A Certain Rich Man by William Allen White
page 56 of 517 (10%)
page 56 of 517 (10%)
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boys, for she was a sensible woman, but it gave him a prestige on the
playground that he was not slow to take. He was a born trader; and he kept what he got and got more. His weakness was music. He kept two cows in his herd in the summer time in return for the use of the melodeon at the Thayer House, and moved it to his own home and put it in the crowded little room, and practised on it at night when the other boys were loafing at the town pump. For a consideration in marbles he taught Buck Culpepper the chords in "G" on the guitar, and for further consideration taught him the chords in "D" and "C," and with the aid of Jimmy Fernald, aged nine, and Molly Culpepper, aged eleven, one with a triangle and the other with a pumpkin reed pipe, John organized his Band, which he led with his mouth-organ, and exhibited in Culpepper's barn, appropriating to himself as the director the pins charged at the door. Forty years afterward, when Molly called his attention to his failure to divide with the children, John Barclay smiled as he lifted his lame foot to a fat leather chair in front of him and said, "That was what we call the promoter's profit." And then the talk ran to Ellen, and John opened his great desk and from a box without a mark on it he brought out a tintype picture of Ellen at fourteen, a pink-cheeked child in short sleeves, with the fringe of her pantalets showing above her red striped stockings and beneath her bulging skirts, and with a stringy, stiff feather rising from the front of her narrow-rimmed hat. During the time when he was going to school by day and working evenings and caring for the town herd through the summer, the war was dragging wearily on. Sometimes a soldier came home on a furlough and there was news of the Sycamore Ridge men, but oftener it was a season of waiting and working. The women and children cared for the farms and the stores as best they could and lived, heaven only knows how, and |
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