ra Falls; all I can do is to give you a pass to Paradise."

"Which," said Mr. Oliver, when Mr. Daniels told him the story, "which
was only a preacher's way of telling the man to go to hades. You and I,
George, express ourselves much more simply."

* * * * *

It will not do to make James Oliver out a religious man in a sectarian
sense. He did, however, have a great abiding faith in the Supreme
Intelligence in which we are bathed and of which we are a part. He saw
the wisdom and goodness of the Creator on every hand. He loved
Nature--the birds in the hedgerows and the flowers in the field. He
gloried in the sunrise, and probably saw the sun rise more times than
any other man in Indiana.

"The morning is full of perfume," he used to say. And so it is, but most
of us need to be so informed.

He believed most of all in his own mission and in his own divinity.
Therefore he prized good health, and looked upon sickness and sick
people with a touch of scorn. He reverenced the laws of health as God's
laws, and so he would not put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his
brains. He used no tobacco, was wedded to the daily cold bath, and was a
regular amphibian for splashing. He had a system of calisthenics which
he followed as religiously as the Mohammedan prays to the East. The
pasteboard proclivity was not one of his accomplishments.

But a few months before his death he was missed one day at the works.
His son thought he would drive out to his farm and see if he were there.
He was there all right, and had just one hundred twenty-seven men, by
actual count, digging a ditch and laying out a road.

James Oliver wasn't a man given to explanations, apologies or excuses.
His working motto usually was that of the Reverend Doctor Jowett of
Baliol, "Never explain, never apologize--get the thing done, and let
them howl!"

But on this occasion, anticipating a gentle reproach from his son for
his extravagance, he said: "All right, Joe, all right. You see I've been
postponing this tarnashun job for twenty years, and I thought I'd just
take hold and clean it up, because I knew you never would!"

He was let off with a warning, but Joseph had to go behind the barn and
laugh.

One thing that was as much gratification to Mr. Oliver as making the
road was the sense of motion, action, bustle and doing things. He
delighted in looking after a rush job, and often took charge of "the
boys" personally.

For t