"He's had as much schoolin' now as ever I had," said the squire,
"and I've got along pooty well. I've been seleckman, and school
committy, and filled about every town office, and I never wanted
no more schoolin'. My father took me away from school when I was
thirteen."

"It wouldn't hurt you if you knew a little more," thought Hiram,
who remembered very well the squire's deficiencies when serving on
the town school committee.

"I believe in learning," he said. "My father used to say, 'Live
and learn.' That's a good motto, to my thinking."

"It may be carried too far. When a boy's got to be of the age of
your boy, he'd ought to be thinking of workin.' His time is too
valuable to spend in the schoolroom."

"I can't agree with you, squire. I think no time is better spent
than the time that's spent in learning. I wish I could afford to
send my boy to college."

"It would cost a mint of money; and wouldn't pay. Better put him
to some good business."

That was the way he treated his own son, and for this and other
reasons, as soon as he arrived at man's estate, he left home, which
had never had any pleasant associations with him. His father wanted
to convert him into a money-making machine--a mere drudge, working
him hard, and denying him, as long as he could, even the common
recreations of boyhood--for the squire had an idea that the time