without work. Waiting for dead men's shoes! Dead men's shoes instead of
shoes of one's own."

"Dead men's shoes," muttered Hiram.

"The curse of unearned wealth," went on his friend. "Your life, Hiram,
leaves to your children the injunction to work, to labor cheerfully and
equally, honestly and helpfully, with their brothers and sisters; but
your wealth--If you leave it to them, will it not give that injunction
the lie, will it not invite them to violate that injunction?"

"I have been watching my children, my boy, especially," said Hiram. "I
don't know about all this that you've been saying. It's a big subject;
but I do know about this boy of mine. I wish I'd 'a' taken your advice,
Mark, and put him in your school. But his mother was set on the East--on
Harvard." Tears were in his eyes at this. He remembered how she, knowing
nothing of college, but feeling it was her duty to have her children
educated properly, a duty she must not put upon others, had sent for the
catalogues of all the famous colleges in the country. He could see her
poring over the catalogues, balancing one offering of educational
advantage against another, finally deciding for Harvard, the greatest of
them all. He could hear her saying: "It'll cost a great deal, Hiram. As
near as I can reckon it out it'll cost about a thousand dollars a
year--twelve hundred if we want to be v-e-r-y liberal, so the catalogue
says. But Harvard's the biggest, and has the most teachers and scholars,
and takes in all the branches. And we ought to give our Arthur the best."
And now--By what bitter experience had he learned that the college is not
in the catalogue, is a thing apart, unrelated and immeasurably different!
His eyes were hot with anger as he thought how the boy's mother, honest,
conscientious Ellen, had been betrayed.

"Look here, Mark," he blazed out, "if I leave money to your college I
want to see that it can't ever be like them eastern institutions of
learning." He made a gesture of disgust. "Learning!"

"If you leave us anything, Hiram, leave it so that any young man who gets
its advantages must work for them."

"That's it!" exclaimed Hiram. "That's what I want. Can you draw me up
that kind of plan? No boy, no matter what he has at home, can come to
that there college without working his way through, without learning to
work, me to provide the chance to earn the living."

"I have just such a plan," said Hargrave, drawing a paper from his
pocket. "I'v