the
family, I calculated that as a plain American citizen, I couldn't do
better than show I hadn't any ill feelin' agin the Government. I don't
recollect just what the name of the gentleman at the head of the Nation
was, seein' 'twas goin' on sixteen years ago, but I'd made up my mind to
call the infant in the cradle arter him, if he'd ever answered my
letter--which he never did. It was then yo' ma an' I had words because
she didn't want a child of hers named arter such a bad-mannered,
stuck-up, ornary sort, President or no President. She raised a terrible
squall, but I held out against her," he went on, dropping his voice,
"an' I stood up for it that as long as 'twas the office an' not the man
I was complimentin', I'd name him arter the office, which I did on the
spot. When 'twas over an' done the notion got into my head an' kind of
tickled me, an' when you came at last, arter the four others in between,
that died befo' they took breath, I was a'ready to name you 'Governor'
if yo' ma had been agreeable. But 'twas her turn, so she called you
arter her Uncle Benjamin--"

"What's become o' Uncle Benjamin?" I interrupted.

"Dead," responded my father, and for the third time I wept.

"I declar' that child's been goin' on like that for the last hour,"
remarked my mother, appearing upon the threshold. "Thar, thar, Benjy
boy, stop cryin' an' I'll let you go to old Mr. Cudlip's burial
to-morrow."

"May I go, too, ma?" enquired President, who had come in with a lighted
lamp in his hand. He was a big, heavy, overgrown boy, and his head was
already on a level with his father's.

"Not if I know it," responded my mother tartly, for her temper was
rising and she looked tired and anxious. "I'll take Benjy along because
he can crowd in an' nobody'll mind."

She moved a step nearer while her shadow loomed to gigantic proportions
on the whitewashed wall. Her thin brown hair, partially streaked with
grey, was brushed closely over her scalp, and this gave her profile an
angularity that became positively grotesque in the shape behind her.
Across her forehead there were three deep frowning wrinkles, which did
not disappear even when she smiled, and her sad, flint-coloured eyes
held a perplexed and anxious look, as if she were trying always to
remember something which was very important and which she had half
forgotten. I had never seen her, except when she went to funerals,
dressed otherwise than in a faded grey calico with a faded g