d the gerund, and also said _were_ where they said _was_, and
_there are_, where usage made it _they is_. It was old Peter's
big-headedness and pride, they said. What business had the pore folks's
boy with the speech of a school-teacher or minister in his mouth? His
"coming" and his "going," indeed! Huh, it made 'em sick.

Joe had lived a lonely, isolated life on account of the family poverty
and pride. He was as sensitive as a poet to the boorish brutality, and
his poor, unlettered, garrulous mother made it worse for him by her
boasting of his parts. She never failed to let it be known that he had
read the Bible through, "from back to back," and the _Cottage
Encyclopedia_, and the _Imitation of Christ_, the three books in the
Newbolt library.

People had stood by and watched Peter Newbolt at his schemes and dreams
for many a year, and all the time they had seen him growing poorer and
poorer, and marveled that he never appeared to realize it himself. Just
as a great many men spend their lives following the delusion that they
can paint or write, and waste their energies and resources on that false
and destructive idea, Peter had held the dream that he was singled out
to revolutionize industry by his inventions.

He had invented a self-winding clock which, outside his own shop and in
the hands of another, would not wind; a self-binding reaper that, in his
neighbor's field, would not perform its part; and a lamp that was
designed to manufacture the gas that it burned from the water in its
bowl, but which dismally and ignobly failed. He had contrived and
patented a machine for milking cows, which might have done all that was
claimed for it if anybody--cows included--could have been induced to
give it a trial, and he had fiddled around with perpetual motion until
the place was a litter of broken springs and rusty wheels.

Nothing had come of all this pother but rustic entertainment, although
he demonstrated the truth of his calculations by geometry, and applied
Greek names to the things which he had done and hoped to do. All this
had eaten up his energies, and his fields had gone but half tilled.
Perhaps back of all Peter's futile strivings there had lain the germ of
some useful thing which, if properly directed, might have grown into the
fortune of his dreams. But he had plodded in small ways, and had died at
last, in debt and hopeless, leaving nothing but a name of reproach which
lived after him, and even hung upon his