Then the worst about
life on the river was that each poleman was paid a portion of his wages
in whisky, and the rivermen seemed intent on drinking the stills dry.
James had not only a strong desire to be decent, but liked also to be
with decent people.

Now, in Mishawaka there were some very fine folks--the family of Joseph
Doty, for instance. The Dotys lived in a two-story house and had a
picket fence. James had dug a ditch for Mr. Doty, and split out shingles
for a roof for the Doty barn. At such times he got his dinner at Doty's,
for it was the rule then that you always had to feed your help, no
matter who they were, just as you feed the threshers and harvesters and
silo-men now.

About this time, James began to put bear's grease on his unruly shock
of yellow hair, and tried to part it and bring it down in a nice smooth
pat on the side. That's a sure sign!

The few who noticed the change said it was all on account of Susan Doty.
Once when Susan passed the johnnycake to James, he emptied the whole
plate in his lap, to his eternal shame and the joy of the whole town,
which soon heard of it through a talkative hired man who was present and
laughed uproariously--as hired men are apt to do.

James once heard Susan say that she didn't like rivermen, and that is
probably the reason James quit the river, but he didn't tell her so--not
then at least.

He got a job in the iron-mill and learned to smelt iron, and he became a
pretty good molder, too. Then the hard times came on, and the iron-mill
shut down. But there was a cooper's shop in town, and James was already
very handy with a drawshave in getting out staves. Most of the men
worked by the day, but he asked to work by the piece. They humored him,
and he made over two dollars a day.

Joseph Doty was a subscriber to "Gleason's Pictorial" and "Godey's
Lady's Book." They also had bound copies of "Poor Richard's Almanac" and
"The Spectator," with nearly forty other books. James Oliver read them
all--with Susan's help.

Then something terrible happened! The young folks suddenly discovered
that they were very much in love with each other. The Doty family saw
it too, and disapproved.

The Dotys were English, but as the family had been in America for a
century, that made a big difference.

Susan was the handsomest and smartest girl in town--everybody said so.
She seemed much older than James Oliver, but the fact was they were of
the same age. The Doty family objected t