prison, do you?"

Then he explained: "We do not know these people. We are too old
to make new friends. We would never be at ease here, we would be
lonely. We like the little home that we bought with our own
savings. It has become a part of ourselves; it fits us like the
wrinkles on our faces. If we moved here our old friends would
never come to see us. This magnificence would scare them away.
No, son. We thank you for offering us this house, but it is not
for us. We will stay in the little cottage where our old friends
will be free to come and light a pipe and chat and drowse away
the evening hours that yet remain.

How wise he was! He knew the fitness of things. His simple
comforts, his old friends, these he valued more than riches, and
the valuation that he put upon them was the right one.



CHAPTER XII

MY HAND TOUCHES IRON


When I was eleven I got a regular job that paid me fifty cents
a day. So I quit school just where the Monitor had sunk the
Merrimac in the "first fight of the ironclads." Thereafter my
life was to be bound up with the iron industry. My job was in a
nail factory. I picked the iron splinters from among the good
nails that had heads on them. This taught me that many are marred