table; odd jobs in receiverships, odd jobs in lawsuits for Daniel
Sands--as, for instance, furnishing unexpected witnesses to prove
improbable contentions--odd jobs in his church, odd jobs in his party
organization, always carrying a per diem and expenses; odd jobs for the
Commercial Club, where the pay was sure; odd jobs for Tom Van Dorn,
spreading slander by innuendo where it would do the most good for Tom in
his business; odd jobs for Tom and Dick and for Harry, but always for
the immediate use and benefit of John Kollander, his heirs and assigns.
But if Amos Adams ever thought of himself, it was by inadvertence. He
managed, Heaven only knows how, to keep the _Tribune_ going. Jasper
bought back from the man who foreclosed the mortgage, his father's
homestead. He rented it to his father for a dollar a year and
ostentatiously gave the dollar to the Lord--so ostentatiously, indeed,
that when Henry Fenn gayly referred to Amos, Grant and Jasper as Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, the town smiled at his impiety, but the holy Jasper
boarded at the Hotel Sands, was made a partner at Wright & Perry's, and
became a bank director at thirty. For Jasper was a Sands!

The day after Amos Adams and Tom Van Dorn had met in the Serenity of
Books and Wallpaper at Brotherton's, Grant was in the _Tribune_
office. "Grant," the father was getting down from his high stool to dump
his type on the galley; "Grant, I had a tiff with Tom Van Dorn
yesterday. Lord, Lord," cried the old man, as he bent over,
straightening some type that his nervous hand had knocked down. "I
wonder, Grant"--the father rose and put his hand on his back, as he
stood looking into his son's face--"I wonder if all that we feel, all
that we believe, all that we strive and live for--is a dream? Are we
chasing shadows? Isn't it wiser to conform, to think of ourselves first
and others afterward--to go with the current of life and not against it?
Of course, my guides--"

"Father," cried Grant, "I saw Tom Van Dorn yesterday, too, in his big
new car--and I don't need your guides to tell me who is moving with the
current and who is buffeting it. Oh, father, that hell-scorched
face--don't talk to me about his faith and mine!" The old man remounted
his printer's stool for another half-hour's work before dusk deepened,
and smiled as he pulled his steel spectacles over his clear old eyes.

One would fancy that a man whose face was as seamed and scarred with
time and struggle as Grant