s and newspapers, and Austen under the other with a book
from the circulating library. No public questions could be broached upon
which they were not as far apart as the poles, and the Honourable Hilary
put literature in the same category as embroidery. Euphrasia, when she
paused in her bodily activity to darn their stockings, used to glance at
them covertly from time to time, and many a silent tear of which they
knew nothing fell on her needle.

On the subject of his protracted weekly absences at the State capital,
the Honourable Hilary was as uncommunicative as he would have been had he
retired for those periods to a bar-room. He often grunted and cleared his
throat and glanced at his son when their talk bordered upon these
absences; and he was even conscious of an extreme irritation against
himself as well as Austen because of the instinct that bade him keep
silent. He told himself fiercely that he had nothing to be ashamed of,
nor would he have acknowledged that it was a kind of shame that bade him
refrain even from circumstantial accounts of what went on in room Number
Seven of the Pelican. He had an idea that Austen knew and silently
condemned; and how extremely maddening was this feeling to the Honourable
Hilary may well be imagined. All his life long he had deemed himself
morally invulnerable, and now to be judged and ethically found wanting by
the son of Sarah Austen was, at times, almost insupportable. Were the
standards of a long life to be suddenly reversed by a prodigal son?

To get back to Austen. On St. Valentine's Day of that year when, to tell
the truth, he was seated in his office scribbling certain descriptions of
nature suggested by the valentines in Mr. Hayman's stationery store, the
postman brought in a letter from young Tom Gaylord. Austen laughed as he
read it. "The Honourable Galusha Hammer is well named," young Tom wrote,
"but the conviction has been gaining ground with me that a hammer is
about as much use as a shovel would be at the present time. It is not the
proper instrument." "But the 'old man'" (it was thus young Tom was wont
to designate his parent) "is pig-headed when he gets to fighting, and
won't listen to reason. If he believes he can lick the Northeastern with
a Hammer, he is durned badly mistaken, and I told him so. I have been
giving him sage advice in little drops--after meals. I tell him there is
only one man in the State who has sense enough even to shake the
Northeastern, and