responsibility on his shoulders. Besides, mother is crippled with
rheumatism, and can hardly get around to do her housework, let alone to
make butter. We are not any too well off since the Union Bank failed; for,
besides losing all my stock, I have had to help pay the depositors' claims.
But we have enough to keep us comfortable, and much to be thankful for,
most of all that our famous son is coming home for a visit. Bring your
wife, too, Harry, if she thinks it will not be too much of a drop from
Washington society to our humble home; and the children, all five of those
bright boys and girls,--bring them all! I want to show them the old stall
in the barn, where, twenty-five years ago, I picked their father up in my
arms early one spring morning as he lay fast asleep on the neck of the old
cow over whose expiring breath he had nearly broken his poor little heart."

* * * * *

"Yes, father, of course it has paid to come down here. I would not have
missed it for all the unanimous votes of the third ballot that sent me
East," declared the United States senator at the end of his three days'
visit. Long ago, the Hon. Henry Aldis had fallen into the habit of
addressing Dr. Layton, in his letters, by the paternal title.

"It does not seem possible that it is twenty years since I stood here,
saying good-by when I started West. By the way, do you remember what you
told me that memorable night when the lamented Brindle laid down her life
because of my carelessness, and her own gluttony? I was standing at the
horse's head, and you were sitting in your buggy, there at the carriage
steps, and I said I wished you would horsewhip me, instead of treating me
so kindly. I remember you reached over and tickled my neck with the lash
playfully, and told me there was no use in thrashing a fellow who was all
broken up, anyway, over an accident."