in the making. Those that are born with bad heads must not be
used in building a house or the house will fall. In the head of
the nail is its power to hold fast. Men are like nails, some have
the hold-fast will in their heads. Others have not. They were
marred in the making. They must be thrown aside and not used in
building the state, or the state will fall.

I put the good nails into kegs, and the headless nails and
splinters were sent back to be melted into window weights.
Handling sharp nails is hard on the hands. And the big half-
dollar that I earned was not unmarred with blood. Every pay-day I
took home my entire earnings and gave them to mother. All my
brothers did the same. Mother paid the household expenses, bought
our clothing and allotted us spending money and money for Sunday-
school.

This is a cynical age and I can imagine that I hear somebody
snicker when I confess the fondness I had for the Sunday-school.
I don't want any one to think I am laying claim to the record of
having always been a good little boy; nor that everything I did
was wise. No; I confess I did my share of deviltry, that some of
my deeds were foolish, and (to use the slang of that time) I
often got it in the neck. Once I bantered a big fat boy to a
fight. He chased me and I ran and crawled into a place so narrow
that I knew he couldn't follow me. I crawled under the floor of a
shed that was only about six inches above the ground. Fatty was
at least ten inches thick and I thought I was safe. But he didn't
try to crawl under the floor after me. He went inside the shed
and found that the boards of the floor sank beneath his weight
like spring boards. And there that human hippopotamus stood