if I couldn't help myself when they are so interested. In this way I
become one of them. I like to whittle a nice pine stick while I
talk, for then the talk seems incidental to the whittling and so
takes hold of them all the more. In the midst of the talking a boy
will sometimes slip into my hand a fresh stick, when I have about
exhausted the whittling resources of the other. That's about the
finest encore I have ever received. A boy knows how to pay a
compliment in a delicate way when the mood for compliments is on him,
and if that mood of his is handled with equal delicacy great things
may be accomplished.

Well, the other day as I whittled the inevitable pine stick I let
them lure from me the story of Sant. Now, Sant was my seatmate in
the village school back yonder, and I now know that I loved him
whole-heartedly. I didn't know this at the time, for I took him as a
matter of course, just as I did my right hand. His name was Sanford,
but boys don't call one another by their right names. They soon find
affectionate nicknames. I have quite a collection of these nicknames
myself, but have only a hazy notion of how or where they were
acquired. When some one calls me by one of these names, I can
readily locate him in time and place, for I well know that he must
belong in a certain group or that name would not come to his lips.
These nicknames that we all have are really historical. Well, we
called him Sant, and that name conjures up before me one of the most
wholesome boys I have ever known. He was brimful of fun. A
heartier, more sincere laugh a boy never had, and my affection for
him was as natural as my breathing. He knew I liked him, though I
never told him so. Had I told him, the charm would have been broken.

In those days spelling was one of the high lights of school work, and