Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-07-06
CHAPTER i. How If All Eeuan.

ST $ tone uldu6 tuo SIX uOuLuS
 stretch encouragingly into six long
 years.
 I see her now vividly aS if it were only yesterday. We were at our scant
 breakfast. I as blue as was ever even 25, she brave and confident. And hers was no mere pretense to reassure me, no cheerless optimism
 of ignorance. but the lhrough-and- through courage and strength of those fwho finch for no bogey that fife or death can conjure. Her tone lifted me; I glanced at her and what shone from her eyes set me on my feet, face ito the foe. The table~eloth was darn ed in many places, but so skillfully that you could have looked closely without detecting it. Not lump of sugar, nor slice of bread went to waste in that house; yet even I had to think twice to realize that we were poor, desperately poor. She did not hide our poverty; she beautiied it, she dignified 1t into Spartan sim plicity. know 1t is not the glamour lover the past that makes me be- IIieve there are no women now like those of the race to which she be- llonged. The world, to-day, yields Scomfort too easily to the capable; bhardship is the only mold for such Echaracter. and in those days, in this bmiddle-western country, even the cap liable were strangers to hardship.
 When I was young," she went on, !~and things looked black. as they have habit of looking to the young and inexperienced" put in with A teasing smile at me-'I used to say No myself: Well, anyhow, they cant kill me-" And the thought used to cheer me up wonderfully In fact, it still does"
 l no longer felt hopeless. I begin fo gnaw my troubles again-despair is still
 Judge Granby is a dog" said I: Eyes, a dog"
 Why 'dog%" objected my mother, Why not simply mean man? I've never known dog that could equal a man who set out to be 'ornery.'"
 When I think of all the work I've done for him in these three years"
 For yourself" she interrupted. 'Work you do for others doesn't amount to much, unless it's been first and best for yourself"
 But he was benefited by 1t, too" I urged, and has taken life easy, and has had more clients and bigger fees than he ever had before I'd like to give him jolt I'd stop nagging him to put my name in a miserable corner of the glass in his door. I'd hang out a big sign of my own over my own office door,"
 My mother burst into a radiant smile. I've been waiting a year to hear that" she said.
 Thereupon had a shock of fright Ninside, for I'd never have dared to show fear before my mother. There's nothing else that makes you so brave as living with some one before whom you haven't the courage to let your cowardice show it's feather. If we didn't keep each other up to the mark, what a spectacle of fright and flight this world-drama would be! Vanity. the greatest of vices, is also the greatest of virtues, or the source of the greatest virtues-which comes to the same thing.
 
 When did you do it?" she went on. and then knew I was in for 1t, and how well-founded was the suspicion fhat had been keeping my lips tight shut upon my dream of independ. snce.
 "T'n-T'n think about it." was my answer. in a tone which I hoped she would seq was not hesitating. but re- fective; T mustn't so too faT-or too tast."
 Better go too far and too fast than none at all" retorted my wise mother. Once a tortoise beat hare --ouce. Ii never happened again, yet The whole t.rnId world has been talk Ing about it ever since" And she fell into a study from which she foused hersaIs to say: You'd better let me bargain for the office and the furniture-and the big sign. She knew-but could not or would not leach me-how to get a dollars worth for dollar; would not. suspect, for she despised parslmony. declaring it to be another virtue which Is becou;- Ing only in a woman.
 "0f course-when-" began.
 We've got to do something in the next six months she warned. And now she made the six months seem six minutes.
 l had at my tongues end some thing about the danger of dragging her down into misfortune: but befnra speaking looked at her. and. look. ing. refrained- To say il to her would have been too absurd-to her who had been left a widow with nothing at all, who had educated me for o1l- lege. and who had helped me through my first year there-heIped me with money. mean But for what she gave besides. more. irnmeasurably more-hut for her courage In ne and round me and under m@Fd never ! have got my degree or anything else. I fear To call that courage help :. would bs like saying the handspring ] helps the watch sO go looked at . her. They can't kiH me. can theET . said I. with a laugh which sounded so brave that 1t stHaightway Eade ne l brave
 So it was settled.
 But that was the first step in a fight I can't remember even noE with