r _was_ red and
that his nose _was_ long. At school, for years, he was known familiarly
as "Rufus," "Red-Head," "Carrot-Top," or "Nosey," and at home it was
almost as bad.

His mother, married at nineteen, was the eldest of a family of nine
children, and many of The Boy's aunts and uncles were but a few years
his senior, and were his daily, familiar companions. He was the only
member of his own generation for a long time. There was a constant fear,
upon the part of the elders, that he was likely to be spoiled, and
consequently the rod of verbal castigation was rarely spared. He was
never praised, nor petted, nor coddled; and he was taught to look upon
himself as a youth hairily and nasally deformed and mentally of but
little wit. He was always falling down, or dropping things. He was
always getting into the way, and he could not learn to spell correctly
or to cipher at all. He was never in his mother's way, however, and he
was never made to feel so. But nobody except The Boy knows of the agony
which the rest of the family, unconsciously, and with no thought of
hurting his feelings, caused him by the fun they poked at his nose, at
his fiery locks, and at his unhandiness. He fancied that passers-by
pitied him as he walked or played in the streets, and he sincerely
pitied himself as a youth destined to grow up into an awkward, tactless,
stupid man, at whom the world would laugh so long as his life lasted.

An unusual and unfortunate accident to his nose when he was eight or ten
years old served to accentuate his unhappiness. The young people were
making molasses candy one night in the kitchen of his maternal
grandfather's house--the aunts and the uncles, some of the neighbors'
children, and The Boy--and the half of a lemon, used for flavoring
purposes, was dropped as it was squeezed by careless hands--very likely
The Boy's own--into the boiling syrup. It was fished out and put, still
full of the syrup, upon a convenient saucer, where it remained, an
exceedingly fragrant object. After the odor had been inhaled by one
or two of the party, The Boy was tempted to "take a smell of it"; when
an uncle, boylike, ducked the luckless nose into the still simmering
lemonful. The result was terrible. Red-hot sealing-wax could not have
done more damage to the tender, sensitive feature.

[Illustration: THE BOY IN KILTS]

The Boy carried his nose in a sling for many weeks, and the bandage,
naturally, twisted the nose to one side. It