the other lumber-jacks.

The boy was barely sixteen, yet he was six feet two in his stocking feet
... huge-shouldered, stupendous-muscled, a vegetarian, his picture had
appeared in the magazines as the prodigy who had grown strong on "Best
o' Wheat," a prepared breakfast food then popular.

I asked him if the story that he had built his growth and strength on it
was a fake.

"Yes. I never ate 'Best o' Wheat' in my life, except once or twice," he
answered, "I like only natural food ... vegetables ... and lots of milk
... but I draw the line at prepared, pre-digested stuff and baled
breakfast foods."

"Then why did you lend them the use of your name?"

"Oh, everybody that has any prominence does that ... for a price ... but
I really didn't want to do it. 'John' made me ... or I wouldn't have."

"And now you have your hair cropped close, why is that?"

"I suppose it's all right to wear your hair long ... but, last summer,
it got so damned hot with the huge mop I had, that I always had a
headache ... so one day I went down town to the barber and slipped into
his chair. 'Hello, Hank,' says he, 'what do you want, a shave?' (joking
you know--I didn't have but one or two cat-hairs on my face)....

"'No, Jim, I want a hair-cut.' At first he refused ... said 'The
Master' would bite his head off ... but then he did it--

"John wouldn't speak to me that night, at table ... but the other
fellows shouted and clapped....

"I don't exactly get dad's idea all the time ... he's a mighty clever
man, though....

"Books? Oh, yes ... the only ones I care about are those on Indians and
Indian lore ... I have all the Smithsonian Institution books on the
subject ... and I have a wigwam back of the bindery--haven't you noticed
it?--where I like to go and sit cross-legged and meditate ... no, I
don't want to study regular things. Dad always makes me give in, in
fact, whenever I act stubborn, by threatening to send me off to a
regular school....

"No, I want nothing else but to work with my hands all my life."

* * * * *

But, with all his thinking for himself, "Hank" was also childishly
vulgar. He gulped loudly as he ate, thinking it an evidence of hearty
good-fellowship. And he deliberately broke wind at the table ... then
would rap on wood and laugh....

I, on my dignity as cook, and because the others, rough as they were,
complained to me in private about this behaviour, but did not openly
spea