8 A FATHER'S LETTER. 



great fluency, but I've tried to be a well-behaved parent. In my 

 poor, weak way I've aimed to be a good father to you, Hemy, and so 

 lias your mother. I think I may say, with pardonable pride, that I 

 have been more successful in that line than she has. 



We have both tried, in season and out of season, to so live that we 

 would not bring your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. I, for 

 one, have tried to shun the demon rum for your sake. I have come 

 home early nights, so that you could know where I was, and I have 

 always been willing that you should smell of my breath if you felt so 

 disposed. I have never filled a drunkard's grave or brought reproach 

 upon you. 



Spelling is not always my best holt, but I aim to please as a parent. 

 I have tried not to bring the blush of shame to your fuzzy cheek, and 

 wish you would try to do as much for me sometime. 



When I was a boy they didn't sugar-coat edjucation and make it 

 one long drawn hallelooger to go to school as they now do. On the 

 contrary, the straggling ideas of the roodiments which I now have, 

 was socked into me by main strength and awkwardness. To get the 

 roodiments of an edjucation we had to possess great physical strength 

 and normal courage. 



When I see the student to-day with a big picture book done up in 

 a shawl strap, wearing one of those little cigarettes in his mouth and 

 riding on the hind end of a hoss car towards the big red female semi- 

 nar}*, I often think of the days when I did a day's work before break- 

 fast, and then walked two miles in order to be ready to get licked 

 when the old cast iron cuss that presided over our school felt like it. 



He was a noble brute. He taught our school, I reckon, because 

 he hadn't edjucation enough to engage in other manual pursuits. 



He is now dead. I do not go over to the cemetery every Spring to 

 decorate his grave. Spring is a very busy season with me. If he 

 had died in the Winter, about forty years earlier than he did, I would 

 have gone out of my way to decorate his grave. It would have been 

 a pleasure to me. 



When he died, your mother asked me if I was going to the funeral. 



"No," says I, speaking up in that droll way of mine — "No, says I, 

 I shan't go to the funeral, but, as the feller says, I approve of it." 

 That's the way I am about everything. I speak my mind right out 

 and nobody ever knew me to hesitate about saying what I thought 



