I never helt it up agin him much, neither, not fur
a good many years, because he got me used to it
young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else.
Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about
as often as he licked her, and boss him jest as much.
So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally
got to have something to cuss around and boss,
so's to keep himself from finding out he don't
amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like
that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and
he kind o' knowed it, way down deep in his inmost
gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have me
around.

But they was one thing he never sot no store by,
and I got along now to where I hold that up agin
him more'n all the lickings he ever done. That
was book learning. He never had none himself,
and he was sot agin it, and he never made me get
none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd of
whaled me fur that. Hank's wife, Elmira, had
married beneath her, and everybody in our town
had come to see it, and used to sympathize with
her about it when Hank wasn't around. She'd
tell em, yes, it was so. Back in Elmira, New
York, from which her father and mother come to
our part of Illinoise in the early days, her father
had kep' a hotel, and they was stylish kind o'
folks. When she was born her mother was homesick
fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so