llowed for me the hundred a year till I was nine years
old, and then suddenly he died, as the reader perhaps knows. But John
Myers kept me as his son, none the less. I knew no change until, when I
was fourteen, he thought it time for me to see the world, and sent me to
what, in those days, was called a "Manual-Labor School."

There was a theory coming up in those days, wholly unfounded in
physiology, that if a man worked five hours with his hands, he could
study better in the next five. It is all nonsense. Exhaustion is
exhaustion; and if you exhaust a vessel by one stopcock, nothing is
gained or saved by closing that and opening another. The old up-country
theory is the true one. Study ten weeks and chop wood fifteen; study ten
more and harvest fifteen. But the "Manual-Labor School" offered itself
for really no pay, only John Myers and I carried over, I remember, a
dozen barrels of potatoes when I went there with my books. The school
was kept at Roscius, and if I would work in the carpenter's shop and on
the school farm five hours, why they would feed me and teach me all they
knew in what I had of the day beside.

"Felix," said John, as he left me, "I do not suppose this is the best
school in the world, unless you make it so. But I do suppose you can
make it so. If you and I went whining about, looking for the best school
in the world, and for somebody to pay your way through it, I should die,
and you would lose your voice with whining, and we should not find one
after all. This is what the public happens to provide for you and me. We
won't look a gift-horse in the mouth. Get on his back, Felix; groom him
well as you can when you stop, feed him when you can, and at all events
water him well and take care of him well. My last advice to you, Felix,
is to take what is offered you, and never complain because nobody offers
more."

Those words are to be cut on my seal-ring, if I ever have one, and if
Dr. Anthon or Professor Webster will put them into short enough Latin
for me. That is the motto of the "Children of the Public."

John Myers died before that term was out. And my more than mother,
Betsy, went back to her friends in Maine. After the funeral I never saw
them more. How I lived from that moment to what Fausta and I call the
Crisis is nobody's concern. I worked in the shop at the school, or on
the farm. Afterwards I taught school in neighboring districts. I never
bought a ticket in a lottery or a raffle. But whene