next, mother told me about my French forebears, and a nice peaceful lot they were, for sure. The head of the outfit—the Sieur De La Tour—sassed the king himself to his teeth—he didn't care no more about a king than I do—unless it happened to match on a two-card draw. There was some racket about a friend of Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour's offending the king. He took refuge with the old man, while the king sent the sheriff after him. "You must yield him to the king!" says the sheriff. "Not to any king under God!" says Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour. Hence, trouble. My! How mother's eyes shone when she repeated that proud answer. Yet suppose I sassed father like that? There's something about distance lending enchantment to the view. Well, they downed the old man, although he stacked the posse around him in great shape. Meantime his friend was using both feet to acquire some of that distance to lend enchantment to the view, I just spoke of.

One thing stuck out in these old-timers. Whatever their faults might be, meanness wasn't one of 'em. Therefore I indorsed the lot. I left her that day determined to be such a son as anybody would be 

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