a thing
that could ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes
about gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans, and broken
mouse-traps--all sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and
yet be any use when he gets it. Why, that bird will go by a gold watch
to bring back one of those patent cake-pans.

Now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't very different from
yours--and so our minds are just like that bird. We pass by what would
be of inestimable value to us, and pack our memories with the most
trivial odds and ends that never by any chance; under any circumstances
whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any one.

Now, things that I have remembered are constantly popping into my head.
And I am repeatedly startled by the vividness with which they recur
to me after the lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being
remembered at all.

I was thinking over some on my way up here. They were the illustrations
I spoke about to the young lady on the way up. And I've come to the
conclusion, curious though it is, that I can use every one of these
freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson. I'm convinced that each one
has its moral. And I think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you.

Now, I recall that when I was a boy I was a good boy--I was a very good
boy. Why, I was the best boy in my school. I was the best boy in that
little Mississippi town where I lived. The population was only about
twenty million. You may not believe it, but I was the best boy in that
State--and in the United States, for that matter.

But I don't know why I never heard any one say that but myself. I always
recognized it. But even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to
see it. My mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong
with that estimate. And she never got over that prejudice.

Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed
her. She forgot little threads that hold life's patches of meaning
together. She was living out West then, and I went on to visit her.

I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. And when I got there she knew
my face; knew I was married; knew I had a family, and that I was living
with them. But she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who I
was. So I told her I was her boy.

"But you don't live with me," she said.

"No," said I, "I'm living in Rochester."

"What are you doing there?"

"Going to school."

"Large