Now, if them poor laborin'-men had paid that 2 cents of theirn to the
government themselves, in the first place, in direct taxation, why, that
wouldn't have been statesmanship. That is a deep study, and has a great
many curius performances, and it has to perform.

[Illustration: UNCLE SAM ENRICHING THE GOVERNMENT.]

Cicely tried her very best to get the executor to change in this one
matter; but she couldn't move him the width of a horse-hair, and he a
smilin' all the time at her, and polite. He liked Cicely: nobody could
help likin' the gentle, saintly-souled little woman. But he wus sot: he
wus makin' money fast by it, and she had to give up.

And rough men and women would sometimes twit her of it,--of her property
bein' used to advance the liquor-traffic, and ruin men and wimmen; and she
a feelin' like death about it, and her hands tied up, and powerless. No
wonder that her face got whiter and whiter, and her eyes bigger and
mournfuller-lookin'.

Wall, she kep' on, tryin' to do all she could: she joined the Woman's
Temperance Union; she spent her money free as water, where she thought it
would do any good, and brought up the boy jest as near right as she could
possibly bring him up; and she prayed, and wept right when she wus a
bringin' of him, a thinkin' that _her_ property wus a bein' used
every day and every hour in ruinin' other mothers' boys. And the boy's
face almost breakin' her heart every time she looked at it; for, though he
wus jest as pretty as a child could be, the pretty rosy lips had the same
good-tempered, irresolute curve to 'em that the boy inherited honestly.
And he had the same weak, waverin' chin. It was white and rosy now, with a
dimple right in the centre, sweet enough to kiss. But the chin wus there,