ssomed. His
odd literary fancy for Don Quixote, for Scott's poems and romances
she encouraged, quietly eliminating the dime novels he had read
indiscriminately with these. She broke through the shell of his shyness
to find out that his diffidence was not sulkiness nor his independence
impudence.

The boy was a dreamer. He lived largely in a world of his own, where
Quentin Durward and Philip Farnum and Robert E. Lee were enshrined as
heroes. From it he would emerge all hot for action, for adventure. Into
his games then he would throw a poetic imagination that transfigured
them. Outwardly he lived merely in that boys' world made to his hand.
He adopted its shibboleths, fought when he must, went through the annual
routine of marbles, tops, kites, hop scotch, and baseball. From his
fellows he guarded jealously the knowledge of even the existence of his
secret world of fancy.

His progress through the grades and the high school was intermittent.
Often he had to stop for months at a time to earn money for their
living. In turn he was newsboy, bootblack, and messenger boy. He drove a
delivery wagon for a grocer, ushered at a theater, was even a copyholder
in the proofroom of a newspaper. Hard work kept him thin, but he was
like a lath for toughness.

Seven weeks after he was graduated from the high school his mother
died. The day of the funeral a real estate dealer called to offer three,
hundred dollars for the lots in the river bottom bought some years
earlier by Mrs. Farnum.

Jeff put the man off. It was too late now to do his mother any good. She
had had to struggle to the last for the bread she ate. He wondered why
the good things in life were so unevenly distributed.

Twice during the next week Jeff was approached with offers for his lots.
The boy was no fool.

He found out that the land was wanted by a new railroad pushing into
Verden. Within three days he had sold direct to the agent of the company
for nine hundred dollars. With what he could earn on the side and in his
summers he thought that sum would take him through college.

CHAPTER 2

I wonder if Morgan, the Pirate,
When plunder had glutted his heart,
Gave part of the junk from the ships he had sunk
To help some Museum of Art;
If he gave up the role of "collector of toll"
And became a Collector of Art?

I wonder if Genghis, the Butcher,
When he'd trampled down nations like grass,
Retired with