The Turning of Griggsby: Being a Story of Keeping up with Dan'l Webster
crumpled the nose and put sundry twists in the countenance. There have been two ministers and three old maids in our family, and in my opinion that looking-glass did it. Of course, other things helped, but the glass was mainly responsible. I myself would have been a minister if it had not fallen to my lot to break a yoke of steers, and that saved me. In the course of this task I acquired an accomplishment inconsistent with the life of a clergyman. I kept it long enough to trim the beech trees about my father's house, and it lasted through many calls to repentance. Then, too, my father discovered that I had an unusual talent for lying. He did his best to destroy it, and would have succeeded if he had not appealed to the wrong side of me—a side which never had much capacity for absorbing information. Now as the cow jumped over the moon in my story book, I could not understand why it should be thought wicked for her to jump over the stable in my conversation. But my story lacked verisimilitude. It wouldn't do. Indeed, for a time I felt as if the cow had landed on me. It was a great monopoly that controlled the output of the human imagination, those days, and while most of my elders were in it, as I knew, they wouldn't give me a chance. I persevered. It cost me great pain, but I persevered. My father lost heart and consulted with the Rev. Appleton Hall, who was principal of the village school at Griggsby, and he undertook to make a man of me. That was how I came to go there, and to live in a small room rudely furnished by my father, where I did my own cooking. The school principal began to call me “Havelock of Stillwater,” Stillwater being our township in the woods, and others followed his example. Mr. Hall did not waste any time in trying to convince me that lying produced pain. I knew that. He took the positive side of the proposition and soon taught me that the truth pays.     

       In the main, the looking-glasses of Griggsby were kind to me, and the weight of evidence seemed to indicate that my face was not a misfortune, after all. Still, I had no conceit of it.     

       The big buildings of the town, the high hats and “lofty” manners of the great men, excited my wonder and admiration. At first they were beyond my understanding, and did not even amuse me.     

       I had a profound sense of inferiority to almost every one I met, and especially to Florence Dunbar. I suppose it was a part of that ample gift of humility which had 
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