anner of schemes and machines to
save labor. And, at bottom, what is progress but man's success in his
effort to free himself from manual labor--to get everything for himself
by the labor of other men and animals and of machines? Naturally his
boyhood of toil on the farm did not lessen Martin Hastings' innate
horror of "real work." He was not twenty when he dropped tools never
to take them up again. He was shoeing a horse in the heat of the cool
side of the barn on a frightful August day. Suddenly he threw down the
hammer and said loudly: "A man that works is a damn fool. I'll never
work again." And he never did.

As soon as he could get together the money--and it was not long after
he set about making others work for him--he bought a buggy, a kind of
phaeton, and a safe horse. Thenceforth he never walked a step that
could be driven. The result of thirty-five years of this life, so
unnatural to an animal that is designed by Nature for walking and is
punished for not doing so--the result of a lifetime of this folly was a
body shrivelled to a lean brown husk, legs incredibly meagre and so
tottery that they scarcely could bear him about. His head--large and
finely shaped--seemed so out of proportion that he looked at a glance
senile. But no one who had business dealings with him suspected him of
senility or any degree of weakness. He spoke in a thin dry voice,
shrouded in sardonic humor.

"I don't care for lunch," said Jane, dropping to a chair near the side
of the table opposite her father. "I had breakfast too late. Besides,
I've got to look out for my figure. There's a tendency to fat in our
family."

The old man chuckled. "Me, for instance," said he.

"Martha, for instance," replied Jane. Martha was her one
sister--married and ten years older than she and spaciously matronly.

"Wasn't that Davy Hull you were talking to, down in the woods?"
inquired her father.

Jane laughed. "You see everything," said she.

"I didn't see much when I saw him," said her father.

Jane was hugely amused. Her father watched her laughter--the dazzling
display of fine teeth--with delighted eyes. "You've got mighty good
teeth, Jenny," observed he. "Take care of 'em. You'll never know what
misery is till you've got no teeth--or next to none." He looked
disgustedly into his bowl. "Crackers and milk!" grunted he. "No teeth
and no digestion. The only pleasure a man of my age can have left is
eating, and I'm cheate