ance" gazing at him
seriously and steadily over the garden-wall. The father of the author of
"Little Women" winced, but bracing up, gave back stare for stare, and in
a voice flavored with resentment and defiance said, "I need them!"

And the owner of the garden grew abashed before that virtuous gaze,
murmured apologies, and retreated in good order.

And Mark Twain used to explain it thus: "You see, it is like this:
Rogers furnishes the plans and I foot the bills." And this was all there
was about it. Only a big man can take his own without abasement.

Mark Twain has made two grins grow where there was only a growl before.
I don't care where he gets his vegetables--nor where he takes a
well-earned nap--and neither does he.

* * * * *

The average millionaire believes in education, because he has heard the
commodity highly recommended in the newspapers. Usually, he is a man who
has not had college advantages, and so he is filled with the fallacy
that he has dropped something out of his life. We idealize the things
that are not ours. H. H. Rogers was an exception--he was at home in any
company. He took little on faith. He analyzed things for himself. And
his opinion was that the old-line colleges tended to destroy
individuality and smother initiative. He believed that the High School
was the key to the situation, and to carry the youth beyond this was to
run the risk of working his ruin. "The boy who leaves the High School at
seventeen, and enters actual business, stands a much better chance of
success than does the youth who comes out of college at twenty-one, with
the world yet before him," he said.

He himself was one of the first class that graduated from the old
Fairhaven Grammar School. He realized that his success in life came
largely from the mental ammunition that he had gotten there, and from
the fact that he made a quick use of his knowledge. Yet he realized that
the old Fairhaven High or Grammar School was not a model institution.
"It has a maximum of discipline and a minimum of inspiration," he used
to say. The changing order of education found a quick response in his
heart. He never brooded over his lack of advantages. On the other hand,
he used often to refer to the fact that his childhood was ideal. But all
around he saw children whose surroundings were not ideal, and these he
longed to benefit and bless.

And so in Eighteen Hundred Eighty, when he was forty years of ag