we want to keep the Old Home House as high-toned as a ten-story organ
factory. And as for education, that's a matter of taste. Me, I'd just as
soon have a waiter that bashfully admitted 'Wee, my dam,' as I would one
that pushed 'Shur-r-e, Moike!' edge-ways out of one corner of his mouth
and served the lettuce on top of the lobster, from principle, to keep
the green above the red. When it comes to tone and tin, Cap'n, you trust
your Uncle Pete; he hasn't been sniffling around the tainted-money bunch
all these days with a cold in his head."

So it went his way finally, as I knew it would, and when the Old Home
opened up on June first, the college waiters was on hand. And they was
as nice a lot of boys as ever handled plates and wiped dishes for their
board and four dollars a week. They was poor, of course, and working
their passage through what they called the "varsity," but they attended
to business and wa'n't a mite set up by their learning.

And they made a hit with the boarders, especially the women folks. Take
the crankiest old battle ship that ever cruised into breakfast with
diamond headlights showing and a pretty daughter in tow, and she would
eat lumpy oatmeal and scorched eggs and never sound a distress signal.
How could she, with one of them nice-looking gentlemanly waiters hanging
over her starboard beam and purring, "Certainly, madam," and "Two lumps
or one, madam?" into her ear? Then, too, she hadn't much time to find
fault with the grub, having to keep one eye on the daughter. The amount
of complaints that them college boys saved in the first fortnight was
worth their season's wages, pretty nigh. Before June was over the Old
Home was full up and we had to annex a couple of next-door houses for
the left-overs.

I was skipper for one of them houses, and Jonadab run the other. Each