ily had very bad luck on their farm in the
West. And they certainly were homesick! But Obadiah and his
uncle, between them, found means to mend matters.

That an innocent and helpless baby should be named Obadiah Waddle was
an outrage which the infant unceasingly resented from the time he got
old enough to realize the awful gulf that lay between his name and
those of his more fortunate mates. The experiences of his first day at
school were branded into his soul; and although he made friends by his
bright face and kind and honest nature, scarcely a day passed during
his six years of village schooling without his absurd name flying out
at him from some unsuspected ambush and making him wince.

[Footnote 16: From the _Youth's Companion_, November 26, 1903.]

It was bad enough when the guying came from a boy, but when a girl
took to punning, jeering, or giggling at him it seemed as if his
burden was greater than he could bear. Then he would go home through
the woods and fields to avoid human beings, so hurt and unhappy that
nothing but his mother's greeting and the smell of a good supper could
cheer him.

At home he had no trouble. His mother and his baby sister called him
Obie, and sweet was his name on their lips. His father, who had
objected to "Obadiah" from the first, called him Bub or Bubby; but one
can bear almost any name when it comes with a loving smile or a pat on
the shoulder, which was Mr. Waddle's way of addressing his only son.

Very early in life it had been explained to Obadiah that he was named
for his mother's favourite brother, who went to California to live,
after hanging a silver dollar on a black silk cord round the neck of
his little namesake.

Obadiah often looked at this dollar, which was kept in a little box
with a broken earring, a hair chain, a glass breastpin, and an ancient
"copper"; and sometimes on circus days or on the Fourth of July he
wished there was no hole in it that he might expend it on side-shows
and lemonade or on monstrous firecrackers.

But he knew that his mother valued it highly because Uncle Obie gave
it to him and because there were little dents in it made by his
vigorous first teeth; so he always returned it to the box with a sigh
of resignation, and made the most of the twenty-five cents given him
by his father on the great days of the year.

When he was eleven years old the Waddle family moved West, and the
last thing Obadiah heard as the train pulled