"Tom," said Sam Kimper to his eldest son one morning after breakfast, "I wish you'd walk along to the shop with me.

There's somethin' I want to talk about." Tom wanted to go somewhere else; what boy doesn't, when his parents have anything for him to do?
Nevertheless, the young man finally obeyed his father, and the two left the house together.
"Tom," said the father, as soon as the back door had closed behind them, "Tom, I'm bein' made a good deal more of than I deserve, but 'tain't any of my doin's, and men that ort to know keep tellin' me that I'm doin' a lot o' good in town.

Once in a while, though, somebody laughs at me,--laughs at somethin' I say.

It's been hurtin' me, an' I told Judge Prency so the other day; but he said, 'Sam, it isn't what you say, but the way you say it.' You see, I never had no eddication; I was sent to school, but I played hookey most of the time." "Did you, though ?" asked Tom, with some inflections that caused the cobbler to look up in time to see that his son was looking at him admiringly; there could be no doubt about it.

Sam had never been looked at that way before by his big boy, and the consequence was an entirely new and pleasurable sensation.