Lamb! He's the biggest man that's ever lived in this town or
ever will live here; and you can take all the Governors and
Senators or anything they've raised here, and put 'em in a pot
with him, and they won't come out one-two-three alongside o' him!
And to think as big a man as that, with all his interests and
everything he's got on his mind--to think he'd never let anything
prevent him from coming here once every week to ask how I was
getting along, and then walk right upstairs and kind of CALL on
me, as it were well, it makes me sort of feel as if I wasn't so
much of a nobody, so to speak, as your mother seems to like to
make out sometimes."

"How foolish, papa! Of COURSE you're not 'a nobody.'"

Adams chuckled faintly upon his pipe-stem, what vanity he had
seeming to be further stimulated by his daughter's applause. "I
guess there aren't a whole lot of people in this town that could
claim J. A. showed that much interest in 'em," he said. "Of
course I don't set up to believe it's all because of merit, or
anything like that. He'd do the same for anybody else that'd
been with the company as long as I have, but still it IS
something to be with the company that long and have him show he
appreciates it."

"Yes, indeed, it is, papa."

"Yes, sir," Adams said, reflectively. "Yes, sir, I guess that's
so. And besides, it all goes to show the kind of a man he is.
Simon pure, that's what that man is, Alice. Simon pure! There's
never been anybody work for him that didn't respect him more than