your troubles,
you nasty little whiffet," she cried. "You started the whole thing when
you sneaked in and ruined Jack's pigeon eggs. Now that you've got
the worst of it you come here with your tattle-tales. You ought to be
ashamed to show your face--" She had become so threatening that I turned
and ran. My whole case had gone to pieces on her sharp tongue like a toy
balloon pricked with a pin. I had been blowing it up until it got so
big I couldn't see anything else. It burst right in my face, and there
wasn't even a scrap of rubber to tell where it had been.

This taught me one of the best lessons I ever learned. By looking only
at his side of a case a man can kid himself into thinking that he is
wholly right, that his cause is greater than himself and represents the
rights of the entire community. But a counter-blast from the other
side will deflate his balloon in a second and he'll come down to earth
without even a parachute to soften the jolt when he lands.

I learned that blood is not only thicker than water, but it is thicker
than curdled milk, and you can't line up a mother against her own child
even if he chased the cows until they got so wild they gave strawberry
pop instead of milk. Any argument that goes contrary to human nature
has struck a snag before it is started. A man must come into court with
clean hands. I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he
finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't
recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home
to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and
the spot they had chosen was right in the neck.

CHAPTER XIII. SCENE IN A ROLLING MILL

The rolling mill where father worked was Life's Big Circus tent to me,
and like a kid escaped from school, eager to get past the tent flap and
mingle with the clowns and elephants, I chucked my job sorting nails
when I found an opening for a youngster in the rolling mill. Every
puddler has a helper. Old men have both a helper and a boy. I got a
place with an old man, and so at the age of twelve I was part of the Big
Show whose performance is continuous, whose fire-eaters have real flame
to contend with, and whose snake-charmers risk their lives in handling
great hissing, twisting red-hot serpents of angry iron.

In this mill there is a constant din by day and night. Patches of white
heat glare from the opened furnace doors like the teeth