fe sweet. When blue
days came for me, and hardship almost forced me to despair, I turned my
thoughts to her, singing as she rocked a cradle, and from her spirit
my own heart took hope again. I think the reason I have never cared for
drink is this: the ease from mental pain that other men have sought in
alcohol, I always found in song.

CHAPTER V. THE LOST FEATHER BED

I didn't care very much for day school. The whipping that I got there
rather dulled the flavor of it for me. But I was a prize pupil at
Sunday-school. Father had gone to America and had saved enough money to
send for the family. I asked my mother if there were Sunday-schools in
America, but she did not know. In those days we knew little about lands
that lay so far away.

My boy chums told me we were going to Pennsylvania to fight Indians.
This cheered me up. Fighting Indians would be as much fun as going to
Sunday-school. A trip to America for such a purpose was a sensible move.
But when mother exploded the Indian theory and said we were going to
work in a rolling mill, I decided that it was a foolish venture.

This shows how much my judgment was worth. I thought it foolish to go to
America merely to better our condition. But I thought it a wise move
to go there and kill Indians to better the living conditions of the
Americans. I know grown men to-day with the same kind of judgment. They
are unwilling to do the simple things that will save their own scalps;
but they are glad to go fight imaginary Indians who they believe are
scalping the human race. "Capitalism" is one of these imaginary Indians.
And Lenin and Trotsky are the boy Indian-fighters of the world. These
poor children are willing to go to any country to help kill the Indian
of capitalism. Meanwhile their own people are the poorest in the world,
but they do nothing to better their condition. Such men have minds that
never grew up.

When our household was dissolving and we were packing our baggage for
America, I tried to break up the plan by hiding under the bed. Mother
took the feather ticks off the two bedsteads and bundled them up to take
to America. Then she reached under the bedstead and pulled me out by the
heels. She sold the bedsteads to a neighbor. And so our household ended
in Wales and we were on our way to establish a new one in a far country.

As I said before, the feather beds were mother's measure of wealth.
Before she was married she had begun saving for her first feath