omething
in nature that causes new growth to come out of old dirt and new worlds
to be continually spawned from the ashes of old played-out suns and
stars. When nature ceases to mold new worlds from the past decay, the
universe will wither; and when man loses the urge to build and goes to
tearing down, the end of his story is at hand.

A tired Thomas whose wife supported him by running a rooming house once
asked me:

"How many do you 'spose there are in the United States that don't have
to work?"

"None," I replied, "except invalids and cripples. Every healthy man
in this country has to work just the same as he has to breathe. If you
don't want to work it is because you're sick. I'm a well man, and I've
got to be working all the time or I'd go crazy. I have no more desire
to be idle like you than I have a desire to wear women's clothes. It is
contrary to normal nature, and that's why I say that any man that gets
that way is a sick man."

The fellow was a "free thinker," as he called himself. He was too lazy
to shave and his beard was always about two weeks ahead of him. He was
working out a plan for communism in the United States. He believed that
enough work had now been done to supply the race forever. It was just a
question of so evenly dividing the goods that all men instead of a few
could loaf the rest of their years.

He had such a tired feeling that he didn't have the ambition of an
oyster. He didn't have enough energy to realize he was all in. He took
it for granted that the whole race was as tired as he was.

He thought he needed one of the Utopias they talk so much about. What
he needed was a dose of castor-oil. I never knew a communist in my life
that was a well man.

CHAPTER XIV. BOILING DOWN THE PIGS

An iron puddler is a "pig boiler." The pig boiling must be done at a
certain temperature (the pig is iron) just as a farmer butchering hogs
must scald the carcasses at a certain temperature. If the farmer's water
is too hot it will set the hair, that is, fix the bristles so they will
never come out; if the water is not hot enough it will fail to loosen
the bristles. So the farmer has to be an expert, and when the water in
his barrel is just hot enough, he souses the porker in it, holding it in
the hot bath the right length of time, then pulling it out and scraping
off the hair. Farmers learned this art by experience long before the
days of book farming.

And so the metal "pig boiler" ages ago