pes eternally to sing._

"'_Government of the Tongue._'"

"Hooray! That's a whopper!" he exclaimed, with enthusiasm. "What's a
prae-lu-di-um?"

"I told you I hadn't got to _p_'s yet," I returned, not without
resentment.

The hymn changed suddenly; the negro in the red shirt, with the scar on
his neck, turned his great oxlike eyes upon me, and the next instant his
superb voice rolled, rich and deep, as the sound of an organ, from his
bared black chest.

"A-settin' in de kingdom,
Y-e-s, m-y-L-a-w-d!"

"Well, you've got gumption," said Bob, the manager. "That's what I
always lacked--just plain gumption, and when you ain't got it, there's
nothing to take its place. I was talking to General Bolingbroke about
you yesterday, Ben, and that's what I said. 'There's but one word for
that boy, General, and it's gumption.'"

I accepted the tribute with a swelling heart. "What good will it do me
if I can't get an education?" I demanded.

"It's that will give it to you, Ben. Why, don't you know every blessed
word in the English language that begins with an _a_? That's more than I
know--that's more, I reckon," he burst out, "than the General himself
knows!"

In this there was comfort, if a feeble one. "But there're so many other
things besides the _a_'s that you've got to learn," I responded.

"Yes, but if you learn the _a_'s, you'll learn the other things,--now
ain't that logic? The trouble with me, you see, is that I learned the
other things without knowing a blamed sight of an _a_. I tell you what
I'll do, Ben, my boy, I'll speak to the General about it the Very next
time he comes to the factory."

He gave me back the dictionary, and I applied myself to its pages with a
terrible earnestness while I awaited the great man's attention.

It was a week before it came, for the General, having gone North on
affairs of the railroad, did not condescend to concern himself with my
destiny until the more important business was arranged and despatched.
Being in a bland mood, however, upon his return, it appeared that he had
listened and expressed himself to some purpose at last.

"Tell him to go to Theophilus Pry and let me have his report," was what
he had said.

"But who is Theophilus Pry?" I enquired, when this was repeated to me by
Bob Brackett.

"Dr. Theophilus Pry, an old friend of the General's, who takes his
nephew to coach in the evenings. The doctor's very poor, I believe,
because they say of him that he ne