Part 2 (1/2)

”Why can't you be like Cousin James? He isn't always in trouble,” she would urge in her tired way.

It was quite true that the younger cousin was more of a general favorite than harum-scarum Jeff, but the mother might as well have asked her boy to be like Socrates. It was not that he could not learn or that he did not want to study. He simply did not fit into the school groove. Its routine of work and discipline, its tendency to stifle individuality, to run all children through the same hopper like grist through a mill, put a clamp upon his spirits and his imagination. Even thus early he was a rebel.

Jeff scrambled up through the grades in haphazard fas.h.i.+on until he reached the seventh. Here his teacher made a discovery. She was a faded little woman of fifty, but she had that loving insight to which all children respond. Under her guidance for one year the boy blossomed. His odd literary fancy for Don Quixote, for Scott's poems and romances she encouraged, quietly eliminating the dime novels he had read indiscriminately with these. She broke through the sh.e.l.l of his shyness to find out that his diffidence was not sulkiness nor his independence impudence.

The boy was a dreamer. He lived largely in a world of his own, where Quentin Durward and Philip Farnum and Robert E. Lee were enshrined as heroes. From it he would emerge all hot for action, for adventure. Into his games then he would throw a poetic imagination that transfigured them. Outwardly he lived merely in that boys' world made to his hand.

He adopted its s.h.i.+bboleths, fought when he must, went through the annual routine of marbles, tops, kites, hop scotch, and baseball. From his fellows he guarded jealously the knowledge of even the existence of his secret world of fancy.

His progress through the grades and the high school was intermittent.

Often he had to stop for months at a time to earn money for their living. In turn he was newsboy, bootblack, and messenger boy. He drove a delivery wagon for a grocer, ushered at a theater, was even a copyholder in the proofroom of a newspaper. Hard work kept him thin, but he was like a lath for toughness.

Seven weeks after he was graduated from the high school his mother died. The day of the funeral a real estate dealer called to offer three, hundred dollars for the lots in the river bottom bought some years earlier by Mrs. Farnum.

Jeff put the man off. It was too late now to do his mother any good. She had had to struggle to the last for the bread she ate. He wondered why the good things in life were so unevenly distributed.

Twice during the next week Jeff was approached with offers for his lots.

The boy was no fool.

He found out that the land was wanted by a new railroad pus.h.i.+ng into Verden. Within three days he had sold direct to the agent of the company for nine hundred dollars. With what he could earn on the side and in his summers he thought that sum would take him through college.

CHAPTER 2

I wonder if Morgan, the Pirate, When plunder had glutted his heart, Gave part of the junk from the s.h.i.+ps he had sunk To help some Museum of Art; If he gave up the role of ”collector of toll”

And became a Collector of Art?

I wonder if Genghis, the Butcher, When he'd trampled down nations like gra.s.s, Retired with his share when he'd lost all his hair And started a Sunday-school cla.s.s; If he turned his past under and used half his plunder In running a Sunday-school cla.s.s?

I wonder if Roger, the Rover, When millions in looting he'd made, Built libraries grand on the jolly mainland To honor success and ”free trade”; If he founded a college of nautical knowledge Where Pirates could study their trade?

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, If Pirates were ever the same, Ever trying to lend a respectable trend To the jaunty old buccaneer game Or is it because of our Piracy Laws That philanthropists enter the game?

--Wallace Irwin, in Life.

THE REBEL IS INSTRUCTED IN THE WORs.h.i.+P OF THE G.o.d-OF-THINGS-AS-THEY-ARE

Part 1

Jeff was digging out a pa.s.sage in the ”Apology” when there came a knock at the door of his room. The visitor was his cousin, James, and he radiated such an air of prosperity that the plain little bedroom shrank to shabbiness.

James nodded in offhand fas.h.i.+on as he took off his overcoat. ”h.e.l.lo, Jeff! Thought I'd look you up. Got settled in your diggings, eh?” Before his host could answer he rattled on: ”Just ran in for a moment. Had the devil of a time to find you. What's the object in getting clear off the earth?”

”Cheaper,” Jeff explained.

”Should think it would be,” James agreed after he had let his eyes wander critically around the room. ”But you can't afford to save that way. Get a good suite. And for heaven's sake see a tailor, my boy. In college a man is judged by the company he keeps.”

”What have my room and my clothes to do with that?” Jeff wanted to know, with a smile.

”Everything. You've got to put up a good front. The best fellows won't go around with a longhaired guy who doesn't know how to dress. No offense, Jeff.”