white-fingered loafers that's too proud to get a living by hard work.
Perhaps you'd like to make a parson out of him. Now look here, old
woman, and you, too, my young cock, I've suspicioned that something of
this kind was up, but I tell you once for all it won't go. Just as
this hulk of a boy is gettin' of some use to me, you want to spoil him
by sending him to college. I'll see him hanged first," and the man
turned to his breakfast as if he had settled it. But he was startled
by his son's exclaiming passionately:

"I will go."

"Look here, what do _you_ mean?" said the father, rising with a black
ugly look.

"I mean I've set my heart on going to college and I will go. You and
all the world shan't hinder me. I won't stay here and be a farm drudge
all my life."

The man's face was livid with anger, and in a low, hissing tone he
said:

"I guess you want taking down a peg, my college gentleman. Perhaps you
don't know I'm master till you're twenty-one," and he reached down a
large leather strap.

"You strike me if you dare," shouted the boy.

"If I dare! haw! haw! If I don't cut the cussed nonsense out of yer
this morning, then I never did," and he took an angry stride toward
his son, who sprang behind the stove.