d
cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and
when I reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again,
and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for
me and lick me if I didn't drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and
then he swore he'd make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away
from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge
that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts
mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said
he'd druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher
and the widow had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide
me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I
borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying
on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most
midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before
court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said _he_ was
satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for
_him._

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of
him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and
nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family,
and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked
to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and
said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was
a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be
ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on
him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and
his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always
been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old
man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the
judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the
old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:

"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more;
it's the hand of a man