always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T exactly
a college graduate, and I went to school odd times.
I got to driving the stage after while, and by and
by I BOUGHT the stage and run the business myself.
Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long
story short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham,
with pride, "I married the school-teacher. We did
pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she was always
at me to paint up. Well, I put it off, and PUT it off,
as a man will, till one day I give in, and says I,
'Well, let's paint up. Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's
Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out on the farm.
Let's go out and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let
the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less
kind of a Kanuck that had come down that way; and I'd
hated to see the house with him in it; but we drove out
one Saturday afternoon, and we brought back about a bushel
of the stuff in the buggy-seat, and I tried it crude, and I
tried it burnt; and I liked it. M'wife she liked it too.
There wa'n't any painter by trade in the village, and I
mixed it myself. Well, sir, that tavern's got that coat
of paint on it yet, and it hain't ever had any other,
and I don't know's it ever will. Well, you know,
I felt as if it was a kind of harumscarum experiment,
all the while; and I presume I shouldn't have tried it
but I kind of liked to do it because father'd always
set so much store by his paint-mine. And when I'd got
the first coat on,"--Lapham called it CUT,--"I presume I
must have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and
thinking how he would have enjoyed it. I've had my share