ad sturdily resolved that he would never, no never, so long as he
lived, drink a drop of rum. In this resolution he had been strengthened
by the constant jeers and gibes and offerings of his father not only but
of his boon companions.

There are natures which grow stronger by opposition. Tode had one of
these; so the very forces which would have met to ruin nine boys out of
ten, came and rallied around him to strengthen his purpose. So Tode,
having been brought up, or rather having come up, thus far in one of the
lowest of low grog-shops, had steadily and defiantly adhered to his
determination. It was seven years since his mother's prayer had gone up
to God; Tode, only seven at that time, but older by almost a dozen years
than are those boys of seven who have been tenderly and carefully reared
in happy homes, had taken in the full force of that one oft-repeated
sentence and had lived it ever since.

Behold him now, the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly. He had
shuffled off the grog-shop, and fluttered into one of the brightest of
Cleveland hotels. The bright-winged moth singes itself in the brilliant
gaslight sometimes where the caterpillar never comes.

Queer thoughts came into Tode's head with that suit of new clothes with
which he presently arrayed himself. Not particularly new, either. Tom
Roberts was in college, and they were his cast-off attire, worn before
he, too, in his way became a butterfly; and he would not have been seen
in them--no, nor have had it enter into the mind of one of his college
mates that he ever _had_ been seen in them, for a considerable sum even
of spending money.

Different eyes have such different ways of looking at the same thing.
Tode will never forget how that suit of clothes looked to _his_ eyes,
nor how, when arrayed in them, he stood before his bit of glass, and
took a calm, full, deliberate survey of himself. To be sure, Tom being a
chunk and Tode being long limbed, notwithstanding Mr. Hastings'
supposition to the contrary, pants and jacket sleeves were somewhat
lacking in length; moreover there was a patch on each knee, and you have
no idea how nice those patches looked to Tode. Why, bless you! he was
used to seeing great jagged, unseemly holes where these same neat
patches now were. Also he had on a shirt! A real, honest white shirt;
and so persistently does one improvement urge upon us the necessity of
another in this world, that Tode had already been obliged to doff